What was the first beer you had?

My grandfather was a Champale guy. With cheese and crackers. So yeah, started with malt liquor.

 

Corona

 

Natty Light

 

Busch

Story has it I came home from being out with my dad and apparently I was drunk. My mom said that one of my dads friends put beer in my bottle. I have a hard time believing that A) An adult would actually put beer in a babies bottle and B) My dad would allow his friends to give me enough beer to make me drunk. We're talking 1-1.5yrs old.

I'm guessing they gave me a couple sips and my mom overreacted.

But as far as I can remember, when I went to my dads every other weekend (divorced, who would have thought, lol), the first beer he would crack in the evening (Busch) he'd let me have the first pull. I was probably 6 or 7. You better believe I'd try to guzzle as much as I could before he'd yell "Hey, give me that!" So by guzzle probably two "big" gulps, just to try and impress him.

 

You gave me a smile because I bet I haven't thought of Utica Club in almost 50 years. God that was nasty stuff, though I never knew they made a bock. The only upstate NY beer I ever liked was Genessee Cream Ale. The others always gave me headaches.

 

I remember part of the jingle. "Knock for Knickerbocker, New York's favorite beer" But it disappeared from the stores in the city in the 60's. Surprised that the label was around until the 90s.

 

I remember: Pour yourself a fistful of flavour, pour yourself a Knickerbocker Beer.

 

My first legal beers were Rheingold on my 18th birthday at Doherty's bar on Staten Island, NY. Can't remember my first sneaks but I'll add to the reminiscence of pisswater by recounting of "Pathmark" beer. At 16 I started working for Pathmark supermarkets and when we were doing really dirty maintenance jobs the managers would let us have the store brand beer. You'd open, you'd pour, you'd see a bubble or two. It was worth what we paid for it. It was definitely not the one beer to have when you're having only having one.

 

Ya sure? Maybe you were just beer shopping in the wrong store...


That's 8 months or so before Rheingold closed its last brewery in Orange, NJ. (Brooklyn closed the previous year).

Looks like Schmidt and Heileman/Stroh shipped most of the brand to New England - some to Florida - after that based only on ads, tho' as a discount brand it was usually a store ad. (I remember it in NJ in the '70s, but don't recall if it was the Rheingold or Schmidt brewed version).

 

The Clam Broth House had Knickerbocker as their house draught in the mid-70's.

 

It was an exotic fruited beer. Snuck some from the benignly neglectful parents of my elementary school besty. I think we split 2 or 3 of them
https://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/37795/424485/

 

Hard to remember. I'm getting old. But most likely Miller High Life. My Dad used to drink a 6.5 oz. "nip" after dinner every night (when he got home from work he and my Mom would have martinis or scotch). The first beer I bought myself was in Sweden when I was 15 - Carlsborg White Elephant. It's been downhill from there.

 

Swiped a Genny Cream Ale from my dad when I was 14-15, mid/late 70s, not counting the sips that I used to get from my Uncle Jimmy when I was 5 or 6

 

Schlitz in 1970 on a freshman basketball tourney trip. Three of us had permission to stay overnight with one player’s brother who lived in the tourneys host city. (The rest of the team had to drive 90 miles home and come back the next morning. That’s how we do things in west Texas.) The older brother pulled out a six pack and we had one apiece and I loved it at first tentative sip.

 

Mickeys Big Mouth. Freshman in college, drank 3 or 4 in one sitting and promptly threw them back up in the porcelain bus about an hour later. As nasty as that stuff was, it's a wonder I ever drank alcohol again.

 

My dad was not a big beer drinker but I recall Falstaff and Schlitz in the fridge at family gatherings and I was able to sneak a sip. I was not impressed.

10 or so years old used to go with a friend to his grandparents house. His grandpa had two fridges full of PBR. He also had an abundance of Hershey bars, Pepsi, and Hustler magazines laying around.

Between the Pepsi, candy bars, and all we were learning from the Hustlers we decided to sneak a PBR. While we felt pretty cool and sophisticated we did not enjoy the beer and went back to Pepsi.

One evening when in grade school there was a homecoming dance. I snuck out and traveled the short distance to the school where the dance was held and found several 6 packs of Michelob that some high school kids cached in the bushes. i appropriated it. Bet those high school kids were pissed. Homecoming dance, probably promised their dates some beers. Gone thanks to me. The next day i shared it, warm, with several buddies. At that point it was worse than the PBR but we looked much cooler with those 70s Michelob bottles.

 

No idea, but my best guess is a Shaefer. Probably stolen during the 60's while I was still under 12 (1970).

