TheBeerObserver

A colleague of mine, Chuck, forwarded an article to me - the Salon guide to Regional brews - a treasure trove of long lost American beers.

 
Blatz, Pabst, Hudepohl, Gansett, Genny Cream, Mickey's Big Mouth, Yuengling, ... the list goes on and on.  These are the beers of our fathers and grandfathers.  They are the labels on beer cans in pictures from the 50's, 60's and 70's that put a location on the photo long before Google Maps.  Beers were a calling card for regions - Natty Boh was Baltimore, Iron City was Pittsburgh, Rainer  the Pacific NW.

Beers were once limited to regions of the country due to distribution and marketing challenges - the country was once a lot smaller in those days.  Interestingly, most of these beers were very similar, with just a few exceptions.  Predominantly American lagers or light lagers, demand was pretty homogenous, even if the brands had yet extend their reach nationally.

The upper midwest is the epicenter for so many of these brands.  Cities like Chicago and Milwaukee were a revelation.  Who knew there were so many Schlitz bars in one town, where you could still get Schlitz Dark in 1994 in Bucktown.  Beers like Schlitz and Falstaff once dominated sales, only to let it slip away.  Did you know Schlitz sold more than a million barrels in 1902? That it was the second biggest brand in the US as recently as 1976? 

In 1994, I was in Portland OR and remember getting off the train and immediately smelling the familiar aroma of a brewery.  I asked a few people on the street if there was a brewery around, to no avail (there were tens of microbreweries at the time, someone should have known something).  Sometime after hitting Widmer and BridgePort, I stumbed across a brewer from Henry Weinhard's walking between buildings in their enormous downtown brewing facility (I knew I smelled beer).  After introducing myself and my friends, he gave us an impromptu tour of the facilities, where they happened to be bottling Mickey's Big Mouths!  The brewers in the operations room were all a little taken aback by our excitement - a magical moment. 

The thing I have always enjoyed the most about craft-brewed beer is the return of regional beers.  It harkens back to America's industrial past, when cities and regions had their own distinct personalities, restaurants and stores.  My favorite part of traveling is enjoying regional beers you can't find at your local package store.  Whether its Stoudt's in Pennsylvania, Fat Tire in Colorado, Harpoon in Boston, or the hundreds' of other regional beers, I'm always on the lookout for new local beers to try - just like in the good old days.