It’s here in Wisconsin. Woodmans has it. I bought some 2 months ago. About $12 for a 12 pack of bottles. Haven’t seen it in cans for over a decade. I miss the teardrop shaped bottle it used to come it.
Miller made Lowenbrau under license for about 25-30 years or so. Was the only beer they did right IMHO.
I had the Canadian version about 10-15 years ago. It was skunked up to high heaven. Goddamned green bottles!:mad:
The German version is superior but good luck getting that. As I mentioned earlier The last time I’ve seen it was in Venice, Italy in 2012. I’ve been to 7 other European countries since then (but not Germany) and didn’t see it anywhere and I looked hard.
I believe back in the day there was a Swiss version of it too that was considered a unicorn. Super tough to find even then.
Now that I’m thinking about it, it must have been Budapest last year where I saw Lowenbrau. In the tall, Bavarian blue 1/2 liter cans. I see it on the Hungarian Tesco site for 189HUF (US$0.68) per can. (And I see it available in a number of other stores.) So that must be where my recent memory is coming from.
No, the Miller version of Lowenbrau wasn’t the real deal. Miller added ingredients for mass production so that it didn’t conform to the Bavarian Beer Purity act of 1516, which genuine beers marketed as Lowenbrau do conform to. Anheuser-Busch called that fact to the attention of regulators and the public. Although no regulatory action was taken, sales dropped to the point where Miller’s Lowenbrau never became a serious competitor to Michelob.
I recall Lowenbrau being a big deal in the mid 70’s. In ‘73, the drinking age was lowered to 18 in New Jersey. Me and most of my pals were 16/17 in ‘74, but we had one mate that was 18. He was our designated buyer. Typical Saturday night: a couple 6-packs of Lowenbrau and a bottle or two of wine (Boons Farm Apple or Annie Green Springs Country Cherry—hey, at least we didn’t stoop to Ripple or Mad Dog!).
The liquid inebriates gave us enough courage to go streaking one weekend. We streaked the local diner (not smart considering some of our neighbors and parents were eating there). All but one of us kept our underpants on (I’m not going to name names, but the short-less mate was our valedictorian), but still, we felt pretty courageous.
One idiot classmate streaked that years’ graduation ceremony, right in front of the stage. He tripped and the bag on his head flew off. The person at the microphone called out his name. Might not have been so embarrassing for him if he was better endowed, but “stubby” wasn’t.
Millers version was still pretty good, even if not pure or as good as the German original.
And Miller advertised Lowenbrau as an American beer, not an import.
I was in one hell of a lot of bars and restaurants in the 70’s and 80’s. I like Michelob but I rarely saw it out anywhere at that time of history, but Lowenbrau (Millers version), during the same time period, was everywhere.
It was a pain in the ass, too. They had this tin foil on the label all the way up over the bottle cap. Even when open bits of that shit would drop down into the bottle or your glass.
I remember this circa 1980? It was found in one of those beers of the world samplers back then. I remember you could find it is the pseudo “import” beer section at Albertsons. They had stuff like Heilmann’s Special Export and Special Export Dark, Lowenbrau, Fosters, and some other crap that would be laughed at out of the store in the modern craft beer age.
Starting in the 1980’s I’ve been all over the world and the only American brand of beer I’ve ever seen is Budweiser. It’s everywhere. I have never seen anyone drinking it outside of the U.S, mind you, but it is available. I have never, EVER, seen a Michelobe anywhere in Europe. Cute ad though.
ETA: I forgot about 1 exception. In November, 2015 we were in Rio in a very seedy bar in a very seedy neighborhood and they were serving bottles of Miller High Life. Not Genuine Draft, High Life! And some people were actually drinking it. That was the only place during our trip there that I saw any American brand beer.
Until recently, I’ve never seen anything but Budweiser in Europe, either. One of the stories I’ve told before is back in '96, I took some time off college and did a work exchange program in the UK. I ended up on the west coast of Scotland working at a Michelin-starred restaurant as a kitchen porter (clean-up boy, some prep work.) After one of my first long days working there, the chefs send me out to get a case of beer and ask me what I like. I said, oh, I’ll be fine with some McEwans. Don’t you want some Budweiser? No, no, McEwans is fine. But we drink Budweiser, and I thought that’s what all you Yanks drank. Oh, no, I’ll drink whatever you guys like. Bud is fine.
