Your Favorite Discontinued Beer.

Brew 102? You're not missing anything there.

quote:

Originally posted by sftreat
Nattie Bo! (oh yeah)

sftreat,
Nice. My favorite was National Premium, which was only sold in and around Baltimore... when I lived in Richmond, someone brought me back a six-pack; we couldn't buy it there.
At one time, Carling National (and later Heileman) operated two breweries in Baltimore. Strikes me that National Premium was made at the newer Beltway facility, but I could be wrong... it could have been downtown.
Other vanished Baltimore brews would include Gunther, American, and at least one more that I can't remember.
Now... can you... or anybody... remember the words to the National Bohemian beer jingle? I can grab at pieces:
"From the Rappahannock to the Susquehanna you can hear the people cheer...
"... National Beer.
(CHORUS) "National Beer, National Beer, wet, cold, delicious National Beer,
"And while I'm singin' I'm proud to say that it's brewed on the shore (toot-toot) of the Chesapeake Bay."
-- This would indicate that they were still using their old downtown brewery at this time.
Drily, Warmly, And Deliciously, Ort. Carlton in Bohemian Athens, Georgia.

quote:

Originally posted by Mosca

quote:

Originally posted by Ort. Carlton.

quote:

Originally posted by jesskidden

quote:

Originally posted by Phildelmar

Roaming Wyomingly, Ort. Carlton in Ever-Groovy Athens, Georgia.

Ort, you certainly know your Wyomingvalleyania!
The brew your friend was probably drinking was Stegmaier Gold Medal, their traditional Americal lager. But Stegmaier also produces some excellent beers: Stegmaier 150, an all-malt lager (previously formulated as Stegmaier 1857 Lager); Stegmaier Porter, a Pennsylvania style using 4 different malts; and true Oktoberfest, Bock, and Wheat beers. Additionally they brew the Pocono series of beers, and Olde Philadelphia sodas, including the original Prohibition recipe Lion Root Beer!
The Lion Brewery is a Wilkes-Barre landmark, part of the local skyline visible from the North Cross Valley Expressway. In an area where treasures can be hard to come by, The Lion is a gem.

Mosca,
Been there! It's located at something like 717 North Washington Street, about a mile north of the square.
It was Stegmaier Gold Medal he was mentioning.
My first taste of Stegmaier Porter was back when the label was brown and chartreuse and had a horse on it. It seemed to have a heavy licorace/anise flavor, which I loved. More recent samples seem to indicate a reformulation (hey, would Senape's mess with their Pitza?!?!?!?!?), but it's still a good brew.
Yuengling has introduced Lord Chesterfield Ale on draught to some customers in N. J. and N. Y., with the next state for trial being N. C., believe it or not. It ought to go over in Asheville.
Man, it's good to hear from you again!
Unwanderngly, Ort. in 30601.

quote:

Originally posted by Poverty Pete
Brew 102? You're not missing anything there.

Pete,
It wasn't good, but it must have been fun back in the day (when Maier was making it) to drive down to Watts to buy it at the plant.
One cannot help but wonder what the other 101 brews tasted like....
Curiouser And Curiouser, Ort. in 30601.

Dearfolk,
Did ANYONE out there actually LIKE Hop 'N' Gator? -- I LOVED the stuff, and it really bothered me when they took it off the market.
Ironically, Ort. Carlton in 30601-Central.

Ort, back in the day, it was 99 cents a sixpack, and worse than A-1, which was also 99 cents in the stubbies.

I agree with Ort Carlton, Ballentine IPA in the 1970's was Fantastic, rich and satifying a little sweet and a little bitter, just Great.

I miss Dobler Ale, Krueger Lager, Fitzgeralds Ale and of course my first beer Ruppert Knickerbocker - 3qts. for a Dollar.

