Hamm’s Appreciation Thread (2024)

Further back, Hamm's Beer was the sponsor of the Cubs and (TV only) the White Sox. At the time, Theo. Hamm was the sixth largest brewer in the US , behind AB, Schlitz, Ballantine, Falstaff and Carling. (They'd been #5 the year before but Carling passed them.)

Other than the Phillies (well, and the Senators but no brewery left in DC), Chicago's teams were the 2 that weren't sponsored by a local brewery. Ballantine, though, was closer to Phila. (~85 mi.) than Hamm in St Paul was to Chicago (~400 mi).

Yeah, beside their flagship brewery in St. Paul, MN and their 2 California plants, they also - briefly - owned breweries in Baltimore 1959 - 1963 (ex-Gunther, sold to Schaefer) and in Houston 1963 - 1967 (formerly Gulf/Grand Prize).

The Hamm L.A. brewery was originally an Acme facility that Rheingold owned and operated for a few years in the mid-1950s. The SF plant was formerly the Rainier Brewing Co. and when Hamm bought the brewery in 1953, the brand name "Rainier" was sold to Sick's in Seattle (IIRC they had previously leased it for the OR and WA market).

 

Now that you mention it @ZebulonXZogg was probably talking about the Cubs games on WGN TV, and yeah -- the Hamm's Bear cartoon commercials were probably all over the games.

My nostalgic mind always goes back to B-ball on the radio -- just loved listening in the car while running around.

 

Is it a circle R on the Sky Blue Waters tag, or a C?

 

All the baseball we got on TV in Oregon in the 50s were the network games of the week. Given the typical 4 hour time difference (Oregon didn't get daylight time until '62) games usually started between 900 and 1030. Summer Saturday mornings, I'd sit down in the living room with my breakfast cereal and watch Dizzy Dean and his sidekick announce the game. I understand that the games were sponsored nationally by Falstaff for a time. But I never saw a Falstaff commercial, probably because Falstaff didn't distribute in the state (at least I never saw it until it was owned by General). I do remember Pabst, Oly, Hamms, Heidelberg TV ads.

 

When I was in grade school, the local team was Pacific Coast League in the era before the major leagues took over LA and the bay area. The games were only on radio. The away games were "wire re-creations"! I'd listen to the night games in my room, usually finishing a little after 1000. No beer ads on those that I remember. But i later learned that Lucky sponsored the games in the early 50s.

 

This!

It's great as AALs go, I suppose because it tastes less corny than most.

I tend to keep some macro in my beer fridge for friends who do not like craft. This is one of the rotating options that I stock along with Miller Lite and MGD. At under $20 for a 30 pack, I simply can't go wrong.

Plus, it's union-made which is a big plus for me when I'm purchasing macro.

 

Thanks for the history lesson as always!

 

Yeah, Falstaff was definitely a Midwest/Southern half of the US brand until they bought Narragansett in 1965. They filled in the mid-Atlantic (NY, NJ, PA) when they bought the Ballantine brands but that didn't work out for them - most analysts say they overpaid, weakening the company enough so it could be taken over by Kalmanovitz's S&P.

Theo. Hamm, a bit earlier, was Midwest-West coast. Looking at that map, it made sense in theory, to move into Texas and to the east coast to Baltimore. But, again, didn't work out the way they'd hoped.

It does seem strange Falstaff'd pay NBC to sponsor their national baseball programming when they were only in 38 states, missing the populous mid-Atlantic region. OTOH, with 4 ball teams (down from 5) they might not have gotten the ratings they did in other areas of the country.

Not if it's coming out of Molson Coors' 2 non-union breweries in Colorado and Virginia. Milwaukee and Trenton, OH (both UAW), Albany, GA (IAM-Machinists) and Ft. Worth (Teamsters) are union facilities, as were the other now-closed Miller plants in NC and Southern California (both IBT).

The Molson Coors' pdf How To Read Date Codes can help determine if the beer's union made, since part of their code includes the brewery the beer came out of.

 

Funny how this has become a common refrain of late, "Doesn't make me sick, so it can't be bad."

So, since the last PBR and Budweiser I had actually DID make me sick, I can honestly call those shite?

Certainly makes me afraid to even try Hamm's.

(and yeah, I know your post was wrought with facetiousness, I'm just piling on. )

 

It's a $1.50 a can at a slot lounge where a friend of mine who's a fellow retiree & former coworker tends the bar. Stop in from time to time to catch up with him and have a few Hamm's. Cheers!

 

Well, originally the Mets games were sponsored by Rheingold, as was Ralph Kiner's post-game show. Before they abandoned the city, the other National teams:

Schaefer's Brooklyn facility was closed in 1976 and Stroh bought Schaefer's new brewery outside of Allentown, PA and their brands (inc. taking over the rights to Piels) in 1981. Stroh went out of business in 1999, and sold the PA brewery to Pabst (only lasted a couple of years - now owned by Boston Beer Co.) and Schaefer was one of the many brands Pabst bought at the time.

Yeah, it was great one. Stroh, during the neo-Prohibition MADD days of the 1980s changed the words from "...one beer to have when you're having more than one" to something like "...one beer to have when you're out to have some fun".

 

I have read that a national buy was usually cheaper than buying equivalent coverage from individual stations. I think Falstaff (or possibly NBC) dealt off the commercial time for markets Falstaff wasn't in. They might have figured they came out ahead financially that way.

 

Appreciating a Hamms by the grill.



As @Blogjackets said, it's beer that tastes like beer. When my dad would let me have a sip of his beer when I was a kid, this is what I remember tasting. Cheers!

 

I remember tasting Falstaff or Drewry's, but you know what? They probably tasted the same as the Hamm's.

BTW -- how does broiled Hamm's taste?

 

Yes, congrats to them! They’re capitalizing on folks, even in the craft beer community, wanting regional lagers, though most regional lagers aren’t really brewed there anymore. It was nice to see Old Style go back to La Crosse.