The Next Great American Beer
In the comments to this post on InBev and Budweiser, we speculated on the future of American owned and operated brewers. Salon’s Edward McClelland wonders what the next great domestic brew will be. Pabst (which I didn’t know was hip) is making a play already, calling itself “the last of the famous iconic U.S. brewers to be fully independent and American-owned.” But, as Joshua noted, Pabst itself doesn’t actually brew beer anymore. It closed its Milwaukee brewery in 1996 and farms out production to Miller, which is South African. Stymied here, McClelland then turns to a smaller-scale brew dear to any East Coast partisan like myself–Yuengling.
Established in Pottsville, Pennsylvania in 1829, Yuengling boasts that it’s the oldest operating brewery in the United States and is still under the control of the Yuengling family. While the town of Pottsville has seen better days (though it did have an NFL team in the 1920s and it gave us Jude Wanniski), Yuengling is still going strong. It is the 6th largest brewer in the United States, producing over one million barrels annually. Yuengling lagers are great, I concur, but problem is, if you live west of Ohio you’re not going to find it anywhere. Yuengling is a regional brewer with two plants in Pottsville and one in Tampa, Florida (where they bought an old Stroh’s plant). They’ve limited their distribution to ten states in the East, which may be part of the appeal. As they say on their web site, “While there is significant interest for our products nationwide, unfortunately we do not have the manufacturing capabilities to service customers across the United States. As a result, our focus and efforts continues to be on our loyal customers and markets that are logistically feasible to our production facilities.” Yuengling eventually may become the next Coors–a regional lager to go national–but I think for the moment it’s presumptuous to call it the next great American beer.
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8 Responses to “The Next Great American Beer”
Ha! Hip urbanites like Pabst now? News to me as well. In my social circles Pabst and PBR is only a fun hick drink to get, and is only drunk when one wishes to tip their foam-netted hat to the rural, truck driving culture. I’m more used to seeing people drink PBR while wearing “wife-beaters” and camo than any emo or urban clothes.
The past year or two, I’ve been making an effort to get to know Indiana beers. I’ve been very happy. Three Floyds and Oaken Barrel in particular are very good.
I’ve had Yuengling, it’s not bad. Not as good as oaken barrel, Fat Tire, Sam Adams or Upland in my book, but not bad.
I just don’t see a beer named Yuengling being the next big American beer. It certainly doesn’t have the American sounding name of Budweiser, Miller, Coors, or Sam Adams. It sounds more like a beer made in Asia. (I had a joke about underage gymnastics girls here, but deleted it). I do wonder what effect the odd name does have on the beer’s sales.
Well, Budweiser isn’t exactly and American name. We did swipe it from the Austrian/Czechoslovakian town of Budweis.
It’s funny Yuengling (Ying Ling) comes across as Asian, because the original phrase (J�ngling) is as German as, um, Budweiser!
Wikipedia agrees on the “Pabst is for hipsters” thing. Apparently it’s retro, authentic, and anti-commercial or something like that.
Prohibition, refrigeration, and tv advertising together managed to kill off almost all of the small regional brewers who once produced all those different niche beers all across America. Survivors Bud, Miller, Pabst, Yuengling…they’re all the same bland thing. Their continued popularity is all about the cost, which is next to nothing, and a more or less continuing post-Prohibition American preference for light lagers.
BTW, if you’re not a big fan of American light lagers, you have Jimmy Carter to thank for helping to jumpstart the homebrew movement; he signed the bill allowing people to brew beer for private consumption.
As a homebrewer myself, I do salute Jimmy Carter for that (and only that). I’ve always found it funny that the good Baptist is the one who got it done.
The American beer scene has dramatically improved in the past 20 years thanks to the craft beer movement. There were only a handful of craft brewers when Jim Koch (Sam Adams) started his thing in the early 1980s. Now there are like 1,500 craft brewers in the U.S. It’s where the action is.
But if you’re looking for an all-American mass-market lager, you can do a lot worse than Yuengling
When I was at Penn State, the beer of choice was Yuengling’s porter, not the lager.