What was your gateway craft beer?

Guinness Extra Stout, which lead me to Schalfly Oatmeal stout, which lead me to try pretty much everything Schlafly had to offer.

 

Interesting. If they couldn't price it like a premium beer then it couldn't have fared well sales-wise. You don't buy licensing rights for a brand and then sell it at a budget brand price unless you have no choice.

 

Sam Adams Octoberfest. I still love this beer now. Until then I had tried a few imported beers and maybe a couple american crafts but none of them really appealed to me until a friend gave me a Sam Adams Octoberfest. I remember it tasted so much more complex and flavorful compared to the cheap beer I was used to.

 

@TongoRad mentioned it above in passing but folks "of a certain age" probably remember Carling-National's classic slogan (second sentence below) for what was by then labeled "Tuborg Gold" in the US after a reformulation of the recipe used in the US to be closer to "Gron Turborg" sold in Europe:
...a pretty direct comment at their placement of the beer in the "premium-priced" segment dominated at the time by Budweiser. (Similarly, another ad, featuring Joe Owades smiling face, stated: SOLD AT POPULAR AMERICAN PREMIUM BEER PRICES! somewhat confusingly - since in beer marketing lingo "Popular" and "Premium" were two different price segments.)

Well, Carling-National (and, later, Heileman, I suppose) got "points" for their advertising and pretty plain statement in ads and on the labels of their "European-branded" beer being brewed in the US and with a different recipe, something Miller didn't do a few years later with their version of Lowenbrau...
("Points" for honest not helping much, however, during the brewery-destroying "Beer Wars" years).

 

I remember drinking these when they first hit the market and saying how bitter they were, and heavy.

 

I had experienced only one dark beer, back in the 80's I had a San Miguel Dark in Austin on a college road trip from College Station. It was probably oxidized all to hell and back. Bad experience, so when I picked up an Anchor Porter in the early 2000's I had low expectations. I was pleasantly surprised and haven't looked back since.

 

Well, in US beer marketing lingo, "Tuborg" and, later, "Tuborg Gold" were "premium-priced" beers.
A 1979 wire service article on the reformulated Tuborg noted:

The "Premium" term was used for the price segment of national brands like Budweiser, Miller High Life and Schlitz. Below that were the segments known as "popular-priced" (PBR and CBL, and large regionals like Olympia) and "economy-priced" brands (like Lucky Lager in the ad) - although the last was a term no brewer ever used in marketing.

Above the "premium" segment, the industry standard segments were "Super-premium" (Michelob, Andeker, etc) and then came "Imports". As noted in these late 1970s California ads, an imported brand like Heineken typically sold for twice the price as the national "premium- priced" beers. (Heineken sixpacks were going for $3.65-$4.25 in CA at the time).

Obviously, beer prices varied greatly in the US at the time, where "regional" markets existed (even for national brands), and a brewer might price the same beer differently depending on market conditions. (It looks like Carling-National might have bumped up Tuborg pricing by '79, right before selling out to Heileman). In addition, the existing records are often newspaper "sale" prices, which could frequently be less than the normal shelf price, a lower price determined by the retailer or the brewer.

Pricing of kegged beer was often likewise very variable - a brewer hoping to establish an off-premise market for a new beer might underprice the kegs in order to make it attractive to bars, where it could serve as a "introduction" to the market (unlike today, on-premise draft was often much cheaper than bottles).

Well, although Carling-National did use the 'dba' name of "Tuborg USA" at times, the market segment decision was likely left to CN (and successor, Heileman) not the licenser of the Tuborg brand, Carlsberg (United Breweries, Ltd.)

 

Larry isn't that funny. ruination was the game changer for me too. Sensational with bitterness and hoppy enough to be different. I started craft beer after that but gravitated toward lagers.

 

I remember going to McSorley's Old Ale House as being a big deal to me. I wonder how that beer would taste to me today.

 

Sam Adams opened the Gate...... Racer 5 welcomed me in!

 

Sort of depends on who was brewing it at the time. Rheingold had taken over brewing the McSorley's Ale in the 1940s and that was the case right up until they closed in the late 1970s.

