You couldn’t escape the Michelob ads in the late 1980s.
Then, a couple years later, Michelob Dry was a hit. ‘One taste and you’ll drink it dry.’
Then the low carb craze hits in early 2000s and Michelob Ultra comes out as a ‘low carb’ beer. It seems like Michelob Ultra is the only brand currently carrying the Michelob name, although they don’t use the low carb pitch to advertise.
Are there any other Michelob beers still out there?
Here’s all the Michelob you want, local to you. But, yes, Ultra is the one I’m most familiar with, too, from the advertising.
ETA: Interesting thing, is a lot of those non-Ultra ones are available outside of Chicago in Illinois, but not in Chicago. Clicking through the links, the only non-Ultra beer I found in Chicago at Binny’s was the Michelob Golden Draft, and that was only at the South Loop location. I swear I’ve seen the regular lager around as well as Michelob Light, but maybe I’m thinking of many years ago.
Try going to this site: http://www.michelob.com/
There is a button at the top that says "Where to find our Beer"
Most Brewers and Winemakers have this button on their front page.
They still make Michelob though distribution is minimal. In the 80s I use to really enjoy Michelob Dark, but that is long gone from production.
Michelob was marketed as a more “sophisticated” beer compared to Budweiser. Michelob was what “white collar folks drank,” while Budweiser was what “blue collar folks drank.” You get the idea. Anyway, with all the microbrews out there today, there’s no longer a market for it. Today, if you want to look special or sophisticated, you simply drink some obscure beer no one has ever heard of.
Actually, I think it was the Michelob Amber Bock, now that I think about it, as the other Michelob product (other than Michelob Lager) that I’ve seen around. I see a lot of the Binny’s in the suburbs stock it, but none in the city, for whatever reason (although the Portage Park location says “Out of Stock” instead of “Unavailable” as the other Chicago city locations do.) I wonder why that is.
I never knew that such a thing as “Michelob ULTRA Lime Cactus” existed, and now that I do I wish to permanantly blot it from memory. I had the Amberbock (named, apparently, by some marketing tool who didn’t think Americans would understand what a “bock” was) and recall exactly nothing about it.
Apropos of nothing, here is an SNL bit made in the style of the old Michelob commercials promising ‘Eighties yuppies that drinking their beer would give them all of the douchebag entitlements they felt they deserved.
Stranger
For years Casino Royale in Las Vegas had a $1 Michelob special. In later years it rose to $2, and they finally did away with it last year. That will probably kill the brand, since I think that casino was the single largest customer Michelob had.
AB beers have never been popular in Chicago. Heileman got an early foothold there, and just when Budweiser was set to make an all-out push there in the 1970s, they got hit by a distributor’s strike. That was about the same time as Miller came out with Lite beer, and AB was suddenly too busy defending Budweiser to worry much about Michelob.
They just need to get the hipsters to latch onto it as their new “slumming beer”, and next year it will be selling for $6 a glass, just like they did to PBR, Lone Star, and Olympia.
Stranger
We had a thread here a couple of months ago about Lowenbrau, and the conversation strayed into Michelob, as well:
https://boards.straightdope.com/sdmb/showthread.php?t=855575
Short version: Michelob (and Lowenbrau) were the mass-market “premium” beers in the US in the 1960s, up through the 1980s. But, after that point, the growth of microbrews and craft brews, as well as increased availability of imported beers, pretty much took away the reason for being for Michelob and the US version of Lowenbrau.
And, yeah, if not for Michelob Ultra, the brand name would probably have faded away entirely by now.
My Michelob Story:
Growing up in Northern Virginia, we used to go into the District to drink and buy beer, where you only needed to be 18 (meaning you could pass at 16). There was a dive bar in Dupont Circle called the Admiral Benbow (we called it Bimbo’s). This was before Dupont Circle was all gentrified and shit.
Sitting at a table with a few guys, my buddy Fred thought he’d impress the waitress by calling out loudly, “bring us a pitcher of Mich!” (I guess he thought “Mich” was a cool nickname for Michelob.) The waitress responded at the top of her lungs, “you want a PITCHER OF MILK?”
Anyway, that’s my Michelob story…
Lol! Yes, I remember ordering Mich Dry. But I don’t think ‘Mich’ for Michelob was as universal as ‘Bud’ for Budweiser
My Dad drinks the shit out of Michelob Ultra as some sort of holdover from when he tried the Atkins diet for a couple of years, I guess maybe its cheaper too?
Was Michelob really different, or did Anheuser Busch just pour Bud into Michelob bottles? I wouldn’t put it past them.
I used to buy Busch back in the ‘80s as a blue collar pride thing, and I doubt it was any different than Budweiser. But it was cheaper.
I think there’s one big tap at Anheuser Busch that ALL the fucking beer comes out of.
Michelob was different from Bud and a little stronger as I recall. Busch was shit, Bud was vanilla. Almost everyone could drink Bud, so it was a universal beer.
Today we use Yuengling Lager as the vanilla as everyone I hang with drinks it and it has more taste than Bud (yes, I know a low bar). I love Yuengling Porter these days and still like Bass Ale though the InBev by-out has adversely effected its availability and I swear reduced its taste a bit. But a cold Yuengling lager, especially on tap is quite enjoyable.
I always felt that Michelob represented AB’s attempts - unsuccessful though they were - to convince most Americans that there was merit in the idea of drinking a beer-flavored beer.
Michelob Dry had a decidedly hoppy taste, and was probably the closest any cheap American beer ever came to cloning a proper English ale.
Naturally it fell on it’s face, just as Michelob’s previous attempts had done.
It’s been interesting watching a bunch of Michelob ads from the 70s and 80s. They definitely are targeting the white collar and upper middle class. Lots of men in suits, nice suburban homes and city high rises. Even using Genesis, a band that probably doesn’t have a huge blue collar following.
Those bottles looked pretty cool as well and I assume the beer was sold mainly in bottles. There was one commercial with cans, but it showed a couple at the symphony where even in the 1970s I doubt they sold beer in bottles at concerts.
Michelob was different. I’m pretty sure it didn’t have much in the way of adjuncts way back when. I can’t drink Budweiser at all. The rice just kills it for me. No problem with Busch, because that uses corn as an adjunct instead.
They still make regular Michelob Lager. I just bought some a month or so ago at Woodmans in Waukesha, Wisconsin. I get it there every so often.
It’s one of the few macro made beers that is actually worth a shit. I believe it is still all malt (no rice, corn, or other adjuncts).
I do miss the Teardrop bottle, though.
Take a trip to the Land of 10,000 Lakes and you’ll see the national beer of Minnesota (Michelob Golden Draft) everywhere. I’m surprised any Binny’s carries it, because I’ve never seen it outside MN.