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Sunday, Nov 8, 2009
Frank Booth: What kind of beer do you like to drink, neighbor?
Jeffrey Beaumont: Heineken.
Frank Booth: Heineken? Fuck that shit! Pabst Blue Ribbon!
The In-Bev takeover will not change that. In-Bev isn't out to change A-B beers, it's out to take advantage of A-B distribution for it's other products.
As an Arizonan for the last 38 years, this beer was not familiar to me. On a trip to Pennsylvania, my cousin introduced it to me, and I loved it. It's way better than your Budweisers and Millers.
I also hope no foreign firm gets a hold of the Sam Adams family, if that hasn't occurred already.
The Pabst revival started in Illinois LONG before it got trendy with Oregon folks. As much as you want to give Oregon credit, the source of the trend was in central Illinois. Three to Four years earlier.
The real story:
In 1997 a group of indie rockers from Peoria, Illinois started drinking Pabst Blue Ribbon because of the fact the brand used to have breweries in the small city. No joke, I was there when it happened. Taking the nature of the indie rock scene in the midwest within 6 months the beer was found at rock shows and in bars as the popular drink. This all happened long before folks in Oregon picked it up. Sorry, but I was there when it happened, and it was one of the weirdest things I have ever seen happen.
Make no mistake, Pabst has historic roots in the midwest, they had breweries throughout the region as well as Pabst bars. But it all started with some rock kids in Peoria, Illinois. Their friends just so happened to be tied throughout the indie community in Chicago, Champaign-Urbana, and other college towns and cities in the midwest. Then in the early part of 2000s I began to see other cities follow the lead and start drinking it.
I know all of this may be disappointing, to find out it was some kids in Peoria, Illinois, but the truth is they did start the trend of the Pabst revival with hipsters. Who thought a bunch of dorky math rock kids in a small city would start a trend. Portland starting the trend SOUNDS cooler. But it simply is far from the truth. The Pabst trend started not to far from Chicago for good reason. They still had ties with bars throughout the area.
As a Jersey guy, Yuengling is very available to me. It's not my first choice -- Brooklyn Lager and Sierra Nevada pale are my current faves. But Yuengling is far superior to any of the mass produced brews. A little more body, a little darker color, it's very drinkable. The only thing I find a little off-putting is how the slightly amber-colored beer looks in those green bottles. Has the look of iced tea. But putting that aside, it's a very good mass-market type beer.
Kevin Dixon and Drew Calvetti. They are now in a Shoegaze band called Brief Candles, but they were two of the originators of the trend. I remember first seeing their math rock band while they were smashed on Pabst.
If you want to contact Drew or Kevin look up brief candles and write them a letter. But they can tell you everything about how it started in central Illinois in the mid/late nineties. They even explained why they drank the beer to me, about the historic ties of Peoria being a town with a Pabst brewery before prohibition.
Yuengling is a fantastic beer and I always miss it when I can't order it in restaurants when traveling.
It isn't really a bock. More of a dark lager. Now, granted, most American beers are pilsners, which is on the light end of the lager scale, but Shiner Bock is on the same scale.
True bocks are apparently closer to malt liquors. Which Shiner Bock is nowhere near.
You need to reevaluate.
I can verify that PBR was well entrenched by 1999 in Chicago. I drank many a bottle or can at The Hideout, Tuman's Alcohol Abuse Center, The Hungry Brain, and lots of other grimy little bars that were, I guess, hipster dive bars. It was cheap!
I now live in upstate NY, and Yuengling is best "normal" 'merican lager brewed in the US. I served it up at my wedding to a lot of out-of-state guests, and the best comment was "it's like a regular American beer, except it's not crappy". And you shouldn't buy Genesee Cream Ale ("Genny") -- if you're not careful, it might get in your mouth.....
Point Beer, from Stevens Point Wisc.
http://www.pointbeer.com/brewery.php
The late, great Mike Royko of Chicago fame once got a bunch of beer drinkers together to do a blind tasting of beer. Point came out first among the Americans, and third overall if I remember correctly. This was before microbrews took off.
Mike also commented that most American beer was brewed using a secret process that involved filtering it through a horse.
Growing up in Canada, I was taught to make fun of American beer; it was supposed to be watery and bland.
I've lived in America since the late 90s, and I've enjoyed many micro-brews and shunned the crap mainstream stuff. American beer *is* good, if it's from a micro.
But on a hot muggy August evening, while I was enjoying grilled meat, someone handed me an ice-cold PBR. It was a revelation.
You know how they always talk about food and wine pairings? Well, on that disgustingly hot muggy evening with the the sweetness of BBQ sauce and the char of grilled food, PBR was a revelation. I understood the appeal of crap watery American lager. It was as natural a summer and grilled-food beer as Guinness is a winter and stew beer.
I've since tried Bud, and, well, let's just say I'll still only use it for bread-making and not drinking. But PBR is somehow a cut above. Maybe not real beer, but it has a place. It's the better Bud.
Much of the initial coverage about Fort Hood turned out to be wrong. Is there anything wrong with that?
The accountability imposed by another country for the CIA's kidnapping and torture reveals much about our own.
Fox News' morning show plays to type, talking about whether Muslims in the Army should face "special debriefings"
The survivor and author is upset about comparisons some on the right are making to genocide
Once seen as a lunatic fringe, reactionary anti-women groups are courting respectability
Salon headlines in your mailbox
