Goodbye, Michelob Original Lager.

Not a drinker of Michelob anymore. Was a beer I drank in high school and occasionally in college. I did curbside so I did not get to look to see if this was still around.

I opted to get 2 week old Jai Alai for $27.59 a case. I know I talk bad about this beer quality wise but I took a chance at the price and freshnes. I will report back.

Enjoy

 

That 70s bottle really is gorgeous

 

Please do.

A month+ ago I was in Florida (St. Pete & Cocoa Beach) visiting friends. The Jai Alai I had on draft was very good! The cans were hit or miss. Maybe the 'good' cans were those that were refrigerated for much of the time?

Cheers!

 

Michelob was the beer we choose to serve at our wedding, That was is 1981when Michelob was considered a top shelf brew. Still drink it once in a while now.

 

I had one of those revamped bottles ,empty, that my dad got in a 6pk he bought. Wonder if that was when they were transitioning?
Lost it in the flood of '11. Wooden shelf in the cellar floated off the floor, & dumped everything.

 

Worst decision ever to stop their unique bottle, I do buy it when I see it. Bring that bottle back.

 

Yeah, that would have been pretty much smack dab at the peak of Michelob's heyday. In '81, it was the Sixth best selling beer in the US at 8.3 million barrels, so around 5% market share.

That sounds damn cheap alright. AB slowly brought Michelob's suggested retail price down - and their marketing/pricing strategy differed from market to market based on a number of conditions - a few years after it's release it was nearly twice the price of a Budweiser sixpack in NJ in 1964 ($2.25 v $1.25)*.

Here's AB's full line-up's pricing in another Florida store's AD in 1972:


* According to the DoL's Inflation Calculator those prices, in today's dollars, equal:

1964 sixpack at $2.25 = $18.79
1972 case at $5.99 = $37.62

 

Assuming Budweiser was #1 what beers were 2,3,4, +5? I'm guessing in no order Miller Lite, Schlitz, PBR & Coors.

 

That article is 8 years old, yet they're still brewing Michelob Original. I'm not going to stick up for a beer I never look for anymore, but freaking out over assumptions is just crazy -- especially when it's the distro making claims.

How 'bout it Jess? @jesskidden

Michelob.com -- ©2020

 

Ha. Ya know, I was gonna list 'em... but figured "TMI" for some folks. You're pretty close - missed High Life (Schlitz was well-into its tumble into oblivion...).

Yeah, I was going to look for that article (well, series of articles...) since I recall they listed Michelob's then current tiny barrelage.

 

Oh, I wouldn't say that. In that period - 1960s-1980s (previously it has been an all-malt beer, one of the few in the US, and available only in kegs) it was certainly different than Budweiser - only 2-row malt, all imported hops, smaller percentage of rice adjunct.

I had it fresh at the brewery in Columbus Ohio in the late 1970s and it was the hoppiest US lager beer I'd ever had up to that point. Granted, it never tasted that good before or again to me - the industry scuttlebutt had always been that the recipe conversion to an adjunct bottled product wasn't as successful as they'd hoped, tastewise, but the sales figures more than made up for it.

 

I guess distribution for this thing has been pretty spotty, not giving it a fair chance from the outset. What has caused the drop in sales for this beer? The same trend towards light beers?

In any case, that’s a shame. It sounds like a beer I’d like. I guess the closest thing to a light all-malt lager would be Heineken or a craft lager?

 

I have not drank this beer in over 40 years, so I wouldn't miss it if were to disappear.
But the old bottles were very cool, and you'd be viewed as a pretty cool dude if you were drinking one of these back in the early 1970's, either this or a Heineken. LOL!

 

With that description, I suppose that Stella Artois is the spiritual replacement for it within the AB-InBev portfolio, except that the caramel malts must have made Michelob Original darker and sweeter than the Belgian import.

 

My post was about Michelob, circa 1960 - 1980 - its first two decades as a bottled (and, later, canned) product. The recipe was changed in 1961 when the beer was first packaged and the rice adjunct was added (usually quoted as being around 20% of the grain versus Bud's 30% at the time, IIRC). It was converted back to an all-malt beer in 2007.
Circa 1970s ad text (labels also noted "rice"):

 

It's still around locally.
I bought a 6pack several months ago and I
thought it was particularly bland. For an all malt, I was disappointed. Like I was when the likes of Erlanger, Andeker, and Augsburger were around.