Your Beer Time Machine

Just curious, what sort of beer(s) do you think you would drink there/then?

Cheers!

 

I would love to go back in time to 1978-82. OG Lowenbrau was our go to beer at the time. California was loaded with og Lowenbrau. Another great trip would be in West Berlin between 85-88 when we would drink Budvar or Lowenbrau. I went to West Berlin 3 times while searving the Air Force.

 

Really? (I take it OG means "Original German" ?) Miller signed a contract with Löwenbräu in 1974 to be the sole US importer of Löwenbräu beer, initially for the western US where the German brewer's subsidiary,Löwenbräu International, Ltd. had been the importer, and by 1975 had won a lawsuit by the eastern importer, Hans Holterbosch, taking over the entire US. The contract also allowed Miller to brew a domestic Löwenbräu.

Test marketing of Ft. Worth Miller-brewed Löwenbräu began by 1976 and it became available in much of the US by 1977, which is when Anheuser-Busch made its famous complaint to the Federal Trade Commission, which would investigate the situation the following year. There was a period in there when both versions were available in different parts of the US but I would have thought any German-brewed beer was gone everywhere by 1980.

Articles on the FTC investigation state that Miller's importation of the brand ended by the fall of 1977. CA ads suggest the Miller version was commonly being sold there by '78 (not that I'd ever trust a retailer's ad to be correct as far as "domestic" and "imported" go , but the price gives it away when compared, just a few years earlier, to Löwenbräu's longtime competitor for the "#1 Imported Beer in the US" spot, Heineken).

Just to be sure, I'd set that dial on the machine to earlier in the '70s or maybe the location to Munich.

 

Ancient Britain for me - the home of cask/real ale. Probably start in the Middle Ages - I’d go back as an Ale Conner. From Wiki:
“The Ale Conner was a type of early tax-man whose job it was to test the quality and strength of beer, not by quaffing, but by sitting in a puddle of it! They travelled from pub to pub clad in sturdy leather britches. Beer was poured on a wooden bench and the Conner sat in it. Depending on how sticky they felt it to be when they stood up, they were able to assess its alcoholic strength and impose the appropriate duty.”

 

Bring an extra pair of pants or two and, oh, have an alternate plan if things don't work out. I always doubted the story and would back Martyn Cornell's research and learned opinion over "Wiki's".

Myth 3: Medieval ale-conners wore leather breeches and tested ale by pouring some on a wooden bench and then sitting in it and seeing if they stuck to the bench

 

Nobody said we couldn’t go back and experience an alternate reality. So boring @jesskidden.

 

Oh, yeah - true enough. I was thinking of the old standard Time Machines, not the upgrade Deluxe models with that third dial* (well, video screen) with the various settings:
"real" "ideal" "mythical" "fantasy" "what if" "shuffle" "2 era mash-up", etc.

Still amazed at how fascinated Tom Paine, Mark Twain and Henry Thoreau all were when the four of us went to see the dinosaurs. "Hey, Kidden, can you put down that beer for once and check out these animals!"

 

I'm worried about going back more than about 100 years. I'd have to be able to specify modern plumbing in all my excursions into the past, and full vaccination protocols. And a machine setting to provide quick and comfortable transportation between locations (no treks on foot or horse or cross Atlantic sailings).

 

Actually, I’m a fan of the “WTF” setting. Just pop-in, pop-open something from home, and watch the fireworks.

And as for @cavedave’s post...

REALLY? You mention “free movements” as a feature after @moodenba asks for modern plumbing.

 

Lots of German beer is sold at Fort Bragg. Duty in Europe is good for learning many aspects of local cultures. The main federal beer and wine store at Bragg is called Smoke Bomb Hill.

 

I was going for a little immature humor there. Maybe I should have included a winking face, or better yet should have behaved more my age. No malice intended.

Happy Thanksgiving.

 

I could travel with steam train from city to city to taste all the NA beers during the prohibition, if that's what it takes. Hell, I could even shuffle coal into the gap of the engine, just bring me back to 1928

 

Well... I guess there's not going to be a lot of competition for seats on that machine..

Why '28? US National Prohibition or Finland's? In the US both the number of operating breweries and amount of legal 0.5% cereal beverage brewed went down steadily during Prohibition.


You might want to check out The New York Tribune's 1920 Taste Test before you leave.

 

1928, sorry for the loss of breweries, but the remaining ones honed their skills. Still the happy twenties, before the crash.

 

Great article! Do you know of any published taste tests of Mafia-brewed beer? Maybe a more interesting idea would be to drop into a few speakeasys and try the mobs' products. I believe Horlacher (PA) brewed for Dutch Schultz in NY; Manhattan/Canadian Ace was Capone's beer in Chicago.

 

The Swedish authorities, as early as 1922, who were otherwise temperance happy at the time and about to ban full stenght beer permanently, rejected the idea of following the American example in producing low alcoholic beers to replace full strenght beers (Swedish beer got a slight bump instead from 3.6% abv to 3.2% abw in 1923, while banning "strong beer" permanently) in a governmental report from 1922 thusly:
:

When even temperance crusaders are questioning the taste of a product I think scepticism is in order.

 

Man, this thread seems to have produced a sort of beer time warp in my town.

Tonight I'm enjoying a Sierra Nevada Porter and an Estonian stout brewed with juniper, rowan berries, and smoked malt. Is it 1985 or 1885?