“Heavy” AAL Comeback?

I enjoyed the trend but economically it made little sense, as why would I pay a premium for a cheap beer? Founders SG was at a reasonable price around me for a while but now not so much. A local brewery, Yards, released one months ago and it's been collecting dust around me; I haven't tried it yet and wanted to recently but the bottles were from August so I had to pass for now. But same argument here also and the beer is the same price as some of their arguably "better made" core beers.

I do enjoy Solid Gold and some of the others but if I want a very cheap, decent beer I have Yuengling options (their Pilsner may not be totally true to style but talk about a bang for your buck).

 

Firstly, I agree 100% with you here.

But there seems to me a sub-segment of the market (e.g., BA crowd?) that just seems to strongly dislike the 'big boys' (what used to be referred to as the BMC breweries) and would rather send their money to a craft brewery instead. I suppose Founders may still be in a 'time out' with some BA beer consumers?

Yes, Yuengling Pilsner is not the best example of a Continental Pilsner beer but I enjoy drinking it and it is indeed economical and as far as I know an all malt beer.

My personal favorite all malt 'crushing beer' is Victory Classic Lager which I purchase by the 15-pack for 20 bucks. I still have a couple of cans left from a recent purchase at Total Wine & More (Claymont, DE).



Cheers!

 

I agree that it needs to make economic sense for me the consumer. I think for most small breweries, what makes economic sense for me the consumer doesn't make economic sense for the producer.

Founders is big enough to do it at scale that makes sense for everyone.

 

This is something I can get behind. I enjoy normal Bud, High Life, Banquet, etc. Ditto with their adjunct brethren (and pseudo-pilsner cousins) from around the world. The fact that light beer became the default beer option always bothered me. A return to normal/full-flavored adjunct lager is a good thing.

 

I thought Solid Gold tasted like a light APA, a bit of caramel malt and citrusy American hops. To me it tasted like there was less to it compared with an APA, as opposed to more to it compared with an AAL. Generic craft as opposed to elevated macro. A well made craft lager to me should taste like it is coming from a small family owned brewery which has generations of experience and history behind it, and a well made craft AAL should have that feel as well. If it tastes like it is cookie cutter modern craft beer instead I quickly lose interest, and Solid Gold had that cookie cutter, formulaic taste to it in my opinion.

 

But AAL's are "cheap" because of the massive economies of scale and the efficient, automated breweries the macro have. They could easily brew a DIPA or Imperial Stout and sell it just as low as their flagships. Why don't they? Well, because they can not sell them by the 10's of millions of barrels a year that it'd be necessary to maintain the advantage of scale.

That's why so few of the smaller breweries were left by the start of the craft era - they mostly tried to compete with AB, Miller, Schlitz, Pabst, etc, on price, by underselling them, even thought the smaller brewers' cost were likely higher. So, the beer might cost them more to make and resulted in less profit than the macros were making.

Most of the few that are left either grew (Yuengling) or moved much of the barrelage into the premium, superpremium & craft price segment (Spoetzl, Schell, Matt, even Yuengling to some extent).

Conversely, if today even smaller "craft" brewers make an adjunct lager - where's the savings? A few pennies by saving on barley malt by using some corn, maybe cut the cost of hops by using half as much - but still relatively negligible on the bottom line. Labor, maintenance, packaging, rent, utilities, transportation and all their other expenses stay the same whether they're brewing an AAL or a DIPA.

 

I've always been partial to Roy Clark's Thank God and Greyhound You're Gone despair and joy in the same song

 

Sorry, meant to say the "perfect" C&W song -- you have to listen to Coe's little dissertation about Goodman around 3:05 in the video.

 

Okay, I stopped about two minutes in. I'll give the whole song after work

 

JK, do you have any idea what the costs are as regards the distribution aspect? Did regional breweries such as Straubs have a financial advantage in that they only sold beer locally (mostly western PA and Eastern OH)?

Cheers!

@honkey @erway

 

So does this new "old" stubby have an 11 oz volume and does it feature a pry-off cap, as the 1936 version likely had?

