As a minor correction Yuengling is also produced in Tampa, Florida. To their credit, their Lager is pretty consistent between both breweries. Thought I don't know for certainty, I'm guessing this is why their Premium, Lord Chesterfield and other denominations aren't available outside of PA (sad, their Premium beer is the only beer that has ever made me say, "Damn, this is good beer.").

I can remember seeking out Pabst in 1991 after Blue Velvet, and finding it in bars in New York.

We also searched out Mickey's Big Mouth (back when they had the snap tops) cuz of that Tom Waits song.

Nothing remains of the Grain Belt Brewery save this kitschy sign, but the beer is produced in Minnesota, by Schell, which bought the brand in 2002.

And? Being bought by Schell isn't exactly like being bought out by some massive beverage conglomerate. They produce some of the most stylistically notable continental lagers in the U.S. (Schell Pils, Schell Firebrick which revives the Vienna style, and one of the few spot-on altbiers brewed in this country). Their cheap deer brand (maybe it's called 'original' now?) and the aforementioned Grain Belt both have wonderful claims to make on the national-low-brow-everybeer sweepstakes this article seems to consider relevant.

Look, I don't work for them (if only, gawd!) but it's not like Grain Belt was a sellout to Unibev or Miller or something, Schell saved that beer, "branding" matters aside.

The brewery was founded in 1860 for crying out loud! Name one American-owned brewery that old (there's maybe 2).

wow. I used to drink pabst and other cheap lagers in the Lutz back in the late 80's and early ninety's. then I discovered microbrews. let the hipsters have it.

... but what can i do?

All i got is Indio, and Modelo Especial, and Sol, and Corona around. At 60 cents a bottle.

Olympia and Negra Modelo.

I hate Corona.

I had a couple of friends from Ohio back in college. All they ever wanted to drink was PBR. It got to the point that it literally tasted like something that had died. I will never be able to drink it again.

Not that Budweiser is any good either, mind you.

Yeah, Shiner was $3.29 at the Pronto Mart on Duval for years.

Old Rasputin is great -- though dangerously strong. More than one and I'm loaded. I'll look for the Red Seal.

In the Summer in Portland I find stuff like imperial stouts too heavy. I prefer Widmer's Hefeweisen. Strange how much I like that stuff when I never really cared for Celis White. (More Austin references!)

"I'll fuck anything that moooooves!"

Ben:

"Here's to your fuck Frank."

I also went to Austin as an undergrad and I had no idea why Shiner went from roughly 5 bucks a sixer to over 8. Now I know. Thanks for the info, and yeah - Shiner ain't all that.

My favorite brewery (of the moment) is North Coast in California. I like Red Seal Pale Ale and Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout.

For a nice summer day, you can't beat Fireman's 4 from the Real Ale Brewing Company, now available in Texas state wide!

I'll pass on Shiner from now on.

I have to put a case (...) in for SF too. We drank a lot of PBR at a host of hipster bars in San Francisco in the early to mid 90's. 1$ PBR nights were a staple of the Mission district bars for years. I remember buying a ton of it when I heard they were going out of business in 1996, my wife still makes fun of me for that as it is ubiquitous in every grocery store now. I also remember it being pretty entrenched in Chicago by the late 90's (the Hideout for sure)

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?

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.

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.

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.

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.