At half a century old I’ve observed several things about my fellow Americans. This one fascinates me probably more than it will any of you;
At one time beers like Hamms, Old Milwaukee, and Blatz were considered premium brews and were very popular.
Today they are considered swill and sell for next to nothing.
WHY?
If I were to offer guests in my home Blatz beer they would give me a funny look and find a reason to leave the party early. Had my parents (I’m 50) offered their friends Blatz (they did!) they would have been (and were) considered excellent hosts who served nothing but the best to their friends.
Also:
At one time Schlitz was the top selling beer in the world. Today it isn’t even in the top 20. Yet it tastes nothing like the current top seller Budweiser.
So what made these facts so? Was it pure marketing that changed the tastes of the public? Or did the tastes of the public change on it’s own? Are we so influenced by marketing and commercialism that even the way we experience tastes on our palates are manipulated?
I think you should probably see where you’re other thread goes first, but the world of beer has changed in the last 30 years. Blatz may have been the best beer around 30 years ago, but now people like craft beers, or at least something a bit more obscure. Hell, I’d be impressed if someone walked into my party with some Shiner Bock. But a lot of these beers simply didn’t exist back in the day.
Also, I don’t think it has anything to do with our palates or marketing, I think other beers simply taste better. In your other thread you were comparing cheap beers to pricey beers by comparing Keystone to Coors. Go Compare Coors to Becks Oktoberfest or Blue Moon or Youngs Double Chocolate Stout and you’ll see there’s a world of difference out there.
How do you know? How old are you? This may be an impossible question to answer, unless brewers are willing to say whether they are using the same recipes AND the same yeast strains. Are the same yeast strains and recipes being used today to make Blatz, Hamms, Old Style, Etc. that they were using in 1950?
No! Read this carefully, my friend: In the other thread I was comparing beers that were made by the same brewers. Keystone is made by the same company that makes Coors. Milwaukees Best is made by the same company that makes Miller Genuine Draft. Busch is made by the same brewer that makes Bud. And so on. To do it your way is apples and oranges.
Fair enough, I totally misread both threads then. I can’t say I’ve compared (for example) Keystone to Coors or Milwaukee’s Best to MGD. In the other thread you only mentioned that you wanted to know if there was a difference between cheap and pricey beers and then gave us a list of cheap and expensive beers. I don’t think any one realized that this is how you were drawing your comparison. As was pointed out to you by a few people (myself included) all the beers you picked were cheap beers.
With the way you’ve re-worded the question, I’ll bow out as I really don’t know. My WAG, if I had to make one, is that they use either more water or less hops in the ‘cheap’ beers to make them go down faster. You have to remember many people drinking cheap beer in college are just looking to get drunk, not spend 10 minutes sipping a Belgian Tripel.
So, just out of curiosity, when Blatz and Hamms was a great thing to bring to a housewarming party, what was the swill of the day? Was there one? I guess then I’ll go go back on what I said and change it to “our palates have changed” but I think that’s happened because what’s available now, I assume, wasn’t available then. Perhaps if Sam Adams or Spaten Optimater was available then, Blatz would still have been considered the cheap stuff that only the 15 year olds drank behind the garage.
Or maybe it’s the “it was a simpler time” mentality. Maybe back 30-50 years ago there were more blue collar workers who just wanted to get home from work and have a few beers. Maybe there wasn’t a million different craft beers because there wasn’t a demand for it. Most craft beers don’t exactly go down like water and if you just spent 12 hours working on a drop forge an IPA might not be what you’re looking for when you could have a Schlitz that goes down like water and is probably more refreshing. Come to think of it, I wonder if the lack of air conditioning in most homes had anything to do with it.
pkbites: Great question pk. I can offer an hypothesis.
I’ll start with a digression. Back in the 1950s, GM introduced a number of brands based on the demographics of the day. Chevrolet was an entry level vehicle, Oldsmobile was middle class and Cadillac was top of the line. Sure, all of them were in the shop half the time, but somehow GM was able to maintain this image.
Twenty years later, they had the same brands, which were based on 1950s demographics. Forty years later they had the same brands, based on 1950s demographics. Meanwhile, the Japanese were make inroads changing the marketplace even more.
So to answer your question, tastes are a function of marketing and market structure. (Tastes are a function of lots of things, but I’m aiming for brevity.) And while marketers act predictably, market structure is a moving target.
In the case of beers, the 1950s - 1960s market had two segments: Premium and Popular. The costs of producing each weren’t too different (and indeed the taste didn’t vary that much either). Busch and Hamms were Popular, Miller and Bud were premium. (I’m setting aside transport costs, but those were important and propped up a lot of local breweries). But over time, real income increased and a new segment was born: “Super Premium and imports”. The latter grouping contained Michelob and Heineken. While microbrewing received plenty of buzz, it was a miniscule part of the industry during the entire 1980s and I assume the 1990s. (Miniscule: way less than 5%).
Anyway, I speculate that when Bud is a good beer, Hamms is a fine beer. But when Bud is cheap, Heineken is better and Sierra Nevada Torpedo Extra IPA is worth checking out, then Hamms becomes swill. Even though it’s not. So it’s not marketing per se that creates this perception, it’s marketing as it responds to an evolving marketplace and impressionistic consumers.
