Goodbye, Michelob Original Lager.

Funny enough, I’m sitting here drinking an unfiltered version of a recreation of the precursor to what we know as Michelob. I had a lot of help with researching Michelob as it was brewed in 1896 from forum members @JackHorzempa and @jesskidden. I had done a lot of research to find the right yeast strain for brewing my attempt at a historical recreation and was set to have the yeast strain I’d found propagated when the shutdown started and my lab couldn’t do a custom prop. I pivoted and used the yeast that was rumored to be taken by Anton Dreher to his Michelob brewery and we’re calling this beer “Dreher’s Original Bohemian Lager.” In June we will introduce the original intended beer with the American Michelob yeast strain as “Beer for Connoisseurs.” I’m really enjoying this beer and its elevated level of bitterness that was absent from modern Michelob “Original.” Can’t wait to can the filtered version in another week!

For anyone interested in reading about this project, here is a link to my blog post about it (https://tombstone.beer/2020/03/25/b...rehers-original-historical-lager-mini-series/). Disclaimer, I took a lot of what Adolphus Busch has written about the original Michelob to be fact rather than propaganda. I do mention in the blog that we can’t really know exactly how accurate this is, but I did give it my best shot and a lot of research went into this attempt at making the beer as historically accurately as possible.

 

Man, you do like pale!

Is that really the color of an original Michelob (that is, not Michelob Original)? Been so long, I really don't remember.

 

@honkey well done, great experiment! I'm slightly confused, though - are you propagating the original yeast now on your own?

Yes @steveh I agree too - that looks extremely pale. My memory is also fuzzy, not sure I drank a lot of Michelob on draft. What is the OG of this beer?

 

I was able to trace down a confirmed culture that was banked with first generation yeast from Anheuser Busch back when their propagation method was to go back to the original culture on a yearly basis and re-propagate. I had slants of the yeast shipped from the USDA to a yeast lab that will propagate it for me.

The original gravity was 1.044

 

I’ve seen estimates for Dreher’s Michelob that ranged from 3 srm to 5.5 srm. For Anheuser Busch, I would bet it was originally on the pale side like this, but have never seen an SRM estimate. The most recent version of Michelob used caramel malts that almost certainly weren’t used in 1896 and it also used hops other than Saaz and was only 19 IBU

 

I really dug the San Miguel Dark back in the 70s. But in 2006, I found it lacking; perhaps a freshness issue.

 

But were you guys drinking the version(s) of Michelob available from 1896 through 1961?


(I tried to make it over to Tony Faust's when I read that ad in the paper but when I saw the line to get in ... Well, I jumped back on the streetcar and went to my local for a few Lemp's draughts and went home.

"Finest beer in the world" my ass... Plus, didja hear what they were charging for one glass! )

 

Fascinating! The Austrian Dreher, the man behind the Vienna Lager, was also involved in a piece of American brewing history? I wonder what had him come to the states...

 

Victory used to be here in force, but that was a long time ago, I haven’t seen any Hop Devil or Prima in well over 2-3 years. Here too Sour Monkey and the like.

 

Were most (all malt) lagers this pale during this period?

 

Is the beer in the picture an unfiltered version of “Dreher’s Original Bohemian Lager” or “Beer for Connoisseurs”?

 

Sorry to not dig thru your previous notes on the history of Mich, but were there big changes with the recipe between 1961 and 1978? Mich was probably my first legal beer at 18.

 

Dreher’s. The appearance will be the same for Connoisseurs though. Both will be filtered. This was just a tasting for me to evaluate the readiness of the beer for filtration.

 

From what I can tell, there were big changes throughout the history of the beer we know as Michelob. Maybe even with the first batches as one source claims to have helped pitch tanks and another source claims that Adolphus Busch didn’t understand the concept of pitch flavor (presumably because they didn’t use pitch). 1961 is seen as a key date because we know adjuncts were introduced and the beer was bottled. At some point it went back to all malt but the malts were at least slightly different and hops other than Saaz introduced. IBU’s dropped... Michelob appears to have been a never ending experiment

 

I do not know what was charged in 1896 but from my article:

"According to a magazine article from the 1920’s, “Michelob was perhaps the best beer ever made in America and the most expensive; it sold for twenty-five cents a glass. In New York, at one bar at least, it was sold for forty cents by a barkeep who told his patrons that it was imported.”

Cheers!

 

I really liked when the cans appeared. They were easy to pack in coolers and provide a nice beer for the era. In those days we tubed on a nearby river (Mayo) and had legendary volley ball contests at my house way out in the country. We had a great mix of folks and I still see many of them. We had a fine sense of community and learned to better negotiate early in our lives. Michelob lives in those memories.

 

When growing up I didn't know any better. I considered Michelob a "fancy" Euro beer because of the name and packaging / presentation. I also thought Rutgers was an Ivy League school because of the name. I also remember drinking Michelob early in the morning after my 21st birthday while washing my car and feeling like I had the world by the nads while diming on some Led Zep.



(Man, I'd still love to get my hands on a bottle of that shah for old times sake. )

 

Michelob dark is not called Dark necessarily because of it's color. All Dunkel's are dark. Saying that is like saying all vanilla ice cream is white, pretty much true but redundant-