Your First "Go To" Beer

[mintjellie]

OE

I was beginning to think I was the only one.

[bartle]

Quidi Vidi 1892 or Jockey Club

I still have a soft spot for 1892.

[Bobsy]

Guinness. Used to buy it by the 24, and always keep at least half a dozen in the fridge during first year of university. I put on a lot of weight (for me) that year!

After leaving the UK for Canada I moved on to the sadly extinct Arctic Wolf and then Blanche de Chambly when I finally got a job.

[Soods]

First beer I bought with any kind of regularity? Has to be Molson Diamond. After that, it was Carling Black Label.

[Tapsucker]

We always had Labatts IPA and Dow Porter around the house when I was a kid. When I went out to bars it was either the cheapest draft or Toby's at the pubs.

In college it was usually a mixture of Red Baron, Upper Canada beers or Northern Beers. The Upper Canada was pricey for a student, but my roomate's brother worked there and we often got 'samples'.

After college I moved on to Conners Bitter, Conners Stout and Formosa draft.

Most of these beers don't exist anymore, I wonder if I would still like them? Nah, probably not...

[midlife crisis]

Molson Golden, The Good Smooth Ale (same as kinguy).

[cratez]

Seriously though - no one else started out drinking malt liqour?

I didn't start drinking until I was 16 (Grade 10), and every weekend my buddies and I would ask my brother to grab us 40s of Old English or Colt 45. After a while he refused to buy them for us, since it was too suspicious - and embarrassing - for a 24 year old to grab six 40s of malt liquor and his own stuff on top of that. So I was forced to choose some different swill, and Busch lager became my 'go-to' beer.

[nickelass]

Probably Moosehead. My buddy used to drink this all the time when I first got into beer. Used to drink a lot of Guinness, Kilkenny, and Boddingtons after I graduated high school and had a job.

[shrike]

Charrington Toby, Heineken dark, and Connors when it opened.....it was very close to where I lived

[phat matt]

first beer i would remember getting drunk off of was 40's of bullmax. Oh to be 17 again.

[SteelbackGuy]

While my go to beers were Export or Bud, I did often purchase a 40 to maximize my dollars for ABV. I could get 2 forties for about 7 bucks. That was a cheap night, but perfect for my minimum wage highschool budget.

[Jon Walker]

Such a tricky question;

When I was 16 in Montreal I did a lot of landscaping during the summers. Quarts of 50 and Black Label were the beer of choice on hot Friday nights. Black Label had also gone through quite a marketing resurgence about that time and I recall it being the first beer that I truly got sucked into buying because the ads were cool. One summer that era all I bought was Michelob, largely because I thought I liked the beer but probably liked the different style bottle more. There was also the year that Bud came out with bottles that hat twist cap openers in the base of the bottle...open your next with your current beer. Needless to say I was a sucker for marketing.

In university it was whatever was available...but again I remember buying a lot of Red Baron because, at the time, it was the only beer available in stubbies.

I personally think that marketing is extremely key if your demographic is the young drinker. This is abundantly evidenced every year by T.V. ads and the flashy distractions (bikini clad babes) on offer at the Toronto Beerfest.

I think the first beer that became a "go-to" for taste reasons rather than marketing or value was probably Tree Hophead in the mid 90's.

[boney]

The cheesiness of early 90's marketing sucked me in to Labatt Ice when I first started drinking beer. A few years later, Big Rock Trad became ubiquitous in Calgary and relatively cheap. Rye generally out competed all beer for me, though, in my niave early years.

[notdan]

In high school, it was Heineken, mostly cause I thought I was too cool to settle for cheap domestic beer. I seem to recall my older brother telling me in grade 11 that people in the Netherlands would think of Heineken the way that we think of Molson Canadian, and I absolutely refused to believe him. Sometime later he gave me my first taste of Blanche de Chambly, which became my go-to beer for the first year of university.

[icemachine]

Mostly I drank what my Dad was drinking, which was either Canadian or Stroh's. Once I started buying beer, I never really settled on anything, when money was tight it was Laker or Red Cap, and when I had extra $, I would try various six packs. I've never bought a 40 of Malt Liqour though.