They surprisingly have Michelob Golden Draft Light on tap at taverns all over Milwaukee.
Hold on. Is Olympia hipster-chic now?
'Cause the last place here in Olympia I know of that served it on draft replaced it with Hamm’s last year.
Do they still make Oly anywhere? The last time I had it was about 7 years ago. I got a 12 pack of cans from Binnys in suburban Chicago. But the weird sludge in those cans was not the light, crisp, cheap-o-la lager I had in the 70’s, 80’s, and early 90’s. It was an odd, pumpkin orange, watered down, half-assed craft brew attempt. And it was awful even compared to the Oly of days gone by.
Apparently so:
Wikipedia says that it’s currently owned by Pabst, and being “contract brewed” by MillerCoors in southern California.
Must cost a bit to ship the water from Olympia to SCal. After all, “It’s the water.” that makes Oly special. They can’t use just any old water.
Look, a label with 4 dots!
I also remember Stroh’s Signature and Heilman’s Special Export as the “premium” beers of their respective brewers.
Budweiser? That’s bottled water in my book…but then again, my favorite brew is Steel Reserve 211.
I haven’t seen it anywhere in the mid-west for years. Like I posted before, I got some @ Binnys in the Chicago area about 7 years ago. It was terrible. It was this weird pumpkin orange slop. I drank a lot of Olys back in the 70’s and 80’s. Whatever was in those cans at Binnys it was not what Oly used to be.
On Thursday I bought a sixer of Michelob lager at Woodmans in Janesville, Wisconsin. $5.99. so it’s still available as of this week.
I also bought a sixer of Mich Amberbock, $6.99 because my son likes it and he’s coming over tonight. I don’t care for it. Nice dark color but little head, little malt or hops, and very watery flavor. Tastes like light beer with food coloring in it,
My suspicion is that it’s back to being a regional beer, which is what it was originally, until they expanded to nationwide distribution in the 1970s. Personally, I blame the Artesians for the whole thing. 
I saw a case of Michelob Ultra on sale at Costco the other day, so there’s that.
OTOH, my iPhone suggested that I was trying to type “Michelin,” when I wrote this post, so there’s that, too…
Yeah, but I don’t think that’s what the OP is talking about. They meant the Michelob Lager that I posted about. The ultra [shit] is everywhere. I saw it in San Juan for Gawds sake!
Michelob Light used to be my go-to beer, but it seems to have mostly vanished. Ultra isn’t the same, at all.
FWIW, I always thought that Michelob was the best of the domestic beers, back before the micro- and craft- breweries were a “thing.”
The big thing now, at least in Chicagoland, are “Micro Breweries”. It seems like most of the pubs opening up, like “Open Outcry” and Horse Thief Hollow", make several of their own beers.
Apparently there are still a lot of places around me that have Michelob Light. Just not the ones I regularly shop at.
You mean like brew pubs? I’m not quite understanding. Microbreweries have been big for a couple decades now. If anything, I’m not sure Chicago can handle many more microbreweries (and a number have already closed, like Arcade Brewing, Baderbrau, Ale Syndicate). I felt like we had way too many about five years ago; it’s just nuts now.
But, yeah, there’s more brew pubs, I suppose, but I also feel like that peaked a few years ago. Horse Thief Hollow is already five years old.
Around here, the brewpub scene sort of peaked about 10-15 years ago and most have since shut, while the actual microbrewery peak is happening right about now.
My guess would be that there was state legislation that allowed brewpubs before allowing microbreweries, but I don’t know about that.
I used to buy Heilman’s special export some in the early 80’s. It was in the “foreign beer” section, which IIRC was limited to Fosters, Lowenbrau (from Switzerland), something Dutch like St Pauli Girl and that was about it. One could get Anchor Steam but it was much pricier.
My Mich story is one Christmas in the early 1980’s. My step siblings went all in and bought me a 6 pack of Michelob. They were cheap asses with me but it was what passed as a premium beer in middle America at the time. It was also the last time I ever went home for Christmas.