Is Pabst and Hamm's the same beer?

I don't reckon that they are either but I find fresh PBR much easier than fresh Hamms.

 

Don't think personal anecdotes prove anything, unfortunately.

 

Hamm’s rated 2.8 with an abv of 4.6%.
PBR rated 2.94 with an abv of 4.74%.
Exact same beer./End thread

 

Back in the 90s I represented a woman who screwed up causing, or helping cause, a large portion of a tank of Coors Banquet being packaged as “Repeal” beer (the inside-name for 3.2 beer, until last year the beer available in Colorado in grocery and convenience stores).

Full strength beer in 3.2 cans—it had to be destroyed. It was in the hundreds of cases...

She—a 20 year employee with a spotless record—kept her job, barely, She was transferred out of a cushy QA job and back into something dirtier and harder. Somebody else had actually made the mistake—hooked up to a Banquet tank instead of a Repeal tank—but my client was tasked with in-line testing and had failed to stop the mistake from continuing, by goofing off and not pulling and testing the samples timely.

I tell this story to back up @raynmoon on one limited point, specifically : there are people on the packaging line in Golden who would know when beer from the same tank is going into two different packages. I’m not saying his source is one of those, or that his source’s story is true. Just that, if it were true, a packaging supervisor or lead, or a QA person, would be in a position to know.

 

I heard that Hamms is now the new hipster beer, so I would expect the price of it to go up soon like Pabst did. The good news is that we'll see it on tap in bars before too long.

 

With regards to the taste differences, there are a couple things to keep in mind. First and foremost is how old the beer is. Even the same beer will taste different if you drink it a month after it is canned vs. a year or two.

Case in point. A few years ago, my brother loaded up 10 cases of Leinenkugels Original in the back of his pickup and drove it down to Florida. Leinies Original is one of my favorite beers, so I know what to expect when I drink it.

Fast forward about two years, I visit my brother in Florida and he offers me a Leinies Original. After a long flight across the country I was ecstatic that I could have a Leinies Original since you can't get it outside of the Midwest. After one sip it became painfully clear to me that this beer was from the same batch that I witnessed him loading onto his pickup two years prior. And to make matters worse he stored it in his garage in the sweltering Florida heat to add even more punishment to the flavor. I just had one beer and had a headache the next morning.

If you want to get a true comparison between beers, you need to make sure that the expiration date or brewed on date are about the same. Thankfully, most beers today have that information stamped on the can or box. Additionally, you need to make sure that they were stored under the same conditions. And the only way to do this is to buy them both at the same place at the same time.

Of course there may be other extraneous factors that could throw a wrench into this, but I think using this method you can be 90% certain that you are comparing beers on an equal level.

 

Mine too! I love the stuff, I could also careless about hipsters taking over.

 

This thread is making me thirsty for a cold Hamm's when i get home.

 

I have drank a lot of both beers, to me the tastes are different. I am going off the beaten path however and getting a 30 of Hamm's special light pretty soon. Just to try something different.

 

Agree they are different, more of a corn syrup finish in PBR (still by a 12pk now and then). The 30pk of Hamm's is always rotated thru my fridge ,$13 is also great.

 

Very corn syrup finish in PBR from Hamm's. This is where Hamm's is awesome! It is semi sweet and does not taste like complete garbage.

 

Getting some tomorrow.

 

Imho, Mountain Fresh Rainier could also be thrown in the mix. The differences between a lot of popular AALs were and are minute.

 

Drank a Rainier, bb June 10th, now a Hamms, bb August 12th, trying to mentally adjust for the age differences, I find them close enough to identical that I will say that they are the same. PBR? I vote, yet again, nay. Shrugs.

 

How about this PBR?

 

Sorry. I'm avoiding seltzers like they are the plague. Which they are, taking up space in the coolers.

 

Was on a palate reset when I was in Tacoma, Rainier was what I drank. It’s no better or worse than dozens of other local favorites guys probably grew up on. Well some were worse, there’s not many truly shit beers out there but there’s enough.

 

Again, the fact that they are the same beer is an open secret in the brewing industry. Believe it if you want or not, but they're the exact same beer. This is more common in industrial scale brewing than you might think.

 

I remember Hamm's from many years ago, driving westward going northwest towards I-80. The beer is crisp and not corny. It is still a good enough neutral beer to be notable.