Big Beer, Part 2

I printed a long list of beers brought to market by the InBev/Anheuser-Busch monster in the last post, and I wanted to make sure that people know that there are plenty more beers that are released in Asia and Europe and South America that I didn't print.

With the majority of the beer market being taken by InBev and Coors-Miller, another two forms of Big Beer are around that I'm going to highlight here.

Pabst Brewing is the first. Pabst Brewing Company was founded in 1844 in Milwaukee, but was renamed Pabst in 1889. At one point it was the largest brewer in America and sold the most beer out of everyone. The current namesake, Pabst Blue Ribbon, resurrected by hipsters calling it PBR, is named such because of the blue ribbons the company tied around the necks of the bottles, a practice that lasted from 1882 to 1916. Originally it was called Best Select, and then Pabst Select.

Now Pabst Brewing Company is a holding company for old brands of beer, many coming from Milwaukee. It's almost like the French company that own the rights to the name Atari and its logo (which, by the way, is a very cool logo). PBC locally sources the beer titles they hold. They do not brew beer; they hire breweries to brew it.

When I saw a list of the brands the hold, I was surprised: it read like a list of the beers we were able to get at the local supermarket in Bed-Stuy in 12-pack form. All of those beers were brewed in Saranac, NY, an upstate brewery town that likely makes most of the North Atalantic's slate of PBC beers.

Here's the list: (Some of the beers or brewed by Miller in some spots...)

Pabst Blue Ribbon
Schaefer
Schlitz
Jacob Best (named for the original founder of the 188 brewery that became Pabst)
Old Milwaukee
Stroh's
Old Style
Olympia Genuine Draft
Ranier
St. Ides
Colt 45
National Bohemian
Lone Star
Ballantine Ale

Schaefer, Schlitz, Old Milwaukee, and Ballantine were all pretty much available to us in the Stuy. So were St. Ides and Colt 45, of course. Schaefer, Schlitz, and Old Milwaukee were the only ones ever to be seen in 12-pack form that weren't one of the A-B/Coors/Miller beers. And while we lived in Texas, sometimes the allure of the five-dollar sixer of tall-boys from "The National Beer of Texas" was too strong, so I've had my share of Lone Star.

So that's Pabst, and my second example of Big Beer. Likely it's beer being brewed in an Anhueser-Busch style, or, in a large scale setting. At least there's enough business to keep breweries open in places like Saranac and Rochester and San Antonio.

But, that's also kind of how Anheuser-Busch works, outsourcing their production to other "local" plants.

I guess that's a mixed bag.

So, this whole little discussion I was inspired to write because I drank a beer. Corrie had picked up two six-packs of bottles, both from a company called Wild Range, one IPA and one Amber Ale. The bottles had a picture of a howling wolf, but they used different color schemes. I was holding the IPA with the gray color scheme. It was cold and covered in condensation. I took a sip.

Whoa! Did Corrie slip me a boiler-maker? My next mouthful made it more clear.

Remember the last time you had Scotch? Didn't you think that that warm gasoline awesomeness would be so much better if it were cold and carbonated and 6.5% percent instead of 50%? That's the best way I could describe that "IPA": it was like carbonated Scotch. I'm not the biggest fan.

Corrie thought it was sweet and weird. The Amber Ale was cold and plain, and to me didn't taste like much of anything. We decided from then on out to pull out our pint glasses and split one of each beer between the two and mix them. It made it mostly palatable.

Has anyone heard of a beer called Steel Kettle Whistle? I found a twelve pack of cans at a Fresh & Easy grocery store marked at $5.99. I had never heard of it, and I was sure it wasn't very good, but the price was right to give it a go. When I went up to buy it, the machine told me it was actually only $4.99. It was like it knew.

It was pale and had less flavor than even Lone Star, but wasn't bad in any real sense. You get what you pay for.

I started to do some research. I still haven't found the location of the brewery, but it's being distributed by something called World Brews. Headquartered in Novato, the generically named World Brews is a subsidiary of Winery Exchange. Winery Exchange, according to their website is a wholesaler who supplies stores with brands. They have wine, liquors, and beers. Currently some of their beers can be found in Fresh & Easy grocery stores.

Steel Kettle Whistle can be found only in Fresh & Easy. Wild Range, my Scotch bottle, is another one of the Winery Exchange beers.

This is another face of Big Beer, my third example. They try to make it seem like they find small breweries and get them wholesaled to stores (like Fresh &Easy), and that may prove to be the case, which seems like it would be the best use of Big Beer power. If it's true, of course. I'm not totally convinced it's not like the PBC-style Big Beer from earlier.

Here's a link to the beers available from the shadowy World Brews, it's just too much to write here. The link has all variations on their 26 brands, but since you'd need to go to specialty stores in the random states to even find them, it seemed less important than the long list of InBev beers from the first post.

This makes me want a nice, big beer. As a relative once said, describing us all and using the first person, "I'm a vehry thearsty man."