Hipster Emergency: PBR Goes Upscale

Today I bring you exciting news from the Orient:

Everyone's favorite American Shit Beer lager is now being exported to China in a fancy new glass bottle under a new name, "Pabst Blue Ribbon 1844."  According to Danwei, an advertisement in the business magazine Window of the South reads:

It's not just Scotch that's put into wooden casks. There's also Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer 1844

Many world-famous spirits
Are matured in precious wooden casks
Scotch whisky, French brandy, Bordeaux wine...
They all spend long days inside wooden casks

[cut]

It's truly a treasure among beers

So, how much does one rebranded, Scotch-like pee-burrr cost you?  $44 U.S. dollars.  Seems like a lot of money, especially considering when I was in China in December, a 32oz of PBR was $0.07 USD.  Coolster legitimacy ruined.

(Danwai, via The New Yorker.  Thanks for the tip, anonymous reader!)

Comments

Anthony Trollope's picture

"I still like formulating specialty beers. In fact, with Pabst, I just made the first specialty beer in Mainland China. There’s almost no ale in China: I had to smuggle the yeast into the country. I formulated a special high-gravity ale called “1844.” It’s all malt, and we use caramel malts from Germany. The initial aging is dry-hopped rather heavily. Then we do a secondary aging in new uncharred American oak whiskey barrels. We bought 750 brand new barrels to the tune of $100,000. This is a very special beer; it’s retailing for about over $40 U.S. for a 720 ml bottle."

http://allaboutbeer.com/live-beer/people/pull-up-a-stool/2010/07/with-al...

It's not the same beer. Fuck, clicking through and reading is just so much work.

Bryan's picture

It's not even the same company- the PBR name is licensed to a Chinese brewery as well as a Canadian one. Neither is part of the US company.

Post new comment

The content of this field is kept private and will not be shown publicly. If you have a Gravatar account associated with the e-mail address you provide, it will be used to display your avatar.
  • Web page addresses and e-mail addresses turn into links automatically.
  • Allowed HTML tags: <a> <em> <strong> <b> <i> <blockquote> <strike>
  • Lines and paragraphs break automatically.