Shiner Bock undoubtedly has hipster cachet -- it has been shown prominently on the X-Files series, for starters! (Due to Austin connections among the crew/cast.) And to my tastes, it's a damn fine brew. But it's no longer cheap, and hasn't been since the brewery was bought by, essentially, the Mexican mafia some years back, who began to raise the price and increase distribution beyond Texas. It costs as much as a micro-brew now, so I can only afford it when it's on sale. But it's still pretty much the de facto national beer of Austin and the Austin hipoisie, FWIW.

Oddly enough, in recent times Pabst and Schlitz have both become hard to find in my local grocery stores. What's going on? And I haven't seen Blatz for over a decade -- when I last did, it was being sold as remainders by a liquor store, three cans for a buck! I miss those days even though the beer was crap.

And where's Leinenkugels in this list of great American cheap beer nominees? Oh -- Leinie's ain't cheap anymore, either. Nor is Abita. What's with this brewer greed??

The next great American beer will not be a lager or a pils or a bock. It will be a ale.

Any independent American brewery worth their weight in hops has a pale ale on tap that is a staple of their menu. Pale ales have become so popular and distinct in this country that they even have a name for the style (American Pale Ale - very close to the British equivalent, except with more hops. Sort of between an English pale and an IPA in regards to hopiness).

They have consistently gotten more popular and accessible, and - unlike the beers mentioned in the article - they are actually really good. Beers that America can be proud of.

If I recall correctly Sam Adams has never had a brewery of its own. It's been contracted out to be brewed by other brewers.

True bocks are apparently closer to malt liquors. Which Shiner Bock is nowhere near.

No, a Bock is precisely a dark lager. Geeze man, look it up before you go correcting people. You have the internet in front of you, don't you? How lazy can you get?

I moved to Austin in 1989 to go to college and discovered the local Shiner Bock. The Shiner brewery was still independently owned by the Spoetzl family and was a tenacious brand that had held out against the big boys since the 1890s. Less than a regional or state beer, it was only available in central Texas. Shiner Premium, the pilsner-style lighter cousin was less available and less often drunk. At $3 a six pack at my neighborhood gas station, Shiner Bock was the best cheap beer in the nation.

We didn't drink Lone Star in Austin. It may have been nationally recognized as the beer of Texas, but it wasn't the beer of our Texas. Years before the annoying, hyperbolic Pabst phenomena began in Portland, Shiner Bock was the unofficial beer of the indie rock scene in Austin. We loved it for what it was: very good given how cheap it was. But we didn't get tattoos about it.

Then the Shiner Brewery was bought out by the Gambrinus Company, importers of Mexican beers. After a few years Gambrinus saw two trends that it thought it could take advantage of: the sudden fame of Austin as coolsville, and the rise of microbreweries. In their vision Shiner Bock would cease being a cheap regional beer and become an expensive micro-brew to be sold around the country as what the hipsters in Austin drink.

Problem is, Shiner is a great cheap beer and a lousy expensive beer. A huge marketing budget does not make a beer taste any better. Pay $8 for a six-pack of Shiner when I could get Rogue's Dead Guy or Bell's Amber for about the same price? Not even for old-times sake.

Mirroring the fortunes of Austin itself, Shiner Bock is now more expensive, more hyped and not as good as it used to be. Poetic.

According to Wikipedia the company that brews Sam Adams, the Boston Beer Company, originally contracted out brewing but has since purchased a brewery in Cincinnati -- oddly enough.

The new brewery is not big enough to brew all they sell so they still contract out 40% of their brewing.

It's an important distinction because Peoria Heights (it is a village, not a suburb of Peoria) has an artesian well for its water source (and the Pabst beer that was brewed there). Peoria gets its water from the Illinois River.

My father was branch manager of the PH Pabst Brewery for 25 years. My grade school was located directly across the street. Living there, you couldn't smell the brewery, but go out of town for a few days and boy you could sure smell it when you came home.

In those days, Pabst was an outstanding quality beer, and I don't think I'm only saying that because Dad was such a great salesman. He showed me once in a side-by-side comparison with some other beer - Miller, maybe, or Bud, or possibly the Pabst from the newest brewery in Georgia - the glass with the local Pabst was luminously golden with a fine, thick head of foam. The other beer was yellow with a thinner and coarser textured head. Pabst tasted rich and mellow; the other tasted like dishwater.

But the brewery closed in 1982. Dad retired about the same time. And when Dad died I inherited his Pabst 25-year lapel pin. How much do you think I could get for it now on Ebay?

And BTW, Blatz is a Pabst brand.

You took the words right out of my mouth. One of the only reasons I ever continued to tolerate the piss that is Pabst was Blue Velvet. Maybe I'm just that gullible, but Hopper was fuckin' hilarious in that movie and that was an all time classic line.

Um...just what "indie band" was this? I think we'd all like to know just what hipster indie uber-influential band out of Peoria was so much a part of re-making a (piss tasting) legend. Or did I totally miss your point?