They had even re-released it as a packaged beer as what by then they called "McSorley's Cream Ale" in their final few years, using Hallertaus, dry-hopping it and adding brewery-distilled hop oil. It was a pretty nice bottled/canned US beer for the era - maybe the best hop nose of any US ale at the time.

After Rheingold closed, the brand was picked up by Ortlieb (most of the larger selling Rheingold brands being bought by C. Schmidt's & Sons) - which continued to make a nice, hoppy ale. It moved to Schmidt's after Ortlieb closed. Somewhere along that timeline (sources do not agree), it went from a bottom-fermented "bastard ale", back to a top-fermented ale.

Once Heileman took over the Schmidt brands (~1988), they ruined the beer, and once in Pabst's stable (after '99) the beers underwent other "reformulations" which left them totally unlike the classic NYC ales of the 1940-70s.

Confusing the history is the fact that the breweries that made the actual "light" and "dark" beers served by McSorley's Old Ale House itself over the years has varied (besides those mentioned above, Stegmaier, Stroh and F X Matt also brewed for them) and their own website's history of the source brewer(s) is incorrect last I looked.

 

I traded the AAL scene in for craft beer about 5 years ago.
My gateway was macro IPA's eg. Stone, Sierra Nevada, Lagunitas, Founders.
I ain't lookin back.

 

Several:

- Long Trail Harvest
- Catamount Porter
- Magic Hat Hocus Pocus
- Tremont Ale
- Sam Adams Boston Ale
- Geary's Pale Ale
- Ipswich Oatmeal Stout
- Katahdin Golden

Can you tell that I went to college in New England in the mid/late 90's?

 

In college I was in a fraternity and every year we hosted a big formal event where we'd rent out a hotel on a beach somewhere and everyone brought dates for the weekend.

Since it's our event, we ultimately pay for the majority of the weekend (dinner, hotel, etc.) but our dates are encouraged but not obliged to bring alcohol in a painted cooler. I asked a girl I didn't know well who, but who our friends had been trying to set me up with for awhile. She didn't really know what I drank so she got a mismatch of your standards (PBR, Yuengling, Red Stripe, etc.) and also some Sierra Nevada and Torpedo which is what she was into at the time.

Long story short she insisted I try something new and that was how I got started with this money pit and also a four year relationship.

 

1999-2003 Somewhere in my High School years, I went to the best house party ever...it was the best house party because the host of the party had a keg of Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale (my intro to craft beer). I remember getting a red cup, filling up the cup and thinking, 'Wow this smells citrusy and different then the crappy beers I get from the bums that I have go into 7-11 and buy me beer'. Then I took my first sip....'holy sh!t, this tastes like spicy grapefruit....I love it'. Ever since then, I've been hooked on good beer.

 

Edmund Fitzgerald Porter by Great Lakes. I made it to almost 30 years old & never even liked a beer. I thought they were all fizzy yellow soda water.

This one stopped me in my tracks.

 

Summit EPA, circa 1994 (which would have made me about 19). A balanced, malty English-style pale ale from Minnesota's first craft brewery. I much prefer hoppy, American-style ales, and have for many years, but this is the one that opened the door for me.

 

Pretty sure I've mentioned this in other [similar] threads:
I was not on the leading edge of the larger movement, but there did come a time early enough in my life where I wouldn't mind spending an extra $1 or $2 a six pack to get something that wasn't Milwaukee's Best in college. Of those that seemed more crafty at the time (whether they were or not): Killian's, JW Dundee, Molson, Saranac.

Years later, one of the first places that I used to enjoy going to because they brewed their own beers and I actually liked them was Sweetwater Tavern (local brewpub chain). Dogfish Head threw a brewpub nearby and that helped lead me further down the path. I don't think it was until nearer 2010 that I really realized I did have an actual interest in beer itself (another 'local" - Starr Hill had entered my life by then, of note).

Anyhow, working back to gateway - I tend to split the blame between Sweetwater and DFH, a little weighted towards the former.

As for how I feel now: Sweetwater is generally decent - with some occasional real winners. At a different level and expectation (large regional distribution brewery), I could argue similar for Dogfish.