Heilemans Old Style

Pabst Brewing Company
Brewed at Miller Brewing Company (MillerCoors)
Style: Pale Lager
Woodridge, Illinois USA

Serve in Dimpled mug, English pint, Lager glass, Shaker

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Rating no. 2000 – kickin’ it Old Style, baybeee! 16 oz aluminum can decoratively bestowed with red brick and Wrigley ivy. Aroma light grass and pale malt, corn, dust. Low carbonation, pale yellow-golden pour, patchy brilliantly white head. Taste has some light malt, even some breadiness, and though the sweet corn and minerals dominate, its smooth light feel is not watery and there’s not an overabundance of perceptible alcohol. Very faint grain and a sort of oily vanilla in the back. True, it’s kinda crappy and a impurity-based hangover is strongly implied, but there’s a lot more charm and repeatability here than with the slightly bigger big boys.

After sampling the “new” Old Style, I decided to rush out and find a surviving 6 pack of the old stuff. Found one in a C-Store in Allegan, MI.

Ug – maybe they did improve the flavor a bit, this one has a slightly vegetal after taste where the new version had no taste (after or before.) Nonetheless – not much different.

I quaffed many a pitcher of this stuff when I lived off the south loop in Chicago. Maybe it was the local ambience, maybe it was different formula 25 years ago, but I liked it then and seem to recall it having a bit of flavor… Na more.

Thanks to PhillyBeer2112 for sharing this and reminding me of the good days sitting in the bleachers at Wrigley Field. Somehow, this beer is a 5.0 at Wrigley Field, but an average pale lager outside of the Friendly Confines.

Foul. Gross. I don’t really know what else I can say about this one. It is exactly what you’d expect after paying 5 bucks for 12 of these little disasters.

clear pale yellow, medium soapy head, pretty nice looking lace. nose of sweet corn syrup, flavor of sweet corn syrup, water mouth feel. drink this one extremely cold. don’t know how i missed rating this clinker until now. if you must drink a macro, this one makes budweiser seem pretty attractive. fully kraesened my @$$. single 24 oz can purchased at the dominick’s in matteson.

Can. Watery, yet mildly yeasty. Carbonation seems relatively low. Worked fine in a pinch.

Bought this as a joke, because the beer was deeply discounted. Expecting swill and got swill but it wasn’t skunked like i thought it would be.

I realy hate this beer truely but drinkin an OS And how awful i think it is brings me back to my childhood when my brother and I whould stealem from the old mans beer fridge GREAT MEMORIES!

Another one of the funny surprises at the Otown throwdown. The funny stopped at the name. Vile and putrid. Grainy and stank. Nasty and gross.

UPDATED: MAR 21, 2009 Courtesy fantomas. Pale gold, fizzy producing a voluminous white but short lived head. Funky corny nose and flavor with clean cobwebby and dusty malts. Dusty. Despite the clean fermentation profile and light body the adjuncty nose and finish makes for an intrusive and unrewarding experience. The claim to have revived the krausening practice but its not clear what positive effect this might have. I assume the beer is tank conditioned with active wort and then bottled? Or do they krausen, then filter, then force-carbonate and bottle? The label exhorts to Think Local Drink Local. An ironic command, given its owned by Pabst rather than the original G. Heileman Brewing Co., of La Crosse, WI. Even worse, Pabst is now HQd out of Texas rather than its historical base in Milwaukee. At best, this beer is contract brewed in Wisconsin by Miller, so in some way it has a connection to its home state.