There was a fun beer that I miss called a Chug-A-Lug, I think it was either Piels or Rhinegold it had a big opeining on the bottle and went down easy on a hot day.

quote:

Originally posted by santacruz

There was a fun beer that I miss called a Chug-A-Lug, I think it was either Piels or Rhinegold it had a big opeining on the bottle and went down easy on a hot day.

I think you are referring to the Rheingold Chug-a-Mug



As a kid I remember watching Met games and seeing Ralph Kiner open a few of these each game. Toward the end of the game he'd start sounding like my grandfather after he'd made too many stops at the linen closet where he kept his "medicine".

How about Ortlieb's ? Joe's beer as seen in a commercial down here in the Lehigh Valley during the early 70s was made for the real beer drinker - the kind that gets a case during the week and another case for the weekend. My kinda drinker anyways but I only tried Ortliebs once and don't remember much about it.

Lucky Lager!!!!!

I drank that all the way through college... probably not a very good beer (cheap) but they had awesome collectible caps with a puzzle (a rebus) inside. Apparently related to Labatts, they say the beer is still made but since 2003 not in the famous bottles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_lager
A picture of some caps: http://www.notcot.org/post/12836/

BTW the Whitbread pubs in the UK all disappeared when they were bought out years back... (pubs bought by "Enterprise Inns"). The company still exists but doesn't own interest in any brewing. Sad.

I had my favorite discontinued beer every day since May 27, 1977. That's when I quit drinking.

Back in my college days which was a long time ago in Niagara Falls N Y it was Indian Pale Ale "Brewed For Braves"
Clay Bell

quote:

Originally posted by cecif

Lucky Lager!!!!!

I drank that all the way through college... probably not a very good beer (cheap) but they had awesome collectible caps with a puzzle (a rebus) inside. Apparently related to Labatts, they say the beer is still made but since 2003 not in the famous bottles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_lager
A picture of some caps: http://www.notcot.org/post/12836/

Tho' that Wiki article (as do most of them) gets a lot of facts wrong, the owner of General, Paul Kalmanovitz, went on to buy the brewing companies of Falstaff (and, so, the Ballantine and Narragansett labels), Pearl and eventually Pabst (under which name the company goes by today).

Some of those brands still use the "rebus" puzzle caps which General/Falstaff/Pearl used to called "Crown Ticklers"- see [url] http://www.crownticklers.com/ [/url] The cap on that page, in the upper left is the one still used and one finds it on Ballantine Ale and Haffenreffer Private Stock Malt Liquor and maybe others in different regional markets. Since the latter beer is brewed for Pabst by The Lion, they also put that cap on some of their own beers.

Pabst has since sold (altho' some reports say they've only leased it) the brand name "Narragansett" to the new Narrangansett company, and they, apparently, have a different series of puzzles under their caps. http://www.narragansettbeer.com/showpage.aspx?pageId=66

quote:

Originally posted by Tony Bad

quote:

Originally posted by santacruz

There was a fun beer that I miss called a Chug-A-Lug, I think it was either Piels or Rhinegold it had a big opeining on the bottle and went down easy on a hot day.

I think you are referring to the Rheingold Chug-a-Mug

The Rheingold Chug-a-Mugs were great- dangerous, sometimes, but great. Piels also had a similar bottle (tho' the ones I recall best from them were the 7 oz'ers)- the Piels were more "barrel" shaped- even had little "embossed" riveted hoops on them. Pretty sure a similar bottle was also used for the Blatz brand (by then owned by Heileman).

The "wide mouth" bottle lives on in Mickey's Malt Liquor (now owned by Miller) tho' they have twist-off caps (perhaps for safety/legal reasons.

quote:

Originally posted by Mosca

Iron City Golden Lager. Very similar to Sam Adams.

No suprise there - when Sam Adams first started they were only a "label" and a slick marketing concept, not a brewery; their beers were brewed by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company of Iron City and IC Light fame.

Steelers are going for their sixth this year!

