Yuengling

[jmcnally]

Has anyone ever tried any of the beers from Yuengling, "America's Oldest Brewery"? Are they available in any of Toronto's watering holes?

[old faithful]

This is a small regional Pennsylvania operation whose founding goes back to the early 1800's. But for the Molson part of Molson-Coors I think it is the oldest operating brewing in North America. Michael Jackson praised it in his early works as an example of a surviving small brewery that formed a bridge to the microbrewery era. Yuengling was in a sense the original microbrewery. Unlike most other surviving old American breweries, it never stopped making products of character, e.g., the basic lager is very good especially on draft, its porter is good quality and many like the Lord Chesterfield Ale, a sparkling ale style-beer which typifies the mid-20th century type of cold aged ale that also was popular in Canada at the time (e.g. Molson Export, Labatt IPA, Keith's IPA which has had a revival of course, etc.). The brewery is still run by descendants of the founder and in the last 20 years they have grown it impressively. I visited the brewery once which is built on a hillside as many 19th century breweries were (the hills provided deep lagering caves and probably good water). As far as I know Yuengling beer is not available in Ontario.

Gary

[Beer Geek]

I had the lager in a bottle last summer and thought it was awful. I don’t rate my beers (other than love, good & bad), so I don’t have a great description other than corn, corn & more corn…with some rice. I was really looking forward to trying it, because after hearing about their history I thought their beers must be great for a brewery to survive for so long. But I guess Coors, Miller and AB have been around a long time too, and there is certainly no greatness in these beers. I have heard that Yuengling’s other offerings are really good, but I’ve yet to try them.