I can remember back when Coors was considered a premium beer, and whenever you knew of someone heading out west you’d always tell them to bring you back a case.
Likewise when Rolling Rock first started becoming popular nationally, every hipster wanted to be seen with one in hand.
You could probably say the same thing about any number of imports like Corona, Stella Artois, Red Stripe, etc. that you can find in pretty much any supermarket nowadays.
What are some of your memories of drinking Coors, Rolling Rock or any other beer back when it was still considered special.
Michelob. I always felt especially grown up when buying it in the early 80s. I was in my early 20s.
It used to be that you hadn’t lost your beer cherry until you drank a pint of Guinness. Now everyone and their mother chugs it.
Beck’s and Foster’s was my contribution in a recent thread on this topic.
Miller High Life was, actually, a high-end beer in the early 20th century. From Wiki:
“It was originally available in miniature champagne bottles and was one of the premier high end beers in the country for many years.”
I was highly amused to see Genesee Cream Ale as a premium beer in Norfolk. Where I grew up, Rochester NY it was the cheap swill =)
I bet at one time Premium was considered that…at least for that company.
It’s espeially sad when the process happens in reverse due to cynical marketing techniques (see Pabst).
My memory of early TV days (early 50’s for me) and the designations of the day, based to some degree on the advertising, had at least Budweiser, Schlitz and Miller as the “top tier” of domestic brands nationally advertised. In the next tier were Falstaff, Pabst, Carling, Blatz, Hamm’s, and dozens of others before you got to the local and regional brands.
Coor’s and Stroh’s were not available nationwide, with the Mississippi being where their territories stopped. See Smokey and the Bandit for more on that lore.
I have been trying for a long time to find a fourth and maybe a fifth brand to go with the Top Tier group above. But no luck yet that I’m willing to accept.
Malt liquors add to the confusion, and it may just be that I had Country Club in that group, mostly due to price.
Stella is still pretty high end. Red Stripe isn’t that cheap either.
I remember getting into a discussion with a man in the grocery store when he saw me buying Coors. “You know that’s a non-union plant, don’t you?” I’m a union supporter (I even picketed a site where my husband was construction foreman) but I thought Coors was pretty good stuff. So before I ever bought any, I did some checking and found out (not sure how, this was pre-internet) that Coors workers had a union but had decertified it.
Now I know there’s more to the story about Coors and unions, and I don’t drink Coors anymore. Cynical moral: If you really, really like something, don’t investigate too closely how it’s made. 
On the other end of the spectrum, Lienenkugel is now a craft macrobrew. :dubious: I remember when we bought it in college cuz it was cheap and not so bad you couldn’t drink it.
Same thing with Straub and Yuengling; factory worker’s beers back in the day, but now they’re considered premium regionals.
The context of the beer also seems to influence its desirability. Among Buffalonians, Genesee is considered blue-collar old-man beer, but expats beyond its distribution range will bring cases of it back from Buffalo. In 1993, at a party in Las Cruces, New Mexico, I bought a 12 of Genny Cream, and it drew a couple of other Western New Yorkers expats out of the crowd, both begging for a can. If I bought Genny to a party in Buffalo, it would probably sit untouched in the fridge.
Today on the East Coast, the old Coors “can’t get it here” mystique now seems to apply to Fat Tire.
When I was young, Rainier seemed to be on a par with brands like Bud or Coors…
They havent had it around here for a long time, but when I travel out of state, it seems Rainier is sold as a “budget beer” now.
For what its worth, I always thought it tasted pertty good, (as far as domestic macro-brewed beers go) and wish it was still sold here in Utah.
To be fair, it’s not the same old Leinie’s anymore, either. It certainly didn’t come in that number of varieties back in the day when it was a cheap beer!
(Paging August West, resident Leinenkugel brewer?)
Funny, Lone Star is kind of like that. In Texas it’s considered swill and a lot of bars will sell it for a dollar a can. Even hipsters on a budget won’t drink it. But it seems that Texans outside Texas can’t get enough of it. I used to have a friend who, whenever he heard about someone going down there, asked them to bring him back a case.
I’m not quite sure that’s what happened to Pabst. I don’t think it’s become a premium beer. It’s still quite cheap wherever it’s sold. In bars that carry it, even in Williamsburg, Brooklyn (the Vatican of hipsterism), it goes for $2 a can, if that (which is pretty cheap by New York bar standards).
It may have become a hipster affectation, but I don’t think anyone would say it’s become a premium beer.
By the way, how exactly did PBR get to be so fashionable? Just an accident, or a genius marketing campaign?
I’ve never had any myself, I’ve heard that in its heyday Ballantine’s beer (esp. their IPA) was very highly regarded.
I blame David Lynch. Patron saint of “Enough inscrutable and obscure references are an adequate substitute for actual artistic genius” filmmaking, and the hipsters who love to name-drop films in that style, Mr. Lynch directed the film Blue Velvet. In that film, Dennis Hopper is asked about beer and says “Heineken? Fk that st! Pabst Blue Ribbon.” With a can of PBR in one’s hand, one is certain to be gawked at by those not “in the know” (essentially the defining way that hipsters would like to be seen), and if someone asks, they can drop a line from a hipster movie. If they’re really lucky, the person who asks won’t get that reference either, proving that the hipster – by ordering PBR – is cooler than the clueless bystander in at least three distinct ways!
Just an incredibly minor nitpick: Carling wasn’t a [US] domestic brand until Molson and Coors merged.