Entry for "Billy Beer"?

If you drink that I have a magnum of Budweiser mellenium 2000 you may like. It is almost 20 years old.

 

See also post #44 in the link I provided in post #11. This beer is named after the wrong Billy.

 

Lol, a ticker dream come true. Bet that’s past it’s ahhh.....prime if it ever had one to begin with.

 

To do in right (well, "right" might be the wrong word...) you should wait until you get 3 more Billy's - one from each of the other breweries - Cold Spring, West End (now F.X. Matt) and Pearl.

Pretty amazing that half the breweries that brewed Billy are still in business. That sure ain't the case for all the breweries that existed in 1978.

As for any "difference" the PR at the time said they weren't.

The belief that it was "bad" is just nonsense*. Those four breweries knew what they were doing - they could all make a good AAL. Carter's personal favorite at the time was Pabst Blue Ribbon - which was seen as a pretty good "traditional" adjunct beer at the time. Pabst hadn't jumped on the efficiency bandwagon that Miller and Schlitz did (which killed the latter, of course). Pabst had a brewery in Georgia (in Pabst, Georgia - tho' the town reverted to it's original name of Perry once Heileman took over the facility in the early 80s) which I always thought might have contributed to Carter's opinion of it. Some stories claim Carter drank PBR over other brands mostly because he liked the delivery driver (for those who don't remember, Carter ran a gas station that sold beer).

Sure, lots of people today don't like the AAL style but, at the time, it made up 95% of the US beer market - and the "hot" style of the time was "light beer". I've seen lots of local "Billy Beer" reports in local papers and the "man on the street in the local gin mill" criticism of the beer was all over the place - "too light" "too heavy" "bad aftertaste" "no aftertaste" (come to think of it, never found a "blind" taste test, tho'). The one that I think killed it (besides, of course, the gimmicky aspect of it) was "too expensive". It was typically sold at "Premium" prices (Bud, Miller, Schlitz) and so was more expensive that the brewers' flagships - Utica Club, Falls City, Pearl and Cold Spring.

* That statement likely does NOT apply to the beer 40+ years later.

 

I don't think I could tell AALs apart taken blind. My brother in law drinks only Bud out of cans nothing else for at least the 32 years I’ve known him. One day he went to the bathroom and I poured out the Bud inserted my Schlitz and he never missed a beat, not a clue at all he was drinking a different beer. I really think it’s in the head not the palate for the most part, it excludes the super low brands that can be shitty, so I’m talking just what would be considered mainstream beers.

 

This thread makes me think back a couple of months ago when we were at the Great Taste..

Doing a bottle share up in Batavia.....someone brought a DFH Malt Liquor...it was about 10 years old or so? Still had the paper bag on it... you took turns chugging out of it...it was...dreadful...oxidized doesn't begin to describe it... we finished it though. Made the train ride into the city and most of the rest of the day one I'd like to forget....whew....

 

Well Falls Brewing in Louisville Ky is kinda specific.

 

I remember having a Billy beer that was about 8 or 9yrs old (basing this on when Carterleft office) when we found some in the garage that had been purchased by my friends dad and just left there. We drank it. Of course we were about 18 and just finding the "free beer" was more important than the contents. Can't say I remembered it. I can say that most people were not fond of it at the time.

Good luck.

 

Love the new location!

 

He'll need it...

 

But they sure claim to be the same company https://fallscitybeer.com/pages/about

"Finally, we closed our doors in Louisville in 1978." Well, yeah, but first they sold their primary brands, Falls City and Drummond Bros., to Heileman, which brewed them in their Indiana (ex-Sterling) and Newport, KY (ex-Wiedemann) plants.

After Heileman spun it off as an independent, the Indiana brewery became Evansville Brewing Co., and also had the rights to the 2 Falls City brands among other ex-Heileman brands. Then Pittsburgh Brewing Co. (Iron City), bought the Falls City and Drummond Brothers labels after Evansville folded in 1998. No idea how this new "Falls City" got the rights - PBC might have just let the trademarks lapse?