Beer Can Blog

Not the same list as the previous post, these are just my humble opinions and are listed in no particular order.

1. Budweiser - Among other things, Anheuser Busch grew to be No. 1 because of savvy marketing and innovations.
2. Miller Lite - Born as Meister Brau Lite (in Chicago), it wasn't the first low calorie beer, but it was the first nationally-distributed one in 1974.
3. Krueger Special Beer and Krueger Pale Ale - The first beer and ale in cans in 1935.
4. Christian Moerlein - the first regionally-marketed modern American beer by an established brewery (Hudepohl, from Cincinnati) that was brewed to the German Reinheitsgebot standards, containing only barley malt, hops, yeast, and water.
5. Anchor Steam - Anchor Brewing Co. was on the verge of closure when Fritz Maytag purchased it and began a decades-long resurgence. Among their offerings are a barleywine (Old Foghorn), a Christmas Ale, a Pale Ale (Anchor Liberty), and other seasonals. Though not of the "microbrewery" classification, Anchor products are well-produced craft beers and ales.
6. Coors Banquet Beer - the first fad beer which people would actually smuggle from the Western U.S. to the East, in large quantities. The Coors family was wise enough not to go into debt to continually add capacity to their Golden, CO brewery, during their fad growth period.
7. Ballantine India Pale Ale - this was the first hoppy American-brewed ale for most people of our age group.
8. Yuengling Porter - the lone, East Coast holdout of this dark ale style(I don't think Stegmaier Porter was brewed continually, but I could be wrong), by the oldest brewery in the United States. Other breweries had porters in the past or on draft, but most surviving breweries had dropped this style in bottles.
9. Samuel Adams Lager - Helped make craft brews more of a mainstream concept. Introduced people to a wide variety of beers.
10. Pabst Export Lager/Pabst Blue Ribbon - the first canned beer by a national brewer, in 1935. Pabst Brewing Co. was afraid to jeopardize their Blue Ribbon label as cans were still new, so they changed the name to Pabst Export Lager, until sales took off.
11. New Albion Ale - Among the first offerings of the first microbrewery in 1976.
12. Billy Beer - No, don't hate me for this one. The concept was not new, but naming and marketing a beer based on the President's brother was new. Blame it on the Falls City Brewing Co. of Louisville, KY and the collectors' headaches that followed on the MSM.

Any others to add?