Carling nostalgia

Yeah, it was still cranking out Black Label Beer, Tuborg and Red Cap Ale when I lived in the area in 1975 - looks like the brewery was closed in 1976, less than a year after Carling merged with National Brewing Co. to form Carling-National. The combined company wound up #10 in the US with 4.3M bbl. Late 50s-early 60s, Carling alone had reached #4.

I recall reading back then that the brewery on the shore of Lake Cochituate was the "most beautifully-located brewery in the country" or some such claim but have never found the source again. (They used the lake water for cooling but the brewing process used the municipal water system, according to The Boston Globe).

And, of course, it was the home to the largest bottle of beer in New England:

Narragansett had been using Imperial Quart - [38.43 oz] - bottles for 'Gansett and Croft Ale since the late '50s, so these were about 1.5 oz larger .

Even though New England was the last big market for ale (and Red Cap was usually said to be the #2 ale in the US behind Ballantine in that period) Carling's market share in Massachusetts never even hit double-digits in the 1962-1976 period - behind AB, Narragansett and Rheingold in the 60s and then by 1976, dominated by AB, Miller and Schlitz (combined ~70%).

 

I live on lake cochituate and had no idea Carling was here.

 

Carling Black Label was one of the early attempts at an "international" brand (as noted on the rear label of an US can)

and as such, was often brewed under license and bounced from brewery to brewery, especially after the Canadian parent co., "Carling-O'Keefe" was folded into Molson in the late 80s after being caught up in the Elders IXL debacle.

So, in the US after they bought C-N it was a Heileman brand (then Stroh > Pabst) and in the UK it was brewed by Bass and now by Coors UK, where it is still one of the largest selling lagers. Former owner of Miller, SAB (now part of ABInBev), also brews a Carling Black Label for it's home market. At this point, it is unlikely there's much in common between all of them (if there ever was).

 

I guess it is - but Pabst's corporate website (noted for frequently being outdated and/or inaccurate) no long lists it as part of their portfolio - @Chaz would know best .

Most of the distribution areas of Pabst's portfolio of beers have been shrunk to the brand's former/original primary market - Pearl & Lone Star in Texas, Schaefer and Ballantine Ale in the Northeast, Rainier and Olympia in the PNW, Stroh's and Old Style in the Midwest, etc.

But Black Label was a national brand (breweries in WA, AZ, MD, MA, GA, MI, IL, OH over the years) and even the corporate headquarter offices in the US was moved from Cleveland to Baltimore...(I guess the Canadian parent pulled the strings). So, it didn't really have a single "original/home market" in the US.

Checking the stats, I was surprised that in the 1950s when the brewery was build, Natick was only rated at around 600k bbl/yr. Kinda small for new construction by a company with a national market - although they also bought the Frankenmuth (MI) Brewing Co. the same year, and opened one in Georgia a couple years later.

By the time they closed, they said their were brewing 700k bbl. in Natick - which supplied NE and part of New York - but needed to brew at least 900k bbl there to be profitable - and, in addition, the additional barrelage would have to be beers selling above CBL's "popular-price" - so, Tuborg and maybe a few others (likely Red Cap Ale was selling closer to premium and they tried to market their west coast Heidelberg brand in N.E. at one point).

 

According to one former Miller employee who used to post here on BA:

 

black label was the first beer i legally bought. a 40 ounce bottle in montreal when i was 19. i drank that bad boy right there on the street haha. i thought public drinking was ok in canada, but apparently it's only cool if you're in a park having a picnic??

 

I've been in the area my whole life - still live not far from the old site now. My dad talks about coming home from work or something one day as they were taking the old brewing equipment out - this would have been '78, '79 or so. It had been closed for several years when they sold it all off, presumably for scrap. I wonder if there are any details about that.

Most or least beautiful is partly in the eye of the beholder. Can't comment about back then (I was just born when it closed) but it's not exactly the most picturesque place now. Admittedly there were 10 percent or less of the breweries there are now, but I can't imagine there wasn't any place nicer than this.


Odd that there was Carling till te mid 70s, then there wasn't another brewery in the area until Jack's Abby opened in 2011. Now all of a sudden Metrowest Massachusetts is a mini-hotbed, with Jacks / Springdale, Exhibit A, plus John Harvards and Beer Works brewpubs, Several in Marlboro, a couple in Hudson, Maynard, Waltham, and so on.

 

I’d been buying Black Label fairly regularly by the time I moved to Massachusetts in 1999, and it was the first* packaged beer I bought there. And sure enough, it was a 40 oz bottle - I’d never seen it packaged in that (more or less dedicated to malt liquor) format before, and it was a real hoot!

As I’ve mentioned in past threads on the old (so-called) “Pabst” brands, the distribution and availability of the brands which are still being brewed is confusing. It strikes me as having no intent to connect brands to cities or regions in which there had historically been good sales figures. To this end, brands which never had much pull in a particular city before Pabst owned them can be found in the low-end retail selection next to non-Pabst brands with stronger local ties.

“Corzman” (Charlie Smigel) has a crowdsourced availability page on his website dedicated to Carling’s Black Label, but it could use some updating.

(*The other old fave I found there at the time -Meister Brau- even had point of sale materials - something I’d never seen in Minneapolis.)

 

One of the biggest, if not, the biggest sellers in the UK.

Massive over there

 

Carling was my wife’s go to Lager while visiting Ireland in June.

 

In the late 80’s early 90’s we drank Black Label bar bottles in the returnable case. How do you post a pic.

 

The BeerAdvocate forum does not offer image hosting. Surf here (imgbox) and put the image on the page. You can drag and drop it from where you have saved it or click on the 'upload image' box and step thru to where it is.
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In the early 1990s, when a bunch of people I hung with via indoor soccer would assemble to watch a local basketball team's playoff games on television, a couple of the guys would go to a store and buy a six-pack of 12-oz. cans of Carling Black Label for 'luck' because the can had the right colors (and it was really really cheap).
I hope many of you realize the Carling plant in suburban Baltimore is now where Guinness is brewing many beers, including Newcastle Brown Ale.

 

Newcastle is brewed at Lagunitas.

 

Different "Ca____" company and different alcoholic beverage:

Yup, says so right on the label, too.

Newcastle Brown Ale is a Heineken-owned brand not Diageo. Before that move, much of the Newcastle Brown Ale exported to US came from a Heineken brewery in Holland.