Best affordable lagers?

I find Bitburger to be quite nice and well priced. $6.99 for a 4-pack of pounders works for me.

 

Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold
Elliot Ness

 

My go to budget lagers are Benediktiner Helles, Stiegl Goldbrau, Tucher Helles always 4 packs of euro tallboys for $6.99 hard to beat that ime. Bitburger Pils is also a good choice I get the 4 pack of tallboys for $6.50. Wernesgruner Pils 6 packs at aldi is also a good choice for $6.99.

 

It has already been mentioned but I'll put in another plug for Trumer Pils. It's widely available in the Bay Area as it is brewed in Berkeley. I can find it at the local TJ's as well for $8/6 cans. Fresher the better of course. You can find a best by date stamped on the box the cans come in.

 

PBR
Brooklyn Pilsner
Brooklyn Lager (though I think the pils is considerably better, ymmv.)
Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold
Von Trapp's basic stuff, esp the mix 12pk, & the Helles.
Jack's Abbey Post Shift Pilsner , & their other basic ones. ($7.99/4pk x 16 oz here. If you're not in NY or PA, maybe less?)
& while it's not a lager, S.Tier 8 Days A Week is in a similar vein.

 

A very solid choice.

 

Probably the best macro on the market

 

Konig Pilsner

 

Enegren. End thread

 

Wonderfully priced (and delicious) for locals who do not have to pay for shipping.

 

and trader joes carries a good variety of it.

 

I have only seen their products at the local TJs further north only once and scooped up their Alt and Black Lager quite happily.

 

Do they still have the rocky mountain ouster stout? I may have to grab some. Last batch I had was from April fools like 6 or 7 years ago and it was great.

 

Ha, yeah, OK. Perhaps I misinterpreted or read more into your statement that "Not all adjunct lagers are created the same", taking it that you were implying that there was something different about the actual brewing process, rather than simply the ingredients and ratio/quantities of the same. (For instance, I'd say that cherry pie, apple pie and rhubarb pie are "created the same", though they use different ingredients and certainly taste different. No? OK.)

This Molson Coors-driven Hamm's thing just interests me, I guess (maybe perplexes would even be a better word). They apparently even have a group of "influencers" out there, compete with a hashtag "Hammpions" . It seems the promo people at MC set out to artificially duplicate the early 2000's consumer/hipster-driven Pabst Blue Ribbon revival (which was not a corporate directed phenomenon).

In one MC blog entry they even quote a MC marketing guy - "“It’s got such a great price point, and when people see it, they see something different—something that’s not PBR (emphasis added)—and they want to be a part of it” - but, unlike craft brewers, they don't give out much useful info about the beer itself.

Hamm's, of course, was a Pabst product from the early '80s (Olympia had bought the brand in the late 70s, and then Olympia was merged into Pabst) until 1999, when Pabst and Miller divided up the Stroh-Heileman portfolio and yet Miller, with it's pick of dozens of classic beer brands - some likely much more respected and doing better than Hamm's - and malt liquors wound buying Hamm's and Olde English from Pabst.

 

What is 'affordable'? Looking for $12 cases of 24? Or is a $12 4-pack considered 'affordable'?

 

JK, to return to the 'creation' topic, do you have any insight into the 'creation' of Hamm's? For example, is there any chance that Hamm's is the exact same beer as some other Molson-Coors brand(s)?

Cheers!

@FBarber

 

Is Enegren to the west coast what Von Trapp is to the east coast?