 

It's worth the hook.

Old, local Chicago DJ used to play Cole's version all the time.

 

Well, sure it helped to have a smaller distribution region since you (and/or your distributors) saved on transportation costs. But, in general in retrospect, it also paid to be small rather than mid-sized. Here's a list of the 49 licensed breweries in the US in 1977 (the start of the Craft Era), listed by capacity (not sales), with the closed firms in the black background.

Notice that 2/3's of the survivors were in the bottom half - small enough to not have to compete head-to-head with the Big Six, with, in most cases, small loyal markets.

 

Coors used both 11 and 12 oz. Stubbies (you can read the contents on both labels and the Light has the 11 oz. embossed "ring").

(I guess it might have beendependent on the state? So, California, being the most distant, got the smaller bottle? Pretty sure they even had 10 oz'ers, which California outlawed, IIRC.)

I guess the new ones have twist-off crowns and, to me at least, seem a bit wider/squatter than the classic Stubby. But, more importantly, they don't contain Coors' Export Lager...

but the much tweaked Coors "Banquet" Beer originally called Pilsener.

 

Yep, I vaguely recall Pabst Blue Ribbon commercials in the early 1980s. Coors is the brand I have no memory of before the late 80s, Smokey and the Bandit notwithstanding.

 

I suppose each of us non-young East Coasters have their own first memories of Coors. I was young at the time but I do remember that when President Ford was in office he ordered that Air Force One be stocked with Coors:

“Air Force One Smuggled Beer For One President

Before Coors was available nationwide, the Rocky Mountain beer was so beloved by President Gerald R. Ford that his crew loaded it onto Air Force One and hauled cases back to Washington after their trips out west. What a crew!”

https://www.princegeorgecountyva.gov/news_detail_T6_R2139.php

Cheers!

 

Doubtful. Like most standard AAL's of the era, probably between 4 and 5% ABV (anything over 4% ABW/5% ABV in Texas had to be labeled "Ale" or "Malt Liquor"). Alcohol content of beers could not be stated on labels at the time in the US (and what info's available is often somewhat variable for the same brand) but at least one 1978 article in a Ft. Worth paper quoted Pearl Beer at 3.79% ABW, so 4.8% ABV.

Pearl Light, OTOH, was among the lightest of the then-new crop of "light beers" which followed in the wake of Miller Lite's success, at 68-70 calories -"50 per cent less calories than traditional premium beers" read one promo piece - the alcohol content was said to be 2.43% ABW (same source as above), so just about 3% ABV.

 

Of course, in 1974 when Ford became President, Coors was the Fourth largest brewer in the US, behind only AB, Schlitz and Pabst, in that year still ahead of fast-rising Miller. According to the Federal Trade Commission "In 1976 Coors sold beer in 12 States and was the leading seller in 9 of the 11 States for which (the FTC) have data. In Texas Coors was a close second, having just entered the southeast part of the State." Schlitz, which would collapse only a few years later, was still #1 in Texas, with a 3.8M bbl brewery in Longview and still about 1/3 of TX market.

Some of Coors' market share figures in the 1970s were pretty amazing:
Wyoming (1976) 51%, Utah (1974) 55%, Oklahoma (1974) 69%, New Mexico (1973) 46% and Kansas (1975) 58%.

In California, home to large breweries of some of the nation's largest national and regional brewing companies - inc. AB, Schlitz, Pabst, Hamm, Falstaff, Lucky/General, etc. - out of state Coors in 1973 had a 40.5% market share. And obviously, in it home market of Colorado 48% in 1976 (several years in the previous decade they had topped 50%).

So... while Coors wasn't sold in most of the US, "rare" it wasn't.

 

Good possibility. Why pay $12 for a 4 pack of craft lager when you can get a 12 pack of AAL for the same price? Sure, some craft lagers are far superior to AALs but I've had the opposite experience just as often. Unless it's Von Trapp, I'm probably passing on craft lagers for AALs.