Turns out, lots of ales turned out to be fails. From disappointing shandies to working class staples, we're here to pour one out for the beers that are no longer here.
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00:00Turns out, lots of ales turn out to be fails. From disappointing shandies to working-class staples,
00:06we're here to pour one out for the beers that are no longer here.
00:10While grocery stores may offer a wide selection of domestics, imports, and craft brews,
00:15for the most part, they haven't really gotten into producing their own store-brand beers.
00:19A long time ago, though, there was Brown Derby, which was made exclusively for Safeway.
00:23Brown Derby beer dates back to 1933, when Prohibition was repealed. It was made by
00:28a California brewery that adopted a name and logo meant to associate its brew with the famous
00:32Brown Derby restaurants. The restaurant chain wasn't too thrilled about this honor, though,
00:36so the brewery had to change the packaging. It was, however, allowed to retain the name.
00:41The beer itself bounced from brewery to brewery, but remained a Safeway staple until 1988.
00:46At this time, many Safeway stores were sold to rival grocery chain Vons.
00:50The new owners weren't down with having their own generic beer brand. Rusty Cans
00:53notes that Brown Derby continued to be sold in some West Coast Safeway stores,
00:57but the brand seems to have disappeared altogether sometime during the past three decades.
01:02Portland, Oregon may be best known as the hipster capital of the world thanks to Portlandia,
01:06a TV series that was meant as a satire, but often hit quite close to the mark.
01:10There you are.
01:12That is a ginger-based bourbon drink infused with honey, lemon, and charred ice.
01:18While we now picture Portland as the kind of place that has at least three craft breweries per block,
01:23there was one beer in particular that got the ball rolling nearly 50 years ago — Henry
01:27Weinhardt's Private Reserve. Weinhardt Brewing itself dates back to the 1850s,
01:32but the beer that made founder Henry Weinhardt a household name was first
01:35brewed as a tribute to him in 1975. Henry's was a huge hit, seen by many Portlanders as
01:40something that paved the way for the craft beer revolution that came along a few decades later.
01:44Still, it wasn't long for the world. The Weinhardt Brewery was sold to Pabst in 1979,
01:49eventually ending up in the hands of Molson Coors. Henry Weinhardt's Private Reserve is
01:54among the handful of brands that the company just dropped. Unlike some of the other ones
01:57on that list, though, Henry's will definitely be missed.
02:00There was once a time when Falstaff was the other big St. Louis brew, behind only Budweiser. While
02:05Falstaff had no Clydesdales to its name, it had something equally monumental. It was known for
02:10its storage silos painted to look like giant beer cans. Standing on the border between Indiana and
02:15Illinois, these massive cans belonged to one of its malting plants and were built in the early
02:191900s, although they didn't acquire the snazzy paint job until later in the century. The beer
02:24itself, though, dates all the way back to 1840. By 1960, Falstaff was the nation's number three
02:30brand. Up through the 70s, it sponsored St. Louis Cardinals' broadcasts, with the legendary
02:34sportscaster Harry Carey as pitchman. At the turn of the millennium, though, Falstaff was on its way
02:39Production ceased altogether in 2005. What brought this beer behemoth so low? In 1975,
02:45the brand was sold to the company that owned Pabst & Strohs, and by 1990, it was being produced solely
02:51by Pabst. Fifteen years later, Falstaff was dropped, and St. Louis became a one-macro brewery
02:56town. Even the beer can silos no longer marked the Midwestern skyline, as they were demolished
03:01in 1997. Harry Carey himself died the following year, but we like to think of him kicking back
03:06and enjoying his afterlife with an ice-cold Falstaff in hand.
03:10If you're a moderate beer drinker and prefer nothing more than a trusty six-pack to get the
03:14job done, you may have Jax to thank for that.
03:16"...a bottle of mellow Jax with a real beer taste, premium brewed from 100% natural
03:21ingredients. Do you have that? Mellow, bright, clear, and lime?"
03:23Yes, we do."
03:24Once one of the South's favorites, Jax claims to have been the first beer to come up with
03:28this concept in the 40s. Whether or not Jax invented the six-pack, it had a pretty good
03:32run regardless. The beer was brewed in Jacksonville, Florida from 1913 to 1956,
03:37but later moved to New Orleans, where it merged with another Jax beer brewed by the
03:40Jackson Brewing Company. In the 70s, it moved again after being bought by Texas' Pearl Brewery.