At that point, I expected it to be just some sort of ribbing or hazing. But, no, they actually wanted Bud, and that’s what we went out to get from the local store.
Interestingly enough, according to this 2017 survey, it was the second most popular brand of beer behind Stella (with 31% of respondents saying that was one of the brands they usually drink personally.) Yeah, I’d like to see that survey, too, but it’s $350. Regardless, it didn’t strike me as a beer nobody drank, though it’s been a long time since I’ve been in the UK. And looking down, I see Coors is also listed.
Meanwhile, since I mentioned Budapest before, a craft beer explosion has happened there over the past five to seven years, so you actually can find some American craft brews out there, like the usual Anchor and Sierra Nevada, but also stuff like Anchorage Brewing, Stone, and a few other beers. There’s plenty of local craft that is cheaper and just as tasty, so no real need to pay the import prices, but they were there, something that was unheard of when I was living there from '98-'03. I wonder if other parts of Europe are experiencing similar interest in craft beer. Certainly, I know in the UK and Scandinavia there’s quite a lot of fun stuff going on, so I wonder whether you’ll find US craft beer imports there, too.
Twenty years ago, my wife and I visited Ireland with two other couples. While in the courtesy shuttle back to Shannon Airport from the car-rental facility, the shuttle driver asked us if we’d had any Budweiser while we were there. We’d seen it on tap a few times, but never had it (because why would we, in the land of Guinness and Harp and Smithwicks?)
He said, “Oh, you should have tried it! We call it ‘getting kicked in the head by a Clydesdale!’” He clearly thought that it had a high alcohol content; I have no idea if the formulation was any different than American Bud.
That ad came out in 1968 so … things changed there before it did here or maybe poetic license? I’d think it’s too late to sue them for false advertising.
Heh. I actually have a picture on my hard drive of this. Here’s the sous chef Paul after we picked up our case posing with it in front of Loch Linnhe (famous for being the site of Castle Stalker–the castle that is raided in the final scene of Monty Python and The Holy Grail. Can you believe not one single person mentioned that to me after working there for two months? I only figured it out back in the US when I was rewatching Holy Grail maybe a year later and realized the locale looked familiar.)
My wife and I go to Europe every single spring and have done so for over 30 years. We pick one country each year and do everything ourselves, no tour groups or anything like that. In fact we just got back from Barcelona, Spain 2 weeks ago.
We drink…a lot… when we’re there and frequent many, many bars and restaurants. I see Budweiser EVERYWHERE! But I have never, EVER seen anyone drinking it. I would notice that immediately.
You guys are probably more than aware that European countries also have their low price swill brands, equal to Milwaukees Best or Hamms. Not everything is Heineken, Becks, and Stella. There are lots of El Cheapo European brews. They just would never get exported to the U.S…
And with the exception of Ireland I’ve found booze, beer especially, to be really inexpensive in most areas of Europe.
Maybe they just drink it in the privacy of their own home, to avoid the shame.
But, seriously, I’m sure it’s very region specific. I noticed it in the UK, but that was over 20 years ago, and ice cold lager was especially a thing with the younger crowd. (Although reading up on it now, it seems Budweiser is as popular at least in supermarket sales as ever.) Meanwhile, in 6 years in Budapest, I never once saw it anywhere. Not even sure I saw a bar serving it or it being sold in the supermarket.
While I rarely buy the same beer twice in a row for the house, at one time at least 25% of the beer I bought was Lowenbrau and 25% was Augsburger. The other half was a mix of everything else. So I really liked Lowenbrau. When I couldn’t get it anymore I was super pissed. Then I couldn’t get Augsburger anymore and I was double extra super pissed!
The very last time I had Lowenbrau was in May, 2012 in Venice Italy. An old man had a cart with 2 tap barrels on it. One was Moretti the other was Lowenbrau. He had glass mugs so you had to stand by his cart and drink the beer so you could give him his mug back. The glasses were about 300ml (10 ounces) and it was 1 Euro for a glass.
Boy, was that Lowenbrau good. Especially after not having it for a decade. I drank 2 and moved on. But had I known that be the last I’d see that sweet nectar I’d of drank the entire barrel!