"Natty Bo", Naragansett Lager, Stroh's, and Duquesne - "The Prince of Pilsners"

quote:

Originally posted by MetroplexJim

quote:

Originally posted by Mosca

Iron City Golden Lager. Very similar to Sam Adams.

No suprise there - when Sam Adams first started they were only a "label" and a slick marketing concept, not a brewery; their beers were brewed by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company of Iron City and IC Light fame.

Steelers are going for their sixth this year!

You make it sound like they were just putting a label on someone else's beer. They DID (and still do) have their beer brewed at contract facilities, as many small breweries do...and almost have to unless they have deep pockets to just build a brewery from scratch, but the recipe was their own. The proof it was and is their own recipe can be seen in the fact IC Lager is usually ranked near the bottom of beer ratings, while Sam Adams is at the other end.

quote:

Originally posted by jesskidden

quote:

Originally posted by cecif

Lucky Lager!!!!!

I drank that all the way through college... probably not a very good beer (cheap) but they had awesome collectible caps with a puzzle (a rebus) inside. Apparently related to Labatts, they say the beer is still made but since 2003 not in the famous bottles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_lager
A picture of some caps: http://www.notcot.org/post/12836/

Tho' that Wiki article (as do most of them) gets a lot of facts wrong, the owner of General, Paul Kalmanovitz, went on to buy the brewing companies of Falstaff (and, so, the Ballantine and Narragansett labels), Pearl and eventually Pabst (under which name the company goes by today).

IMHO "most" is an exaggeration, but really the link was simply an fyi... since no one else had mentioned Lucky.

quote:

Originally posted by Tony Bad

quote:

Originally posted by MetroplexJim

quote:

Originally posted by Mosca

Iron City Golden Lager. Very similar to Sam Adams.

No suprise there - when Sam Adams first started they were only a "label" and a slick marketing concept, not a brewery; their beers were brewed by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company of Iron City and IC Light fame.

Steelers are going for their sixth this year!

You make it sound like they were just putting a label on someone else's beer. They DID (and still do) have their beer brewed at contract facilities, as many small breweries do...and almost have to unless they have deep pockets to just build a brewery from scratch, but the recipe was their own. The proof it was and is their own recipe can be seen in the fact IC Lager is usually ranked near the bottom of beer ratings, while Sam Adams is at the other end.

You are correct - Sam Adams has proprietary recipies; more importantly, it has had a marketing campaign since its inception that has become a case study in most graduate business schools.

My comment was born of my amusement circa 1985 in drinking my first "Sam Adams' Boston Lager", then reading the fine print on the label and finding it was brewed by the producers and purveyors of what we in Pittsburgh used to lovingly call "Panther Pi$$" (after the U. Pitt Panthers).

Leaving the quality of Sam Adams aside, I'm sure that we both would agree that the "Boston Brewing Company's" marketing efforts have been one of the most successful of the past three decades or so in selling "sizzle" and maintaining an extremely high price point.

Props to them! And Coors for me!

quote:

Originally posted by cecif

quote:

Originally posted by jesskidden

quote:

Originally posted by cecif

Lucky Lager!!!!!
Apparently related to Labatts, they say the beer is still made but since 2003 not in the famous bottles. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucky_lager

Tho' that Wiki article (as do most of them) gets a lot of facts wrong, the owner of General, Paul Kalmanovitz, went on to buy the brewing companies of Falstaff (and, so, the Ballantine and Narragansett labels), Pearl and eventually Pabst (under which name the company goes by today).

IMHO "most" is an exaggeration, but really the link was simply an fyi... since no one else had mentioned Lucky.

Yeah, you're right - In my post I'd first written a bunch of "corrections" to that Lucky Lager Wiki entry but deleted it all (figuring no one really cared ) and should have changed what was left to read "most of the Wikipedia brewery histories that I've read get a lot of facts wrong". (Certainly did not mean it as an attack on you.)

