There was a liquor store in Somers Point, NJ that carried Ballantine IPA in the early 80s, but that's the only place I recall seeing it. It was pretty expensive then.
Henry Weinhard's was the first beer I actually chose over what ever was on sale in college. But the first time I realized there was a whole other world of beer out there was SNPA. It made me want to brew beer.
Around the time Robert Christgau, music writer, reviewed a number of beers in Oui magazine, and said that it was "so bitter it starts conversations at parties..." . I've seen people here confuse the memory of Ballantine XXX Ale of 40-50 years ago with Ballantine India Pale Ale from that era... Now, me, I drank my fair share of IPA, and LOTS of XXX, but, ah, when it comes to Falstaff's Ballantine ales, the short-lived* Ballantine Brewer's Gold Ale... * Yeah, only around for a couple of years... that's just how such things work, I guess.
Depends what we are calling craft. Back in the 90’s, Pete’s Wicked was craft. That would be my first. Then I had Fat Tire in late 90’s. Then what really opened my eyes was an imperial stout at a beer festival in 2000. Founders in 2001 sealed the deal.
Mine was Red Granite Ale from the original Pikes Peak Brewing in Colorado Springs when I got stationed there Spring of'92. After that, it was Old Chicago getting me hooked on "micros" with Pete's, Fat Tire, SN, etc.
The older hippies I hung with in the early/mid 90's were into imports and favored Grolsch and Bass. Both of which I didn't really care for. So I used to grab Pete's Wicked and Sam Adams. Not sure what I had first.
It definitely tasted citrus-y to me--that much I recall. But wow, that's a distant memory (almost 50 years). I had just moved to Buffalo where I bought the 6er; I'm from WI and had never heard of IPA before (maybe it was available, but I had never seen it).
The thing in the front of my mind is the stuff from Troegs/Victory/Weyerbacher that landed in the area mid-late 90's/early 2000s. However, if Petes Wicked/Sam Adams count, they probably snuck in before this.
I never had the chance to drink a Ballantine brewed Ballantine IPA but I did have the pleasure to drink a reconstruction of this beer. It was a beer collaboratively brewed by Stone (e.g., Mitch Steele) and Smuttynose which they branded as Cluster’s Last Stand. This beer was brewed based upon a reconstructed recipe by Bill Pierce who was a friend of mine. Bill wrote an article for BYO magazine entitled: “Make Mine Ballantine - Rediscovering America’s formerly preeminent ales” which included this recipe. I was able to purchase several bottles of Cluster’s Last Stand and I shipped a bottle each to Bill Pierce and Mitch Steele so they too could enjoy a reconstruction of this old timey beer. I discussed Cluster’s Last Stand with a side-by-side of the contemporary (i.e., 2014 version) Ballantine IPA. I can report that Cluster’s Last Stand did indeed have a citrus flavor to it: “Aroma Cluster’s Last Stand: A vibrant citrus hop aroma; I did not perceive any malt aroma initially. Taste: Cluster’s Last Stand: The taste sort of followed the aroma with citrus being the dominant flavor but there were other hop flavors as well; some earthy flavors. Not much in the way of malt flavor initially but I noticed the malt more as the beer warmed/opened up.” https://www.beeradvocate.com/commun...-pabsts-ballantine.217032/page-2#post-2853438 Cheers! @AlfromPA
Was Ballantine the first craft brewer, in the 1930s? The article on Jess Kidden's website from Fortune magazine (June 1938) indicates that the marketing strategy of the Badenhausens, the brothers who took over the brewery in 1932, was to make a more expensive and more flavorful but nevertheless light beer that would appeal to the upwardly mobile middle class rather than the working class. By charging more and promoting ale rather than beer they managed to put Ballantine, which had been a moribund outfit before Prohibition, into the front ranks of American brewers. The secret: a light ale (as opposed to the earlier heavy one), but with a distinctive flavor, and spiced with a little snob appeal. Sound familiar? To me this sounds like the Jim Koch (Sam Adams Boston Lager) playbook of the 1980s--and Jim is hailed as one of the fathers of "craft beer." https://sites.google.com/site/pballantineandsons/home/fortune-june-1938
Do you consider a flavorful beer such as a Porter as being a craft beer? Maybe we can go further back from the 1930’s to perhaps 1829: “The first beers brewed by Yuengling were not AAL beers but instead were beers brewed with ale yeast. On the Yuengling website they list as their first beers: Lord Chesterfield Ale and Porter.” https://www.morebeer.com/articles/What_Is_Craft_Beer Cheers!
Louis F. Neuweiler (Allentown, PA) had a broader portfolio - 4 ales + an all-malt lager (plus the same as Ballantine's line-up - light and dark lagers, porter, stout and a seasonal bock) In most markets their then-flagship Ballantine XXX Ale was sold in the "Premium" price range - the same as the national "shipping" brewers' beers like Budweiser, Schlitz and (at the time) Pabst. Most other ales were from local or regional brewers, and the retail on them was usually in the "Popular" price range similar to their regional lagers.
Sure, but what I wanted to stress in the Fortune article was the idea that craft beer (exemplified by Ballantine in the 1930s) is a more flavorful product with, let's say, upscale marketing. Craft beer in this sense would be a connoisseur's beer (usurping the role of wine) that appeals to people who want to avoid cheaper, insipid beers at least in part because of their (lower) class connotations. Are there examples of this in the nineteenth century? Perhaps IPAs were always in this category, even in the 1850s: more flavorful, more expensive, with exotic connotations (India), they appealed to a better-off and more cultivated audience.
From the article i linked above: "There were a number of other American breweries producing IPAs in the 1800’s with a few examples: C. H. Evans, Frank Jones, Christian Feigenspan and Matthew Vassar. A number of breweries ahead of their time?" I personally have never associated "upscale marketing" as being a requirement for a craft beer (e.g., I enjoy drinking today's version of Lord Chesterfield which I discussed yesterday in the ongoing Lager thread). Cheers!
Yes, for sure, Yuengling hits the sweet spot between (good) craft and popular appeal. I sure miss Lord Chesterfield and the Porter. Here in Denver Shiner Bock is a good substitute for the Lager, but Chetty and the Porter have no equivalents.
