It was like millions of mustachioed dudes in skinny jeans and thick rimmed glasses cried out in terror, and were suddenly silenced.
No gentle reader, I am not speaking of the destruction of Alderaan, but of the recent news that Pabst Blue Ribbon, the cheap and tasteless beer that is ironically consumed by hipsters is up for sale.
For those not familiar with PBR, it is a 170 year old beer, founded in Milwaukee all the way back in 1844.
Pabst Blue Ribbon is named after Frederick Pabst, an early owner of the brewery, who had the bright idea of attaching a darling little blue silk ribbon tied into a bow around each bottle, which made Pabst Brewing the nation’s largest consumer of blue ribbon from 1882 to 1916, when a silk shortage caused by the WW1 need for parachutes put an end to the practice.
When the dark days of Prohibition arrived in the USA in 1920, Pabst Brewing got into the cheesemaking business, because if there is one think Wisconsonites like more than beer, it would have to be cheese.
Pabst sold mountains of cheese during Prohibition, and almost certainly ran a thriving sideline of bootleg beer to wash it down with. However, as soon as Prohibition was repealed in 1933, Pabst sold off the cheese business to Kraft and went back to brewing beer.
Prohibition was hard on Pabst Brewing, as they were the largest brewer in the USA at one point, but never regained the same market dominance after the repeal.
Pabst Brewing has undergone many ownership changes over the years, and reached the height of their popularity in 1977, with annual sales of 18 million barrels. Unfortunately, a rapid decline followed, dropping below a million barrels per year by 2001.
During this long slump, Pabst closed down all their brewing facilities to become a virtual brewery, having their beer contract brewed by other facilities, a practice which continues to this day.
Here in Canada, Pabst Blue Ribbon is contract brewed by Sleemans, while the Miller beer conglomerate handles production for the USA market.
Unfortunately, quality control declined during the years of declining market share, which started a vicious cycle of even more PBR drinkers defecting to alternatives like Bud or Miller Lite, competitors that more quickly embraced modern industrial brewing practices.
Leaning too heavily on the value of tradition, Pabst Brewing delayed adopting more modern brewing technologies, which further weakened their competitiveness in the market.
Just when the future was looking bleak for PBR, a new hope appeared in the early 2000s, in the form of enbeardificated hipsters listening to indie music and drinking cheap beer in an ironic manner.
PBR had always been a discount beer, selling for around $1/can in the USA market. The unassuming label and blue-collar vibe struck a chord with the nascent hipster movement in the early years of the new millennium, and PBR has become the unofficial beer of hipsters everywhere, much to the chagrin of the truckers and dockworkers who had thus far been the primary consumers.
Luckily for Pabst Brewing, the millennial generation drinks a lot of beer while listening to their indie bands and poetry readings, so PBR saw a sharp upswing in sales in Portland in 2002, which was an early hotbed of hipster culture.
Sales then started skyrocketing across the country, and have climbed from a million barrels per year in 2001 to nearly 10 million barrels last year.
Despite owing their success to the whims of counterculture fads, PBR has remained steadfast in their image and recipe, not deviating from their classic formula, made in the style of a Pale American Lager.
Unfortunately, there really isn’t that much to write about in the taste department, as it is just another fizzy yellow water of a macrobrew. The flavour is one of corn and other cereal adjuncts, instead of the more flavourful (and expensive) barley. A sweet malt flavour dominates, with only minimal hop bittering. Most people would have a hard time distinguishing this from a Bud Light in blind taste test.
That being said, hipsters drink it because it is counterculture, not because it tastes good, and price-conscious boozers drink it because it is cheap. So, if you fall into one of those categories, go out and get yourself a PBR!
