The United States of cheap beer

From Stroh's to Shiner Bock, from Hamm's to Hudepohl, Salon brings you an incomplete, biased guide to this great piss-beer nation.

Editor's note: Read Edward McClelland's story about Pabst and its bid to become the next great American beer here.

By Salon staff

Read more: United States, Alcohol, Life, Eat and Drink, Food and Travel

Aug. 11, 2008 | First they came for Olympia, and I said nothing. Then they came for Old Style, and still I said nothing, because I live 1,000 miles away and Old Style sucks anyway. Then they came for Ballantine, and -- ooh, is that a micro-brewed hefeweizen?

While Budweiser and Miller and Coors were taking over America's supermarket cases by going Lite, meaning that starting in the '70s they dreamed up various watered-down versions of their already insubstantial brews, the Pabst Brewing Co. stayed true to itself. Pabst stuck stubbornly to its retro recipe, its retro label, its retro everything -- and slipped to fifth place among American brewers. But with the sale of Anheuser-Busch to the Belgian combine InBev, Pabst is now the largest American-owned brewer. And in part, that's because during all those years in the lite-beer wilderness, it pursued its own very different winning strategy, either by stealth or by accident.

First slowly, and then boldly, with the 1999 purchase of Stroh's and its associated brands, Pabst sucked up many of the best-known old-school mediocre beers in America. If your dad liked a beer, and was on a budget, chances are that his swill-of-choice is now owned by Pabst. As the (somewhat random and incomplete) list below shows, there are other ways for America's venerable cheap beers to survive in a world that seems increasingly divided between corporate behemoths and twee craft brews.

One is simply to endure, à la Genesee, the other is to don craft-brew camo, à la Matt's. But about half of the most famous cheap beers in America now live on as regional variations on Pabst. -- Mark Schone

Brand: Haffenreffer Private Stock

AKA: Headwrecker, P-Stock.

Hometown: Boston

Found in: Every state from Maine to Florida, rap lyrics. Biggie Smalls name-checks Private Stock in the song "Juicy."

Distinguishing characteristics: Rebus puzzles on the bottle caps (see Lucky Lager, below), strength and size (a 64-ounce container has been discontinued). Haffenreffer was promoted with the tag lines "The malt liquor with the imported taste" and "Nobody does it bigger." One of these two statements is true.

Vital signs: Once brewed by Falstaff, now a Pabst-owned product.

Brand: Narragansett

AKA: Gansett

Hometown: Cranston, R.I.

Found in: New England

Distinguishing characteristics: Popular among Red Sox fans, the beer's memorable slogan was, "Hi neighbor, have a 'Gansett!"

Vital signs: Falstaff purchased Narragansett and sibling Haffenreffer in 1981. The Narragansett brand name became the property of Pabst but was purchased by some Rhode Islanders in 2005, who began distributing a relaunched Narragansett, contract-brewed by High Falls Brewing Co. in Rochester, N.Y., the company that makes Genesee (see Genesee Cream Ale, below).

Brand: Schaefer

Hometown: New York

Found in: The entire Eastern time zone, and Puerto Rico.

Distinguishing characteristics: Skinny white and gold can. "Schaefer is the one beer to have/ When you're having more than one."

Vital signs: Purchased by Stroh's in 1981, which was subsequently bought out by Pabst in 1999.

Brand: Utica Club

Hometown: Utica, N.Y.

Found in: Upstate New York

Distinguishing characteristics: Once upon a time, it wasn't just locals who drank Utica Club. On television commercials seen throughout the Northeast, comedian Jonathan Winters did the voices of the beer's talking-beer-stein mascots Schultz and Dooley, whose many arguments were ended by drinking, which isn't really the way it works in the real world. The Matt Brewing Co. was also responsible for a couple of malt liquors named after either gladiators or condoms, Maximus Regular and Maximus Super, and something called the Matt's Beer Ball. A round brown plastic ball full of beer that was something less than a keg and something less than cold, even when refrigerated, the disposable Beer Ball, which required no keg deposit, was a dormitory favorite.

Vital signs: Utica Club is still available in upstate New York. But the Matt Brewing Co. has reinvented itself as a regional craft brewer, producing the well-regarded Saranac family of beers.

Brand: Genesee Cream Ale

AKA: Genny Cream Ale, Green Death (see also Rainier, below)

Hometown: Rochester, N.Y.

Found in: A 500-mile radius of Rochester

Distinguishing characteristics: Creamy white head. Of foam.

Vital signs: Winner of two consecutive gold medals at the Great American Beer Festival, Genesee is still made at the High Falls Brewing Co. (formerly Genesee Brewing Company), the seventh-largest American brewer. Genesee also makes a J.W. Dundee line of beers that includes a popular honey brown lager.

Brand: National Bohemian

AKA: Natty Boh

Hometown: Baltimore

Found in: Pennsylvania to Virginia

Distinguishing characteristics: Natty Boh's mascot, a cartooned gent with a bushy stache and one eye and a top hat, has become a civic icon in Baltimore. It's a matter of local pride to love the beer as much as the mascot, or try to, despite a taste as skanky as one of John Waters' early films.

Vital signs: National Bohemian hasn't been brewed in Baltimore in decades. Yet another Pabst brand.

Brand: Yuengling

AKA: Vitamin Y

Hometown: Pottsville, Pa.

Found in: Ten states -- Pennsylvania, New Jersey, New York, Delaware, Maryland, Washington, D.C., Virginia, North Carolina, Florida, South Carolina and Alabama

Distinguishing characteristics: "America's Oldest Brewery" (founded 1829) churns out a crisp lager with a bit more bite than your average blue-collar beer.

Vital signs: The sixth-largest commercial brewer in America is still owned by a guy named Yuengling, an Anglicization of Jüngling. (Brewery founder David Jüngling immigrated from Germany in 1823 and started his company in 1829.) Yuengling is our choice to become the next great American beer.

Brand: Iron City

Hometown: Pittsburgh

Found in: Local stores, and online.

Distinguishing characteristics: Iron City, first brewed in 1861, was blue-collar Pittsburgh's beer of choice during its heyday as America's steel town. It also became America's third-largest brewer when 21 local brewers merged into one company under the Pittsburgh Brewing Co. umbrella in 1899. Iron City clung tightly to a regional identity, becoming one of the first beers to use scenes and motifs from local sports teams in its packaging. It survived the '70s pogrom against local brands by successfully emulating the favorite strategy of national beer makers: just add water (though there's an internal contradiction to a beer called Iron City Light).

Vital signs: They don't make much steel anymore in Pittsburgh, and they don't make much Iron City either. The Pittsburgh Brewing Co. declared Chapter 11 in 2005. Iron City beer and the other core brands are on life support, while all the subsidiary brands purchased from Midwestern brewers (see Falls City, below) are comatose. New owners from Connecticut are still producing Iron City for the local market, but will only ship about 250,000 barrels in 2008, below their goal of 327,000.

Next page: Stroh's, Old Style and, of course -- the Beast!