03:46While the Jacksonville Historical Society claims that Jax is still being brewed in Texas,
03:50the info is a bit out of date, as Pearl themselves were bought out by Pabst around
03:54the turn of the millennium. While its flagship Pearl beer eventually returned to the market
03:58on a local level, Jax remains missing in action and presumed dead.
04:02Malt liquor isn't for everyone. Some have never been into it, while others might have
04:06been fine with it up until they played Edward Forty Hands at a high school party.
04:11Oh, my brain is f----d.
04:13Even if you're mostly unacquainted with the single 40-ounce brews,
04:16you likely know some of the most popular brands, such as Mickey's or Colt 45.
04:20One that you won't see anymore, however, is Magnum, a malt liquor produced by Miller.
04:25Magnum was a malt liquor much like any other, although at 5.6 percent ABV,
04:29it fell somewhere on the lower end of the booziness scale in comparison to others.
04:33Despite earning such accolades from beer advocate users as not too bad and a solid,
04:37non-offensive malt liquor, Magnum, too, was recently dropped by Molson Coors.
04:42If you've ever caught a game at Wrigley Field, then you know there's no more quintessential
04:46Cubs fan experience than munching on a hot dog and sucking down an Old Style.
04:50Well, what you may not be aware of is that Old Style isn't really a Chicago beer at all. In fact,
04:55it's actually from Wisconsin, which is, admittedly, a better-known beer state than Illinois. Yet,
04:59there was once an Illinois beer that had a far better claim to the title of true Chicago brew,
05:04the now-defunct Meister Brau.
05:06I'm a simple guy. I like double overtime, smoky poker games, and Meister Brau.
05:11Nothing's richer, nothing's smoother. And guys like me don't need anything else."
05:14Meister Brau was Chicago-born and brewed from 1891 through the early 70s. At one point,
05:19it sponsored many of Chicago's sports teams. It was the official beer of the White Sox,
05:23as well as the Blackhawks and the Bears. The thing about Meister Brau,
05:26though, is that it never really caught on outside the Chicago area.
05:29The beer was eventually purchased by Miller, but the Milwaukee brewer declined to keep the name.
05:34Milwaukee, after all, has long held a bit of a grudge towards the larger city to the south.
05:38Instead, it did some tweaking of the recipe and eventually rebranded the beer as Miller Lite.
05:43While it has, in fact, returned as the official beer of the White Sox,
05:46we have to admit that guaranteed rate field is no Comiskey Park, and Miller Lite's no Meister Brau.
05:52Back in the early 2000s, low-carb beers were all the rage. But the problem with many of them
05:56is that they tasted rather flat. Not flat as in lack of fizz, necessarily, but just, you know,
06:01kind of blah. Whatever brewers had done to decarb the beers removed much of the flavor as well.
06:06Miller tried to combat this by introducing a lemonade-flavored MGD64 spinoff. Sadly,
06:12it was very short-lived. Miller Genuine Draft 64 Lemonade was introduced to the market in the
06:16summer of 2011, but by late July, it was dead in the water — a substance that some drinkers
06:21not-so-coincidentally compared it to in beer advocate reviews. While the product was intended
06:26to be a low-carb, light-spin on Line & Kugel's popular summer shandy, also a Miller brand at
06:30the time, it just never really took off. At first, Miller planned to tweak the formula of MGD64
06:36Lemonade, but it wound up just dumping the product entirely. In fact, so eager was it to have the
06:41beer off its hands that the Milwaukee Business Journal reports that Miller bought up all the
06:45product still in the warehouses and, er, made away with it somehow. While Miller did not disclose
06:50what it did with the unwanted beer, it wouldn't have been the worst thing for it to have found
06:54its way to the bottom of Lake Michigan if, in fact, this turned out to have been its fate.
06:58Yet another lemon-flavored beer that failed to survive too many seasons was National
07:02Bohemian Crab Shack Shandy. Despite what its name may imply, the beer wasn't actually flavored with
07:07Old Bay seasoning. That's too bad, as that might have gone over big with Natty Bow's
07:11core constituents in Charm City. It is, after all, widely considered to be Baltimore's beer,
07:16now and forever. Instead, Crab Shack Shandy adopted the more typical shandy flavor profile,
07:20with plenty of citrus flavor, to go along with its more classic malty beer taste.
07:24While the description makes it sound delightful, beer advocate users unflatteringly compared Crab
07:28Shack Shandy to Country Time Lemonade. As for why it eventually disappeared from shelves,
07:33we suspect timing may have been the predominant factor in its demise.
