“Heavy” AAL Comeback?

there is no other question my friend. To the land of sky blue waters! $15 a thirty pack is the key for many Hamms drinkers. And in the words of @DavetotheB - Hamms: beer that tastes like beer

 

For what this is worth to the question of the original thread, I saw an old co-worker loading up his car with the usual 2 cases of Coor's Light the other day. Pretty sure the love is still strong.

 

This didn't really work out well for Genesee. As far as distribution, all of these breweries are shipping beer by the truckload. Does AB have it's own fleet? By and large no. Do they have better contracts with Logistics firms? Sure. Do they have better clout to negotiate more desireable pricing with distributors? Sure. But at the end of the day, we Americans by and large do not drink what our dads drank, especially when it comes to beer. So these regional breweries were at such an enormous disadvantage from a marketing standpoint and from a consumer-pool standpoint. What PBR has done is pure genius. Wrap up half a dozen of these heritage regional brands, make them all with the same wort stream, throw some marketing dollars at them and see which one's work. Pretty brilliant.

 

During Genesee's peak era around 1980 with a 3.6 million barrelage, they had a much expanded distribution region (28% of the US, according to the pamphlet with this distribution map).

Well, except is hasn't worked out sales-wise.

1976 - 17,037,000 bbl. (peak of the original Pabst)
1998 - 4,180,000 bbl.
1999 - 13,460,000 bbl. (1st year of owning Stroh/Heilman portfolio.)
2010 - 5,675,000 bbl.
2020 - 3,650,000 bbl.

Of course, it also didn't work out for Heileman, Carling-National, Stroh, Associated or Pabst's "sister" breweries also owned by S&P-Falstaff, General, Pearl.

 

Jeff, firstly thanks for your reply/input.

I suggested Straub as an example in my original post since they had a limited distribution region (i.e., mostly western PA and eastern OH). I am uncertain whether Genesee is a 'good' example since they had a much larger distribution footprint as illustrated above in JK's post. It seems to me that a Regional Brewery with a more 'concentrated' distribution region could have had a competitive advantage vs. the larger breweries (e.g., AB, Miller,...).

Perhaps another example I could have brought up is Yuengling. I grew up in the suburbs of Philadelphia and even though were I lived was only about 100 miles from Yuengling (Pottsville, PA) I had never heard about Yuengling until the 1980s. My guess is that prior to the mid 1980s the majority of Yuengling beer was distributed in the areas of PA northwest of Philly. I would think that this 'localish' region was an economic advantage for Yeungling at that time (60's, 70's). Perhaps @jesskidden has more data here.

Cheers!

 

"THOROLY AGED" I thought that was the worst typo I'd ever seen, but googled just in case and, sure enough, found this:

https://en.m.wiktionary.org/wiki/thoroly

Guess they needed to cut down on just a few extra characters to fit everything on the label

 

What didn't work out well for Genesee? The brewery is still operating. So, relatively, things have gone OK. Every surviving brewery has probably undergone lean times (and may still be struggling). For example, Genesee neighbor Utica Club/Saranac at one point got union concessions and also survived a fire. The small brewers may have had a key advantage over the regionals, in that they could counter loss of local market share by expanding into some nearby markets (Stevens Point into Milwaukee and Chicago; Yuengling into Philadelphia; Huber into Chicago). The regionals would have had to reach farther afield for additional market share. The regionals may have also been targeted by the nationals with predatory pricing and advertising. A campaign to erode the market of a small Straub-sized brewery wouldn't be worth the effort.
Some of Pabst's success is probably due to luck. They scored with the "virtual brewery" concept for years when Miller excess capacity was available to produce Pabst products. Miller, now MillerCoors, has decided to abandon contract brewing. Now Pabst is apparently the proud proprietor of several breweries. Pabst will have to sustain or increase sales in order to meet the infrastructure costs that are an ongoing expense.

 

That and taxes are probably the two things that shape beer more than anything else.

 

What the Hell is Budweiser Heavy?

 

What someone drinks in a TV show isn't just dictated by real-world sales volume (but you know that). As you pointed out, product placement is a key factor (and perhaps this product placement is an indicator that there's a marketing push to boost waning sales). The portrayal of the fictional characters is also a factor. I don't watch this show, but I doubt the producers would have preferred that the characters drank hard seltzer.

 

Yeah, at this point simply "survival" for any of the (less than 2 dozen?) pre-craft era US breweries can probably be considered "OK" but Genesee was down to under 300,000 bbl a year when they were bought (for the 3rd time in about a decade, soon to be sold again) in '09 - so less than 10% of their barrelage at their peak circa 1980. Percentage-wise, that's worse that Pabst's fall.

