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[limr9 7]

It's not the commercial; it's the beer! I never had Hamm's. Don't think I've ever even heard of it.

 

[snowbear155 85]

Back in the 70s, when beer can collecting was the hot lick (anyone remember Billy Carter?) I went to a place that had a lot of different beers. They'd open the bottom of the can so the pop-top was intact. I was (an still am) interested in trains, so I decided to try a beer called "Railfan."

When the beer came, there was a photo of a modern locomotive. Well, the beer was certainly named appropriately: it tasted like it had diesel fuel in it.

 

[astroNikon]

Just had a deja vue moment. I probably posted the same crap last year!

we're used to it ...
over and over and over and over again. lol

 

[snowbear155 85]

OBTW, Sharon . . . thanks for sending your rain up here. We had a nice little thunderstorm a while back.

 

[snerd]

I swear I edited that vue to vu!! And hey! Without much photography talent going on, I have to have SOME angle!!!





........

 

[snerd]

It's not the commercial; it's the beer! I never had Hamm's. Don't think I've ever even heard of it.

I think I have a few years on you. I remember these beer and even cigarette ads as a kid in the early '60's. Or, Hamms could have been a regional product. Cheers!

 

[snowbear155 85]

I have heard of Hamms, but I don't recall seeing it.

I'm 56.

 

[Derrel]

It's not the commercial; it's the beer! I never had Hamm's. Don't think I've ever even heard of it.

OMG!!! I grew up listening to those old Hamm's beer commercials on TV! Here in the Pacific Northwest, Hamm's beer was a VERY popular canned beer (THE most popular in fact), sold in both 12, and 16-ounce cans, and sold by the six-pack,half case, and quart, and keg, at affordable prices. Hamm's beer, like almost any American pilsner-style macro-brewer beer that's low in alcohol, is pretty good when it has been stored well, and where it sells in high enough volume to keep it FRESH. The problem is that aluminum cans conduct heat about 1,200 times more-efficiently than a typical glass beer bottle, so unrefrigerated pallet loads and truck loads of beer dumped into non-refrigerated warehouse or retail storage space can easily spoil. The non-insulative qualities of aluminum cans lead to very easy spoilage on beer.

Beer, especially canned beer, can be very good when it is FRESH. What so many beer snobs do not understand is that most pilsner style beers are pretty decent in taste and character, as long as they are consumed while fresh, and have been stored PROPERLY. Seattle's Ranier beer has a reputation as "skunk beer", but if one drinks it at a Seattle-area tavern out of a keg, or buys it in Federal Way, it's good. Where it sells fast, it's good; where it sits, it's not good.

Hamms beer...I have drunk my weight in it many times over. It used to be our standard "western beer" keg beer, as well as canned party beer for the entire decade of the 1980's. Taste, color,aroma? Think Rolling Rock. Or any other macro-brewer's American pilsner style beer. Light, crisp, refreshing, plain, honest,not awful,not superb, just a good old-fashioned American pilsner beer of the type that has been popular in the west since the 1860's. Of course, if one gets a 12-month old, not-been-refrigerated-for-months-we-just-stack-the pallets-in-the-back-room,spoiled can of Hamms in some midwestern or northeastern city, it'll probably be spoiled and taste bad.

 

[limr9 7]

I think it never really made it over to the East coast. We had Piels instead. I do remember the 70s and collecting beer bottle tops, not cans. Well, my mother would use empties sometimes to store her cooking fat. One night my sister snuck down to drink what she thought was beer and got a huge surprise. We still laugh about that one

 

[snerd]

I drove delivery route for Coors beer back in the mid-'80's. It was "always" kept refrigerated, from brewing to take-home. I think the shelf life was 6 months, but our local outfit enforced a 3 month life. If they checked your stores and found any older than that, they bought it back, poured it out, and I paid for it. Only happened once!

 

[snowbear155 85]

 

[Derrel]

I drove delivery route for Coors beer back in the mid-'80's. It was "always" kept refrigerated, from brewing to take-home. I think the shelf life was 6 months, but our local outfit enforced a 3 month life. If they checked your stores and found any older than that, they bought it back, poured it out, and I paid for it. Only happened once!

Coors beer, being non-pasteurized, was illegal to sell in Oregon for decades. Coors was often "imported" in car trunks and pickup beds and so on, by people who went to Colorado, bought it there, and then brought it back...and when it returned to Oregon, it invariably was spoiled badly and tasted like piss-water because the only time one can safely drive from Oregon to Colorado, over multiple snow-and ice-filled mountain passes, is during the few warmest months of the year!

I cannot recall the exact year when we voted to allow non-pasteurized bottled and canned beers to be sold in Oregon....maybe '85?

Here's a beer legend: the 4-dot Olympia beer label!!! This was a common legend when I was a boy and teen!

Mouthpiece Notes: "4 Dot" Olympia Beer Label

 

[snerd]

Where are all the Canucks?!

 

[snowbear155 85]

 

[Derrel]

Yes, the Coors Brewing Compoany was one of the FIRST big brewers to recognize the need to keep light, low-alcohol, canned beers REFRIGERATED at ALL times, brewery to distributor,to retailers. They even used to run TV ads here about that. Of course, in this market, people were leery of Coors because for decades it was basically, always spoiled and very flat,weak, and smelled bad...because it was literally, not LEGAL to sell it here in cans or bottles, for decades! Weird laws around alcohol are not unheard of, and the far west had some very large brewers in Seattle,Portland, and San Francisco, and they dominated the entire far west region through very narrow, restrictive beer distributorships. Coors had the mountain west region mostly to itself for decades, because the mountain west country is mostly inaccessible for months at a time from the far west's Interstate 5 corridor region, until the mountain passes are opened in late spring, after the 15 to 25 feet of snow has been cleared.