A Little Beer History

Back in the day. I have a long history of drinking beer. I grew up around beer drinkers. My dad drank Esslinger Beer which was brewed in the Philadelphia area. At least that is what I remember him having around the house. He was an occasional drinker usually when his brothers were around. They would have monthly parties when we were growing up. They also drank Ortliebs that was another local beer. 

Uncle Tom, my grandmother's brother, who lived down the street drank Pabst Blue Ribbon a lot. I wonder if that is why my brother Tom was such a PBR fan back in the 70’s long before the hipsters discovered it. Many of my uncles drank Schmits beer of Philadelphia. Uncle Tom also drank Ortliebs which was also my first can of beer he slipped to me when I was up on the third floor watching a game on TV with him.

As a teenager I drank whatever we had. I remember Schilitz at some parties. I really started drinking beer in the Navy and it was lots of Budwiser and Miller on the bases at the clubs. There was also near beer at some of the bars near the  Navy bases in Virginia where my ships had their home port. When we were overseas we drank the local beers and it was my first time really exploring different beers. I particularly remember liking Fix beer in Greece and Red Stripe in the Caribbean countries. 

Later when I was back in Philly living with friends we did explore a lot of foreign beers but our regular beer seemed to be Rolling Rock and we liked the little pony bottles too. There was a good beer distributor up in Germantown Avenue in Mt Airy that we went to a lot to get something a little better. We liked checking out the British, Irish, Austrialian, Canadian, Dutch, Belgian and German beers in particular. I think one of the first pale ales I liked was John Courage Ale from John Smiths Brewery in England. We would splurge and buy a case which was very expensive for the time.

There were a few bars around town that had good beers. Taker’s Café in Mt Airy was one. Another one with lots of Irish and English beers on tap was the Kyber Pass downtown.

In 1976 I made my first of several trips to Buffalo before moving there in 1979 and had my first Molson Canadian and Labatts Blue. Another favorite at the time was Old Vienna. Later on we would go up to Toronto and get the really strong stuff.

The 1980’s was more of the same. I mostly drank Canadian beers except when I was working at the Pastime Lounge. People were always buying the DJ beers and I had made it known with the bartender that I would drink Miller while working. It was almost like drinking water after all the beers I’d been experimenting with the last decade or so. It was also around that time that I stopped drinking Bud in any form when I could help it.

Throughout the 1990’s I had stopped drinking the American factory beers. More and more local breweries had closed over the previous couple of decades and it was the era of just a few national breweries and a handful of locals. It was also a time of the first craft beers and the larger successful locals like Sam Adams Boston Lager, Sierra Nevada in California and the beers of Saranac in New York. I loved checking out new beers back then and never went back to my old ways of drinking regular familiar beers.

During the 90’s I also attended a lot of work related conferences where I got into the habit of looking for new beers to try while out and about. I spend a lot of time in San Francisco and really enjoyed lots of new beers including my first taste of Anchor Steam and Pliny the Elder double imperial IPA on tap which has it's own interesting history. I would continue exploring beer at conferences all through the 2000’s and beyond too.

I started tracking my beers using the Untappd app. Right now I'm about to log in my 1,600 unique beer.