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Review : Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer
In all truth I rarely drink. But on those rare occasions that I do I usually pick a good Seattle micro-brew beer like Red Hook ESB and IPA, Fat Tire and Pyramid Ale Hefeweizen or an imported Japanese Sapporo or Kirin. If drinking in the Dotcom era has taught me anything it has taught me that one should never work for start-up stock options and that there is more to beer than American pee water beer.
Let me stop and tell a joke.
Q: Why is American beer like sex in a canoe?
A: Because it is fucking close to water.
The thing is that millions of Americans drink billions of cans of pee water beer every week so I figure it was my patriotic duty to give it a shot. I had tried Shit on a Shingle and Spam the meat for this blog so having a few cold ones did not seem to extreme.
The last time that anyone has talked about drinking on this web site was back when Peter wrote about Sake. I read Fark.com every day and a while back they linked to an article in the Washington Post on how this obscure old as dirt pee beer brand Pabst Blue Ribbon was suddenly cool with the Gen-X crowd. ( Retro Chic Suds Hit With Hip Young Adults ) I actually never drank when I was underage so I did not have an early exposure to cheep pee water beer.
Pabst Blue Ribbon is the official beer of the American mullet.
Being the lemming of culture that I am I plunked down six bucks for a twelve pack of PBR silver cans. This puts it at less than half the cost of what I usually pick Redhook the pride of Seattle's Fremont.
So I got home and went about my business and cracked open a cold one. It was interesting. Enlightening one could say.
The taste is pretty smooth and it is not that bitter. It is not a "lite beer" but it is still pretty light compared to the Euro-style microbrews. The taste is there but it is mild enough that you can drink enough of it to have a good time. As one of the cheapest choices out there it is as good as a beer to money ratio that you are ever going to get. The alcohol content really is a joke but then again you can have one with a meal and not have to worry about driving later on. This is not a scaled down light formula but it is intended to taste like this. It is the best of the "bad beers". Uncle Sam shipped millions of bottles of the stuff to GI in the Dubba Dubba 2. This beer is America. ROCK!
It looks like the company pissed off hippies everywhere when they celebrated the invasion of Tibet in China.
Pabst used to be an independent brewery based out of Milwaukee Wisconsin since 1844 but in 2001 the brand hit rock bottom and they sold the brand to Miller and closed up shop. The beer is no longer made in Milwaukee but at a Miller plant nowdays. The beer has not really changed much in over a hundred and thirty years.
bad recession and the national unemployment rate is the highest it has been in a decade. We are in the era of the bullshit "Jobless recovery" and permanent international outsourcing. This very well be the worst decade for what is left of the American Middle Class and America's youth since my grandparents made it through the Great Depression of the 1930s.
These are harsh time and it calls for a harsh beer. Pabst Blue Ribbon is just the thing. PBR hit it's peak in the 1890s and has been on a steady decline ever since then but the sales have actually shot up since Gen-X discovered that it. It is not shoved down your throat with multi-million dollar mass marketing it is simple a decent cheap beer. This beer is America whether you like it or not. It is real for what that is worth anymore.
Who know if Pabst Blue Ribbon will take off again and regain it's crown? I doubt it. But the days of the Dot Com IPOs, Aeron chairs, balanced federal budgets, and national job security are long gone and this is a honest cheep decent beer for now.
It is also a square on Hipster bingo. Now if you excuse me I am going to go listen to Nirvana and go to bed.
Jake at August 12, 2003 
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Comments
pabst is good!
Posted by: dsfds at June 2, 2004 9:12 PM
Pabst is delightful beer,smooth,refreshing,tasty,Like a good woman..
Posted by: gerbill at October 19, 2005 9:40 PM
Sorry, but Red Hook is not from Seattle but from my home state, New Hampshire. And I love PBR too.
Posted by: Joe at January 19, 2006 10:23 PM
PBR is the champagne of working class beers!
Posted by: RYANSKIN at July 4, 2006 8:49 PM