Since being folded into NAB with Labatt USA, the Genesee brand's actual sales are hard to decipher since NAB>Fifco USA's barrelage includes the Labatt imports and domestic production, as well as Magic Hat and the other IBU brands (if any are left), and Seagram FMBs.

 

Cobra Kai got me to buy a 12-pack of Banquet for the first time. It was fine. It tasted like no-frills beer, nothing remarkably good or bad. I didn't buy it again though.

A friend of mine drinks craft early in the evening, then switches to AAL later in the evening. Miller Lite was his AAL of choice for ~20 years and this past year he switched to Miller High Life.

I doubt those anecdotes prove the OP's hypothesis of a resurgence in "heavy" AALs though.

Over the last few years I have enjoyed dabbling in AALs and I usually have a few in the fridge. There are subtle differences between them that is fun to try to figure out. To my tastes I prefer Yuengling Premium, High Life, and Hamms (in that order).

Rolling Rock is very unique [it's the DMS], but not to my liking.

Related: https://theawkwardyeti.com/comic/stomach-loses-part-3/

 

Surviving a loss of nearly 90% of production (This is just from my memory from growing up there up to 2001ish) doesn't bode well for any business. I'm no historian, but I my sort of rough analysis of what PBR has done seems about as sustainable as I can think of when it comes to these "heritage" lagers. Rainier, Old Style, Olympia and all the others... The people buying them (and I'm one of them on occasion) are doing it mainly out of nostalgia and possibly price point. All the same beer and all they have to do is change out the pallets of cans during a run.

 

Taxes? How so? For the most part (maybe excluding the very cheapest 30 pack brands?) as a percentage of the retail price of beer, the Federal excise tax on beer has never been lower.

And for small brewers (under 60k bbl) in the US, they are paying a smaller FET at $3.50/bbl than small brewers did after Repeal - $6/bbl - when most beer cost 10¢ bottle.

 

I was thinking very broadly (and not the US today). Things along the lines of: if the government is determining taxes based on malt or gravity... and how brewers inevitably react.

 

Jeff, do you really think they are exactly the same?

I suspect that the beers are brewed via High Gravity brewing and something they could do (if they choose to) is dilute the various brands differently to create some differentiation. Just a theory on my part.

Cheers!

 

I think the variations in the Pabst pantheon have been discussed (possibly by JessKidden). Many differences have been discussed. Even to the extent that Schmidt's for the PA market is said to differ from the Schmidt's in the MN area. Also, Hamm's seems to be easily distinguishable from the rest of the crop. There seems to be more going on than dilution of one high gravity brew. I wouldn't have believed that Pabst took that much interest in the taste of their products, but it appears that they do.

 

And similarities. A former BA who worked at then-Miller brewery in Ft. Worth, LAD, once noted that:

Well, that was the case in the early '90 when Heileman owned both brands and "merged" the labeling but not the recipes. I'd think it's unlikely that Pabst has Molson Coors brew different Schmidt(s) recipes, but it could happen.

Many of Pabst brands have the same abv - 4.6%, with a few other just a fraction of a percent above or below that. And a former Pabst brewmaster (yeah, they have them even though they work at MC breweries) told me that some of their beers are blends. I've always suspected, too, that some are hopped post-fermentation with hop extract.

Well, Pabst kinda "backed in" to the virtual brewery thing by closing or selling one brewery after another once S&P took ownership. And, really, being "virtual" was no different that the many "craft" brewers who depended on contract-brewing for much or all of their production.

Even before that, when Heileman bought and spun-off a new Pabst, they had started contract-brewing some Pabst brands in regions where they kept Pabst breweries for their own. Stroh continued that until Pabst switched to Miller for much of their brands in the late 90s (some say losing the contract helped push Stroh into leaving the business).

Well, I'd put that Miller simply no longer exists. SAB bought them, merged them into Coors in the US, then SABMiller was purchased by AB-InBev, which sold the US portion to Molson Coors. Yeah, Molson Coors doesn't want to be Pabst's contract brewer - at least, not at the previous rates.

Well, isn't it more that Pabst ownership is now part of the group which owns the 4 City breweries? I'd imagine that they will continue to contract-brew all the other brands of beer, seltzer, FMBs, etc., that have kept City going for the past 2 decades, along with the Pabst brands.

Investor group to acquire City Brewing, which will add California brewery

 

According to a former brewmaster they were the exact same wort stream... take that for what it's worth. All of the megas brew high gravity. Many larger craft breweries do as well. For many beers, it just makes sense.

 

I love that Classic Lager but it's not easy to find around me anymore and many retailers stopped carrying it after selling out. I just did a search on the Victory website and confirmed that many are still no longer carrying it. Sad, but not unexpected unfortunately.