07:36It was introduced in the spring of 2018 and brought back again for the summer of 2019,
07:41but by the following year, well, you know.
07:43"...to avoid the loss of potentially tens of thousands of lives,
07:47we must enact an immediate stay-at-home order."
07:50With COVID-19, product shortages, runaway inflation, and all the other myriad of
07:55ills plaguing the 2020s to date, it seems that Crab Shack Shandy may have been one
07:59more casualty of our post-pandemic world.
08:022018 must have been a good year for Shandy-style beers, as not only Natty Bow,
08:06but Old Style added one of these summer stalwarts to its lineup. Old Style didn't
08:10call its Cooler by the Lake a Shandy, though. Instead, the brewery opted to describe it as
08:14a Radler. Potato, potahto. For those who don't know, a Shandy is a 50-50 mix of beer and lemonade,
08:20while a Radler can use any type of juice. That said, Cooler by the Lake was pretty lemonade-y.
08:25One beer advocate reviewer did detect notes of orange and grapefruit, though,
08:29so perhaps it technically was a Radler after all. But what happened to Cooler by the Lake?
08:33Well, it's possible that it may have fallen victim to market oversaturation. After all,
08:38it was only available in the Midwest, territory already staked out by the very similar-tasting
08:42Leinenkugel Summer Shandy. Also taking into consideration that it only lasted for just
08:47those last two pre-pandemic summers, it's likely that Old Style's Radler met a similar
08:51COVID-blighted fate to that of Natty Bow's Shandy.
08:54Long before Seattle became associated with grunge, single-origin coffee, and craft beer,
08:59it was a regular blue-collar kind of place where people fished,
09:02worked the docks, and relaxed with six packs of Olympia beer.
09:05"...Olympia. It's the water, and a lot more."
09:08While it wasn't actually brewed in the Emerald City,
09:10Olympia was a product of nearby Tumwater, Washington, about an hour's drive south.
09:14The beer was first brewed in the 1890s by a German beer maker named Leopold Schmidt.
09:19Perhaps Milwaukee had hit its quota by then,
09:21and Mr. Schmidt was in the vanguard of brewing's westward expansion.
09:24At any rate, his brewery prospered for over 100 years,
09:27but shortly after the turn of the millennium was bought out by Pabst. From that point on,
09:31Olympia was brewed in California.
09:33"'Was' is the operative word here, as that production is definitely past tense.
09:37According to a 2021 Instagram announcement, the company is putting a halt to the production
09:41of its beer to concentrate on a more profitable vodka distilling operation instead.
09:46Pete's Wicked Ale is one of those, oh yeah, beers. If you were old enough to drink the
09:50stuff back in its heyday, you're probably just now thinking those very words, followed by the
09:54thought that you haven't seen it in forever. Pete's Wicked is pretty much a Gen X beer,
09:58having come of age in 1986. Interestingly enough, it was the creation of a home brewer
10:02who was actually more of a wine guy until he tried brewing his own beer.
10:06While Pete's Wicked wasn't the first craft beer ever, it was one of the earliest and
10:10certainly one of the most popular back in its day. In fact, at one time, Pete's was the nation's
10:15second most popular microbrew, with Sam Adams taking the top spot. In the late 90s, the brand
10:19was sold to the Gambrinus Company. In 2000, the new owners tinkered with the formula. It's this
10:24change that led the original Pete to consider the brand officially dead, according to The Day.
10:29Despite the original brewer's disapproval, it took another decade before Gambrinus bailed
10:33on Pete's Wicked altogether. Once upon a time in the Midwest, there was no better beer for
10:38an Independence Day picnic than the patriotically named Red, White & Blue. It was the kind of light
10:43and easy drinking lager that would play nicely with fried chicken and potato salad. And it was
10:47also budget-priced, so it wouldn't set you back too much even if you purchased a case or two for
10:51the whole party. Appropriately enough, Red, White & Blue was even born on the 4th of July.
10:56Specifically, it debuted on July 4th, 1899. What we don't know about Red,
11:00White & Blue is the exact date it died — at least, not the first time around.
11:04It went away at some point, though it must have lasted into the 1990s,
11:07as On Milwaukee points out that it was the brew of choice for the Naked Beer Slides that took
11:11place at a Milwaukee bar patronized primarily by Marquette students. While Red, White & Blue
11:16was reborn in 2018 as a draft beer served by the Pabst Milwaukee Brewery and Taproom,
11:20this brief revival came to an end when the tavern itself,
11:23renamed the Captain Pabst Pilot House, closed at the end of 2020.