 

heinekin

 

A Blatz beer I stole from a case my dad got for helping out at my Grandpa's bar. I remember it like it was yesterday. It was the summer of '77 I was 13. The case was out in our garage (warm). Not the best way to have one, but it didn't taste too awful.

I remember the case was heavy cardboad and had a 'split top', i.e. it had two flaps.

 

I was laughing out loud reading this !

 

I am pretty sure my dad gave my beer when I was a toddler so have no idea what the brand was. Probably Henninger or Kaiser Pilsner or Amstel, as these were the most popular beers at the time in the area that I grew up.

 

Probably Rheingold or Schaefer, as those were always in the icebox when I was a little kid. We're talking almost 60 years ago!

 

I was 18 when I had my first full bottle of beer. It was an ice cold Corona with lime in a big pool in Cancun, Mexico. I remember thinking it was exceptionally bitter.

 

Probably Bass. I found an opened bottle in the pantry when I was about 4 years old and had a swig. It was awful, and my mother caught me doing it. I was punished, not for the beer but because I had drunk from a bottle. No well brought up person ever drinks from a bottle.

 

I'm pretty sure my first beer in general was Coors Light at a high school party. Remember thinking it was awful, and went back to drinking whatever equally awful mixed drink I preferred at the time (Captain Morgan and Coke I think).

First legal beer I had was a Stella Artois, which was my go-to when I'd drink at my best friends house cause his parents were cool with us drinking during family events or holidays.

But one of my friends was a bartender at some little brewery called "The Lost Abbey" and there was this really cool beer garden nearby called "Stone Brewing" that other friends told me about...needless to say I was ruined within weeks of turning 21. No idea beer could even taste like that!

 

I was a toddler, my dad back in the day bought Carling Black Labels in those hard cased cardboard boxes for 16 oz bottles. I’d get into the bottles and suck up any stale beer still in the bottles, I have a picture somewhere.

First real beer I’d guess Budweiser snuck in the woods. First legal beer was Schmidt’s on tap at a local bar.

 

PBR. It tastes a lot better now than it did then. Apparently it’s an acquired taste...

 

Samuel Adams Winter Lager. I started late.

 

Coors light I still don’t mind a few when at a cookout or track event. In my area of Maryland 10oz can is popular.

 

Pfeiffer when I was 7 years old and my dad let me try it. Can still taste it and would love to have it again today, but it's no longer produced. Loved it from the first taste. He realized he created a monster because I bugged him at least once a week for a sip. My mom was not happy but she looked the other way.

A year later my uncle let me sip off his Falstaff. Whenever he was in town I got some of that.

Good stuff!

 

Probably not my very first, but a better story. Summer job working at the Falstaff Brewery; on my last day there, the fork truck driver reached behind his seat & pulled a cold one from a cooler and handed it to me with a "good job, kid!" All I did was clean floors & toilets, but really wanted to use those big paddles to stir the big tanks.

 

Natty Ice, we wanted something to get us messed up and it did and gave me one hell of a hangover

 

Anyone remember the "pony" sized beers? My first beer was a Budweiser pony size bottle. I thought it was terrible. Didn't drink another beer after that for almost a year.

 

I remember ponies!

For me I was 8 or 9. We lived in a three-decker in a part of Boston known for three-deckers. My father would play cribbage on the steps outside with the tenant from the first floor, usually with a Red Sox game on the radio (Who remembers Billy Rohr?). I asked if I could try a sip of his can of Budweiser (opened with a churchkey - no fancy pull tabs back then.) I tried, and it was disgusting. As I got older I drank a lot of disgusting beer, because everyone else was. Usually Budweiser or Miller High Life was the ticket. The drinking age was 18, so 16 year olds could pull off a buy at a package store now and then. Around 17 I discovered Heineken Dark, and I've been looking for great beer ever since.

 

Lol, I knew someone would remember those. That's sounds very familiar. I always looked a little older than everyone else my age, so I was the lucky one sent into the old country store to buy a case of Bud or Miller. A miracle I was never arrested! In college I mostly drank Miller Lite. That was the holy grail at the time. If I was on a date and had scraped up enough money, I'd go "upscale" and buy Amstel Light. The first really good craft beer I had was Anchor Steam, when I was on a business trip in San Francisco. I was amazed. Thought I had found gold!

 

Maybe Rolling Rock.

 

The first sip I ever had of my Dad's beer was either Old Style or PBR. I don't remember which one, I just vaguely remember the blue shield logo.

The first one I ever had to myself was a Budweiser, I believe.

 

Schlitz Malt Liquor “tall boys”.:Three friends of mine split a sixer! Two each, ended up being tore up from the floor up!