Food and drink that used to seem "premium" that no longer do...

Cafe Society
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So, I went to the 3 Floyd’s Brewpub for the first time today, even though my mom lives in a nearby city. All I can say is, if you love awesome beer and food, you gotta go! I knew the beer was going to be incredible, but I was very impressed by the food. And both food and beer are very reasonably priced. Had Zombie Dust for the first time… on draft! Also Dreadnaught and Precious. Great stuff…

Which leads me into the main topic here. Times change, tastes change. I first had a drink at age 22, while in Japan (late bloomer, I know) in 1993. The first beer I had was Japanese beer, which was better than the average American beer at the time. I come back to the US, and I think I have shared one pitcher of Bud and have had less than 10 non-craft US beers in my whole life. The rest has been non-US beer or craft beer. In any case, craft beer was only starting to take off in the mid to late 90s, and I would drink Sam Adams and think that stuff was pretty good. We went to Goose Island in Chicago in 1998, and it blew my mind. I started getting Goose Island IPA at the store, and it’s hoppy flavor challenged my taste buds to quite a degree.

And so it was, back in the day. No craft beer drinker today would think of Sam Adams as anything good at all, but at one point, it was the go-to “good beer” that was readily available. For that matter, Goose Island is seen today as an also-ran. I heard Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale described as a bad beer as early as 2008. Beer snobbery has been around for at least a decade now, lol.

Let’s not even get into the so-called “premium beers” before craft brewing took off in the US. Michelob?!?! What a joke. People used to drink Heineken and think it was something special.

This all applies certainly not to just beer. I also have the competence to do Scotch, but I’ll leave that and other examples to you, my SDMB friends!

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People think Two Hearted is bad? Hipsters hating on it just to hate?

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Yeah, that’s a new one on me. Unless something has gone profoundly wrong at the brewery, it’s fine fine IPA. And nearly universally loved.

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Yeah, that’s just stupid. I’m not even an IPA drinker, but Bell’s Two-Hearted is considered a very good example of the style. Anyone who is saying otherwise is just displaying ignorance or being a little too hip for life.

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I totally agree. I thought it was beer snobbery attacking the wrong target.

(He wasn’t a hipster, btw. Just someone who considered himself a huge beer expert.)

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Wasn’t Red Dog beer supposed to be a quality beer when it came out? It’s the dirt cheap one in Michigan, cheaper or equal to Natty Light and Milwaukee Best.

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The first beer I liked was in Germany, 1991, and I was 19. “No, no, I don’t like beer” I insisted on my first night in Wiesbaden. “Try this, you’ll like it, even if you think you don’t like beer.” What was this wonderful German beer? It was Guinness Draft. However, it did inspire a love of good beer (including German beer) that has stayed with me all of my life.

I’m not a snob, but I am a craft beer drinker, and if I’m in a place without craft beer, Samuel Adams is a perfectly decent beer. I’ll even have Blue, or Blue Moon, or Stella, or Smithwick’s, or other non-craft, mass market beers. It’s not the 1990’s anymore, and not all mass market American beers suck anymore (Blue is considered domestic).

Similar to you, I’m always on the lookout for an IPA. :slight_smile:

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Shiner Bock used to be considered “premium” (and it was once the most delicious beer, ever). After it was bought by Gambrinus, and the volume went way up, it changed. It’s now an ok cheap beer, but I don’t hold it with anywhere the same esteem I once did. To top it off, I still can’t find a bock that matches pre-Gambrinus shiner. Every other one with the same richness and dark malt is either too sweet or too heavy.

So it goes.

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Yeah, I probably didn’t state my case very well, but Sam Adams remains a pretty darn good beer. I should have said, “Craft beer lovers may be inclined to diss Sam Adams as crap, but it still remains a pretty good beer.” Especially on draft. It can’t, however, by any standard claim to be some really different kind of craft beer, which it one time it could definitely do.

IPAs rock. :slight_smile: Had a Lagunitas on draft yesterday at Cheesecake Factory, and really that was on the same level as stuff I had at 3 Floyd’s today.

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Yeah–never heard that sentiment. It’s always been considered a good beer–probably my favorite American IPA for the last decade.

I like my crafts, but Sam Adams is still quite good. I’ve tried many American lagers, and their Boston Lager is still top tier for me–probably my favorite (although that is not exactly a mainstream “beer snob” opinion.) And they have plenty of niche beers that get highly rated by the snobbiest of beer snobs. See their Barrel Room Collection beers, some of their Imperial Series beers, Utopias, etc.

