Since Blitz-Weinhard went out of business, it’s now made at Full SailBrewery in Hood River, OR. We toured the brewery a few weeks ago.
As I remember it, a lot of bars started selling it as 1.00 drafts in the late nineties. This caused it to be trendy. Now it’s priced up there with Budweiser everywhere.
I prefer Old Style, but it’s not sold where I am. I occasionally get PBR, but the price annoys me. I think it’s sold primarily to hipsters that don’t realize that it became popular for being an extremely cheap beer.
Man, I’m out of it (the result of being sober for over 10 years…).
When I was a kid, PBR was nothing but the stuff well-to-do steel workers and assemblyline workers drank (the not-so-well-to-do people drank Schlitz, Schaeffer, Iron City, Blatz, etc.). I can imagine Archie Bunker drinking it if he could drink beer that featured a label other than “BEER” (IIRC, some labels were red (Bud?) while others were blue (PBR?)).
PBR’s theme song in those days was “Rednecks, White Socks, and Blue Ribbon Beer”. How times have changed.
In my adopted hometown of Athens, Georgia, PBR is probably in the top 3 most popular beers.
Most of the downtown bars around UGA sell it cheaply on draft.
I never really thought of it as ‘trendy’, but it sucks less than many other standard beers (Bud, Bush, Coors, et al.)
Where, in general, are you? In North Florida, where I am, it’s still a step down from Bud, Coors, etc in price but a step up in flavor. And it’s very commonly found as the cheap draft in local bars ($1 - $1.50).
I drink quite a bit of it - it’s my domestic of choice. I like the flavor better than the main macrobrews, I like the price, I like that it doesn’t taste like fruit or like water. I’ll admit, the design nerd in me likes their packaging and logo - classic, simple, attractive. It’s still union made in the USA (albeit mostly by contract in Miller facilities).
Anyway, the Pabst company owns pretty much all those regional, old timer beers these days (Hamms, Lone Star, Schlitz, etc).
Pabst was the beverage of choice at a large % of neighborhood taverns in southern Wisconsin back in the 70-80s when I was there, and had been for years. Not sure why I thought they had folded years ago. PBR must be in my blind spot when I’m surveying the beer cooler display…
Not that I’ll go searching it out, down here I’ll be sticking with Shiner
How long does something have to be “trendy” before it’s not really a trend anymore? PBR has had hipster cache for almost a decade now, and doesn’t seem to be going anywhere. (Compare it to the brief rise and fall of Stella Artois among the same crowd a few years ago.)
When you’re listening to outsider musicians playing thrift store instruments, it doesn’t feel right to be drinking a $5 microbrew or a Bud Light. PBR is a little cheaper and a little better than the big-time American macros, and in the lifetime of the crowd in question it hasn’t been relentlessly marketed on TV. So it’s not hard to see how it took hold.
I like it because it’s readily available in cans, and I like to go to music festivals in the summertime where glass bottles are frowned upon. Newcastle works, but it’s a little spendy when you want to pound cold ones all day.
I’ll nitpick that a bit. The Stella fad, which seems to still be in force where I am, was never so much hip as I saw it, but rather kind of wannabe Euro-luxe. I thought of it as the equivalent to Heineken 25 years ago – not exactly great, but adequate, lager trading on European cachet. For awhile, Stella’s advertising campaign had taglines like “reassuringly expensive” and “perfection has its price.” No one’s ever made those associations with PBR. And, the bars I see selling PBR rarely also have/had Stella.
What bar, do you know? As a mid-90s wannabe hipster in my 'hood it was all about the Rainier ‘Green Death’, reminiscent of what NW dads drank in the 60s and 70s.
I had no idea before this thread that PBR is anything other than a cheap beer that was popular in the '70’s.
I have it sometimes. It is available around here in 24 oz. cans mainly.
It’s OK.
I was as much a callow hipster as anyone, but I accepted the anatomical theory that ones taste buds shut off once they’ve been exposed to a flavor after a few swallows. So we’d drink one or two fancy beers, then switch to cheap stuff.
But the cheap stuff was even cheaper than PBR and really no less nasty: locally-brewed brands like Huber, Walters (in Eau Claire, WI; cheaper than the vaunted Linekugels from nearby Chippewa Falls), San Miguel in the Phillipines instead of imported Bud; Rainier, Grain Belt, Fox Deluxe, etc.
Before the era of microbreweries, in the South and West, there weren’t a lot of small breweries that made working-class swill. In those cases, PBR would be acceptable. But otherwise Hamms was the eight beers to drink when you’re only drinking nine.
Blech. It was cheap, gross beer when I was a kid, and it’s cheap, gross beer now. I thought I really hated beer, until I tried some of the good stuff. It’s still not my alcohol delivery medium of choice, but I’ll order a pint or two if I’m in a decent bar with a good selection. I’m so glad I’m not a hipster. The things they suffer just to belong.
You did see that there have been a dozen posters in this thread who say that they like the taste (or price) of Pabst more than Bud, Coors or Miller, right?
Are they all just covering, pretending to like something, when all they really want to do is fit in?
Isn’t it about time for the hive-mind to pick another subculture to bitch about? Hipsters are nowhere near as obnoxious as those that constantly whine about them.
Don’t you know the big secret? People who whine about hipsters ARE hipsters.
I was taking a leak at the Grafton in Chicago, and saw I sign for PBR night: $3.50 a draft. :eek:
:smack::rolleyes:
Man, I already commented a year ago,, must we really whore PBR so soon, already?
My dad is the king of cheap, shitty beers (Busch Light, Natural Light, etc) and he won’t touch PBR. My mom bought it once because it was on sale and even a pseudo-alcoholic such as my dad wouldn’t even take a sip. He told mom to water the plants with it.
There are areas of DC and I’ve heard in Richmond where it seems to be the “edgy” thing to have PBR on tap at a bar. I’ve even seen it advertised… “PBR ON TAP!” as if that was something to be proud of. One of my neighbors started a PBR appreciation status update on Facebook and it was full of people proclaiming they were a PBR family before it became cool to a PBR family.
That doesn’t even make sense. There’s no major difference between Natty and PBR, flavorwise. I prefer Pabst, some of my friends prefer Natty, but neither of us refuse to switch if one or the other isn’t available. Heck, it’s got a slightly larger alcohol content than either Natty or Busch.
Bud, on the other hand, has a strange taste all it’s own.
Who here remembers when Rolling Rock was the hipster beer of choice?
::raises hand::
The only thing amazing about PBR’s hipster reign is how long it has lasted. Rolling Rock was out after two or three years.
Whole Foods had PBR on an aisle display last weekend–not just an endcap, a giant pyramid of PBR right near the cheese and coffee. Fucking hipsters.