I drank a few Lucky's when I lived in LA in the mid-70's and living hand to mouth. My favorite was the relatively rare "Lucky Red Carpet Beer". http://www.taverntrove.com/items/18253.asp

Even though they weren't my favorites, I loved the price of six packs of Schmitt's and Ballantine from my graduate school days in Charlottesville, VA: 99 Cents!

And what a convenience it was moving from Pennsylvania and finding beer available for sale by six pack and singles at groceries, gas stations, and drug stores. Unfortunately, that "convenience" revealed my first wife's alcoholism. Oops! Maybe PA's archaic alcohol laws had a purpose.

quote:

Originally posted by Tony Bad

quote:

Originally posted by MetroplexJim

quote:

Originally posted by Mosca

Iron City Golden Lager. Very similar to Sam Adams.

No suprise there - when Sam Adams first started they were only a "label" and a slick marketing concept, not a brewery; their beers were brewed by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company of Iron City and IC Light fame.

Steelers are going for their sixth this year!

You make it sound like they were just putting a label on someone else's beer. They DID (and still do) have their beer brewed at contract facilities, as many small breweries do...and almost have to unless they have deep pockets to just build a brewery from scratch, but the recipe was their own. The proof it was and is their own recipe can be seen in the fact IC Lager is usually ranked near the bottom of beer ratings, while Sam Adams is at the other end.

It's not as you say; Beer Advocate has IC Golden Lager as a "B", Sam Adams Boston Lager as a "B+". IIRC correctly, and I very well may not, the recipe for Sam Adams was derived from the recipe for IC Golden Lager.

quote:

Originally posted by Mosca

quote:

Originally posted by Tony Bad

quote:

Originally posted by MetroplexJim

quote:

Originally posted by Mosca

Iron City Golden Lager. Very similar to Sam Adams.

You make it sound like they were just putting a label on someone else's beer. They DID (and still do) have their beer brewed at contract facilities, as many small breweries do...and almost have to unless they have deep pockets to just build a brewery from scratch, but the recipe was their own. The proof it was and is their own recipe can be seen in the fact IC Lager is usually ranked near the bottom of beer ratings, while Sam Adams is at the other end.

It's not as you say; Beer Advocate has IC Golden Lager as a "B", Sam Adams Boston Lager as a "B+". IIRC correctly, and I very well may not, the recipe for Sam Adams was derived from the recipe for IC Golden Lager.

Most accounts of the creation of Samuel Adams Boston Lager have the recipe derived from the brewing logs of BBC's founder, Jim Koch's Great Grandfather. (Koch comes from a long line of US brewers.) The recipe was then "tweaked" by the famous brewery consultant Joseph Owades (updated hops to reflect current strains, added dry hopping & krausening, etc,). The Pittsburgh Brewery was picked for the contract because it could handle the processes (and, probably, few other brewers were interested).

Coincidentally, the "Iron City Golden Lager" shows up around the same time Koch contracted with PBB, in 1985 (according to Brewers Digest Annual Guide for the same year)- so there may have been some influence, one way or 'nother. It should be noted that IC Golden Lager is not the same beer as the regular Iron City.

I miss Walter's from Eau Claire, WI. Cheap, no-frills. My car broke down in 1979 over Labor Day Weekend en route from Chicago to Seattle. I was bored and pretty broke so I went and toured the brewery.

http://www.falstaffbrewing.com/walter's.htm

Cecif's memory of Lucky Lager with the rebus caps hit me hard. My folk's drank that stuff once or twice a year and then kept the caps around in jars... And later, I discovered that Lucky Light was something you could drink all day long without getting a buzz. Which is on occasion the way to roll.

I have heady memories of those days in the late eighties/early nineties when people were going into microbrewing like lemmings going over a cliff. Every week there'd be something new. Some good, some bad, but a continual flow of experiment.