I remember the dismal 80s and the early 90s, when Beck’s and Heineken were considered premium brands. That’s the first ones that come to mind for me.

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I know this is not a beer thread only, but I don’t know if any of you folks who like a good american lager have ever tried Yuengling.

It is, IMO, the best American beer that is mass produced… (Don’t know how wide-spread it is nationally, but I’ve been able to find it fairly easily on the east coast. It is made in eastern Pennsylvania.)

In my day, I remember that Rolling Rodk was a “hip” beer that people liked to be seen drinking, but it was and always has been swill. I can’t remember when it went national, but the brewery was purchased by a large, national beer company and sent it everywhere. That stuff is the only beer that gives me a massive headache the following day, even if I have had only one. Don’t know why or what is in it, but it always happened, so I have not had one for over 20 years now.

I find Yuengling better than Sam Adams, but I do understand the appeal of Sam. You can always find it, and it is a very good beer. I don’t know how far Yuengling’s distribution goes, but if you have never tried it, I recommend it highly.

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Of course. If they had it here in the Midwest, it’d be my cheap beer of choice. I’m not sure you find it much west of Pennsylvania or perhaps Ohio. I last had it when I was in upstate New York this spring.

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It was never really that good in retrospect; it was a combination of what we were all used to drinking, combined with a marked lack of competition in the non-US light lager style that made it seem so much better than it was.

I mean, when I was in college (Texas A&M, 1991-1996; prime Shiner Bock country), and until about 1995, the options seemed to be Bud, Bud Light, Miller Lite, MGD, Icehouse, Red Dog, Coors, Coors Light, Lone Star, Busch, Natural Light, Milwaukee’s Best, Dos Equis Especial, Dos Equis regular, Modelo Especial, Negra Modelo, Corona, and Shiner Bock. There were some imports- ISTR that we could get Heineken, Grolsch, Bass and maybe the occasional strange bottle of Guinness Export. There wasn’t squat in the way of craft brews either.

So we had our choice between fourteen variations on the American light lager style, 2 Mexican vienna lagers, 2 Dutch pilsners and Shiner Bock. So by comparison, it WAS heavenly. But it wasn’t ever that good, and nowadays it suffers by comparison to all the other beers out there. Even at the time, it wasn’t ever really superior to say… Dos Equis or Negra Modelo. Also, the start of college coincided more or less with Gambrinus’ purchase of the Spoetzl Brewery, and the subsequent marketing blitz, so it was always in our face, and there was a certain amount of Texas chauvinism that took hold as well.

At some point at about 1995, Sam Adams and a whole raft of other US breweries and foreign imports came on the scene, and for me at least, Shiner Bock was relegated to $2 chuggers at Duddley’s because it was cheap, not because it was something I was going out of my way to get.

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Yuengling first became available in Ohio a couple of years ago. Now you trip over the stuff here.

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“Rolling Rock” had a premium image-I don’t know why, it is a typical light lager beer. “Michelob” is A-B’s “premium” beer-it tastes much like regular Budweiser.
And Omaha beef is pretty poor.

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I’m not much of a beer drinker, but when I was in college in the late 1960s, we could not get Coors beer in Texas. So the thing was if you had any friends going to Colorado, they would bring back a case of Coors. (I’m not making this up.)

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While I do appreciate that you’ve drunk it for a long time, you never had the good stuff. Shiner was bought in 1989. I remember the weekend that the new production arrived locally. It wasn’t the same beer anymore. If I had a beer that tasted exactly like it again, I’d probably cry.

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Yes, Yuengling is a good, cheap beer. I prefer Sam Adams over it in the mass produced beer category, but I have nothing against a Yuengling. It also helps that Yuengling is the oldest operating American brewing company.

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Believe it or not- Coors used to be sought after, especially in Eastern states.

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Also, Lowenbrau. St. Pauli Girl, Bass Ale, Molson Golden and Moosehead. Is it just me, or did Moosehead taste a whole lot better in the 80s?

Heck, I can remember thinking Genessee Cream Ale was a step up from the run-of-the-mill swill…but what did I know at 17?

Yuengling is my cheap beer of choice too, but I think Sam Adams is markedly better, and priced accordingly at the local supermarket.

Besides my first taste of Guinness, which took more than a few tries before I fully appreciated, the first beer I tried that really impressed me was Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout - still one of my favorites.