Historical Tidbits: Beer. The Beer Rules of 1958

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Beer-drinking advice and suggestions from 1958. --- "Don't stick to one beer. Try various kinds." --- "Judge each beer as you would a person, play, or book -- on its merits as an individual." -- - "Rinse the beer glass with cold water before you use it." --- "Serve the right beer with the right foods, mating light with light, rich food with darker, stronger beers and ales." What to drink? Imports:

  • Amstel
  • Augustinerbrau
  • Bass Ale
  • Beck's
  • Carlsberg
  • Carta Blanca
  • Guinness Stout
  • Heineken
  • Kirin
  • La Batt's (her spelling, not mine)
  • Lowenbrau
  • Pilsner Urquell
  • Turborg
  • Whitbread
  • Wurzburger

Prefer a domestic?

  • Andecker (brewed by Pabst, a "rich all-malt beer" available only "unpasteurized on draught")
  • Ballantine's India Pale Ale (a "remarkable ale")
  • Iron City lager (its fans are "enthusiastic and eloquent"; a "connoisseur type" beer)
  • Michelob (claimed by many to be "America's finest beer, one of the greatest in the world.")
  • Miller High Life ("great delicacy and elegance")
  • National Premium ("This beer has had its ups and downs, but is now doing better than ever ...")
  • Olympia (made with "pure glacial water . . . from exceedingly deep artesian wells....")
  • Prior's Double Dark ("...the only all-malt bottled beers made in the U.S.A.")
  • Rainier Old Stock Ale ("ancestral spores of the yeasts came from England," and the beer is aged in "the staid old British manner..."

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Source: Poppy Cannon, "The Changing Taste for Beer," House Beautiful 100 (October 1958): 209, 231-237. Cannon was, at that time, one of the nation's most prominent food writers.