Bison Brewery used to make a Coriander Rye ale. Sounds disgusting, doesn't it? Well, it was modeled on a British bitter ale and it was insane. The coriander melded with the hops and the slight tartness from the rye set everything off perfectly. If you've ever sniffed with pleasure at rosin, well, this stuff tasted the way rosin smells only delicious, if you know what I mean and you hop-heads probably do.

Lagunitas brewery used to have a real knack for making beers that were both remarkably tasty and ridiculously high in alcohol. For the turn of the century they made a B2K that tasted like a high-end India Pale Ale and had an alcoholic content of twelve or fourteen percent, I forget which. Pretty much the opposite of Lucky Light.

Now if we were talking about beers that used to be great microbrews and became mediocre with mass production...

<<How about THE ORIGINAL Ballantine India Pale Ale, when it was brewed in Newark>

Wow! What a great thread. When I saw the title of the thread, Ballantine IPA was what came to mind. Then I read thru the posts in suspense: Is it or isn't it still available anywhere?? Consensus seems to be that the answer to that question is "No". Dam...

It may be my favorite beer of all time (and I've had many).

Anyway, the current Ballantine XXX Ale is even worse than I remember from even a few years ago. However, I recently got a case of the current Steg Porter and I think it's better than the previous version.

Lastly, sorry Ort, but Hop N Gator was one of the worst beers I ever tasted

Ort, a great topic!

My most missed beer is definitely Tiger Beer, which was an import that was available locally up until about the mid 1970's or so. It was far and away my very favorite beer 1975-1976.

Another beer I'd like to find at the store is Hamms. I understand it's available in some limited markets still around the country, but I haven't seen it since the mid 1980's. I think it was sold at one point to Olympia (remember Oly-balls?!). I still have a whole bunch of "I brake for artesians" junk in a closet somewheres. Olympia's not sold locally anymore either.

I used to like the cousin of Little Kings Beer, "Big Jug". Big Jug was from Shoenling's Brewery and was, well, a big jug ... 64oz for 99cents!
Ah yes, those were rich times.

I'd like to find Tuborg Gold again as well.

Buckhorn, Top Hat, Falstaff and "no brand" with the red circle and stripe are missing in action too. Not that I have such a desire to find them however.

I'd buy Hamm's Draft everynite in the 70's at $2.25/12pk
britt

quote:

Originally posted by Mosca

It's not as you say; Beer Advocate has IC Golden Lager as a "B", Sam Adams Boston Lager as a "B+". IIRC correctly, and I very well may not, the recipe for Sam Adams was derived from the recipe for IC Golden Lager.

That Beer Advocate rating for IC Golden Lager is based on one review!

Other reviews have been less generous.

quote:

Originally posted by Sonny Funzio



My most missed beer is definitely Tiger Beer, which was an import that was available locally up until about the mid 1970's or so. It was far and away my very favorite beer 1975-1976.

Anheuser-Busch imports Tiger Beer, but don't know where they distribute it. http://www.anheuser-busch.com/BeerVerified.html Page down half way or so to "Imports" (you'll have to go through their age check first).

quote:

Originally posted by Sonny Funzio




Another beer I'd like to find at the store is Hamms. I understand it's available in some limited markets still around the country, but I haven't seen it since the mid 1980's. I think it was sold at one point to Olympia (remember Oly-balls?!).

The strange thing about Hamm's is that it was a Pabst owned brand for a few decades, after Pabst bought Olympia. Then, when Stroh folded in 1999, Pabst and Miller divided up the Stroh-owned brands (which by then also included the many old Heileman labels). Pabst took the majority of them, Miller just a few - most notably Henry Weinhard and Mickey's Malt Liquor- AND confusingly, Miller also wound up with the Pabst-owned brand, Hamm's.

Never did read a explanation on why that was, save for maybe Miller (strong in the mid-West) wanted another "discount" brand (altho' there were a bunch of Heileman brands that would have fit, as well)? As you note, they do seem to be ignoring the brand, letting it slowly die, according even to this fan site:
http://www.hammsclub.com/LocateHamms.htm