Yuengling Beer from early 90's.

Well, what is now called "Yuengling Premium" was Yuengling's flagship beer, a typical American adjunct lager and usually sold in the discount/popular price range. Today, their flagship is Yuengling Traditional Lager, a beer created in the late 1980s.

Yuengling Premium isn't nearly as well distributed as Yuengling Traditional Lager, but where it is, it is still sold at "below premium" prices - in NJ a case goes for $12-14 vs. $18-20 for "Lager".

 

I went to school in PA from 92-96. Yuengling Premium was in that discount category - cheap kegs ($20?). Yuengling Lager / Black & Tan was a step up and you could get this on draft at most bars and nice restaurants in the area. Lord Chesterfield was somewhere in between.

 

I don't think the kegs were that cheap- or maybe that was just a PA price. I remember paying like $40 for a half-barrel of Lord Chesterfield in NY in the 80s- which was still cheaper than Bud, etc. at the time.

 

That's accurate in PA as well, though those prices are a bit cheaper than they are here.

 

I have to say since expanding to Ohio there seems to be a feeling among beer drinking friends of mine that the traditional lager has changed since the days of bringing it in from PA. I definitely see their point but can't put my finger on if it's actually changed for the macro worse or if it's simply which plant it is brewed and shipped from say the TN location. I still find it better than the main flagship BMC stuff, though I prefer Lord Chesterfield & the Porter if I have the choice depending on locale.

 

There's no "TN location" - just the original brewery in Pottsville, the newer one outside of town in Mt. Carbon and the Schlitz-built brewery in Tampa, FL.

Yuengling does take advantage of the TTB "loophole" for labeling a brewery's city for multi-site companies, so that all their labels say only "Pottsville, PA" - their corporate headquarters. As also required, their bottle/canning coding no doubt designates which brewery the beer is from.

A deal to purchase the Memphis Schlitz brewery that Coors ran in the 80-90's fell through, and City Brewing Co. of La Crosse, WI bought it instead. They run it under the dba of "Blues City Brewing Co." doing contract brewing.

 

Thanks for the clarification, you are the man. I said that only because I had heard that their entry into Ohio was based on their buying another brewery that would help w/the push & heard it was in TN. Thanks again.

 

You are spot on. I remember when it was cheap as hell. Then it crept up in price. Still tastes the same though.

 

Yeah, talking about pricing from 20-30 years ago is always difficult - lots of misremembered "deals" combined with a large range of pricing from region to region, type of retailer to retailer, etc. And keg prices are tougher to find in old ads.

But here's pricing for two "discount" brand kegs in PA (Altoona, 1986), both brewed in-state by Stroh in Allentown at the time.

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Funny thing was, in the period before they released "Black & Tan" and "Traditional Lager" in the mid/late-80s and went slightly upscale, as cheap as Yuengling Premium was, it wasn't their cheapest beer. They also brewed the discount Old German brand* and Yuengling had also picked up the local "Bavarian" brand after the Mt. Carbon Brewing Co. closed. (Bonus savings- they could use the same labels, since it they said "Pottsville, PA").


* One of 3 "Old Germans" one could find in NJ at the same time, along with Eastern's and Pittsburgh's - we didn't get Peter Hand's Old German here.