What was the first beer you had?

Well, in this case since "BEER" came along during the big beer can collecting period, the cans and the breweries are pretty well documented. I don't recall any reference to Stroh (in Longview, Texas because they bought Schlitz) or AB (yeah, their Houston brewery dates from the 1960s) brewing a generic - but I'll check.

 

I was in my very early teens, and my sister and I asked what beer tasted like. Dad opened a bottle of Heineken and neither of us cared for it!

 

Blatz

 

Ballantine
My Mother and Aunt both worked at the Newark, NJ brewery back in the day.
My Grandfather would come home from work and the first thing was to pour a glass of beer for himself (adding pepper BTW), and a shot glass for me. It explains a lot!

 

Child abuse

 

Michelob, 1984. That classic curvy bottle with the gold foil. I still think it's a decent brew...perhaps nostalgia giving it a lift.

 

When I lived in California in the 70s, southern California, I noticed that the grocery beers were being brewed by General.

 

Coors Light. A friend of mine snuck some cans from his dad's stash. My folks didn't drink, so I had minimal exposure to it prior. I was maybe 13 or so.
I didn't like it at the time. At ALL. In fact I don't think I really started enjoying the stuff until many years later. I credit hard cider for giving me a better palate for fermented beverages.

 

Summer between 5th and 6th grade. A buddy snuck a can of Special Export Light from his dad's cooler. Split it with me and 3 or 4 friends. Chased it with a can of Coke. "Stumbled" around the playground afterwards. Fun memory.

 

PBR. The only beer my Dad ever purchased with any regularity.

It gave me “bitter beer face.”

 

Well, the generic beer "craze" was late 70s-early 80s and last I checked, the breweries I named above were the most commonly produced and are listed in the reliable references sources. I see Olympia brewed one in Tumwater later in the 80s, but by then it also part of the S&P empire (General/Falstaff/Pearl) after Pabst and Oly merged and then S&P's Kalmanovitz bought Pabst.

There were a few bottled BEERs, too (the infamous Eastern Brewing Corp. did one) - and those wouldn't have been as well-documented. And, I imagine, the generics might have lasted longer in different regions and different retailers.

Miller in the beginning of period was running at full capacity and building breweries like crazy (going from 5.1M bbl to 37M bbl, 1970 -1980 will do that) but I could see it if Azuza or the newly-build Irwindale had excess capacity. Things did slow down for Miller in the 80s - they built the Trenton, OH brewery and then moth-balled for a few years.

 

Technically my first beer was two beers, Guinness and Bass. I was either 18 or 19 and went out to a bar with a bunch of my older co-workers from Barnes and Nobles. I was completely out my element so I calmly repeated "a Black and Tan please" because I'd heard someone else say it. Oh man did I have a hard time finishing that one, and it took me years before I would try Guinness, or any stout, again.

 

Falstaff had a brewery in Ft. Wayne (in fact, it's last brewery, but since it was by then just another S&P company the brand continued on, brewed at other of their breweries - Pabst, Olympia, General, Pearl) and a lot of BEER came out of there and their other facilities.
But there was no relationship between Falstaff and National, which had merged with Carling and then was bought by Heileman in the 1970s. One of the latter's breweries was in Evansville and Carling-National had a brewery in Belleville IL (home of Stag Beer). Both lasted into the 1980s.

 

My first was definitely my dad's Heineken too! Also early teens, I didn't like it...

 

Yeah, well, plus theirs was an especially appropriate brewery's name for a Generic beer, too.

They were a bit 'schizo' about their corporate name over the years, too - I mean, if they couldn't decide, how are we supposed to remember?