Here’s the 2nd effect. Blatz was a regional Milwaukee beer, judging from your You-Tube ad. The beer industry consolidated a lot during the 1950s- 1990s as regional breweries were taken over and national brands rose in prominence. The two largest beer firms controlled 8.8% of the market in 1947. By 1990, they controlled 67%. The 8-firm ratio rose from 26 to 98 percent during the same period. I suspect that a lot of the old brands suffered from inattention when they were one of dozens owned by huge conglomerates.
The market evolves over time to reflect tastes. Tastes don’t change that much, but people bought Schlitz in 1950 because it’s what they were being sold. Remember, distribution channels were much tighter back then, too; your local supermarket probably sold a dozen brands at most, while today it sells a hundred (assuming you’re in a state where supermarkets sell beer).
Great question, by the way, and I’m quite surprised this thread was about to die with 7 posts.
But what is changing those tastes? I’m willing to bet that if beer drinkers in 1950 were given a Miller Lite they would have rejected it as tastelss crap. It’s been one of the top selling brands for 35 years now and they market the living hell out of it.
So did people learn to like light beer because commercials told them over & over again how great it was, or did brewers start making light beer because the public demanded it? I find it hard to believe that the public would demand a watered down, lower alcohol brew on their own.
I’m saying the tastes haven’t changed - that the market simply took time to adapt. You seem to think like many beer drinkers (including me) - that people can’t possibly choose to drink that watered-down shit.
And yet, they do. Beer drinkers are a huge portion of the population. People who care about beer are a tiny subset of that portion. The rest don’t want anything that tastes too strong.
Anyway, it’s not low alcohol. Budweiser is 5% alcohol by volume. That’s less than most real ales, but about average for lagers and pilsners.
What were the relative price points and market position of Blatz now and then? If your guests know that Blatz today is a bargain beer, they might think it swill while they might like it if were served in a fancy bottle. That’s assuming the formulation is the same; if it were cheapened to meet the lower price point it could be swill.
There are a number of brands which were premium brands 30 years ago which now have the reputation as cheap junk, possibly merited.
When I was in grad school Coors was very hard to get in Illinois, and was thus considered as premium and wonderful. (I never liked it, but I was in a minority.) It doesn’t seem to be that way now.
I didn’t say low alcohol, I said lower alcohol. Light beer, on average, has 15-20% less alcohol that it’s regular version. That’s the main way brewers reduce calories.
That’s why they don’t call it diet beer. They also campaigned heavily to make drinking light beer manly by featuring advertisements with sports stars.
I don’t know if anyone has a good answer for why tastes change over they years. I’m only 35, but when I was a small boy ribs and skirt steak were cheaper cuts of meat because they were thought of as inferior. Now skirt steak is so outrageous that I won’t pay the price for it and ribs can set you back a decent amount. What used to be trash meat for poor people is now fodder for the middle class.
I don’t know about marketing, but IIRC people’s enjoyment of wine has been shown to be highly influenced by the label. This cite shows that people can distinguish between expensive and cheap wines only 50% of the time - equal to flipping a coin.
I’m guessing the problem reduces to what makes our lizard brains light up, or rather what charges the lizard brains of various market segments. Advertising can certainly secure a sense of familiarity, which in turn counters the impression of a product being swill. Making your beer the fun beverage of choice is trickier, though Bud in the US and Heineken in Europe have achieved some success in this area.
I think the question can be divided in two:
The first one might be due to consolidation and the reduction of advertising for 2nd tier brews. According to wikipedia Blatz is “An American brand of beer formerly produced by the Valentin Blatz Brewing Company and now produced by the Miller Brewing Company under a contract with the Pabst Brewing Company.” If Miller promotes Blatz, to a large extent they will just be cannibalizing their own market. Better to just let the brand slowly die, and mine its legacy in the meanwhile.
The second I think has to do with rising incomes and tastes for variety.
It’s more about variety and availability. Many people, myself included didn’t care much for beer until the craft beer scene got big enough to provide me with some variety to taste. Until then I assumed that all beer was lager or pilsner. After sampling hundreds of craft brews I now know that I simply don’t like those styles. I enjoy stouts, porters, red and brown ales, and the occasional IPA if it is brewed with citrus , rather than bittering hops. With such a variety now available, people are starting to see the macrobrews for the very mediocre beer that they are. Even if you love pilser and lager, there are plenty of awesomely good versions out there that simply blow away the “acceptable” big guys.
A lot of it was distribution and marketing. Most brewers were regional. In 1950 Anheuser Busch opened a brewery in Newark, then one in Los Angeles in 1954, and by 1957 it had knocked Schlitz out of the #1 spot. Schlitz stayed in the hunt until its disastrous experiments with new formulas and, finally, a crippling strike.
Does marketing change your palate? Let’s put it this way. If you grow up drinking Bud, it becomes your default for taste. You may or may not like it that much, but it creates a benchmark that you use to cmpare other beers.
It seems apparent to me that there is no standard by which to measure the quality of beers. Since large amounts of beer are purchased by young people, who have no long term commitment to a particular brand, or type of beer, it’s not surprising that they would be affected by factors such as price and marketing.
It is amusing seeing how Yuengling is sold as some kind of primo beer all over the place now, and my ex-father in law would tell me how it was the cheap swill when he was younger; same with Rolling Rock.
A lot of it is regional - beer that is considered the cheap basic can be marketed as an exotic premium outside of that region. Heineken is a premium beer in the US. I remember Bud being launched in the UK as a premium.
They also campaigned heavily to make drinking light beer manly by featuring advertisements with sports stars.