Before I turned to writing about drinks, I made and sold beer in Vermont. After a long shift of tapping triple IPAs, pastry stouts, and fermented farmhouse ales, I wanted exactly one thing: a brutally cold Narragansett Lager or a crisp Genny Cream Ale. Beyond irony or nostalgia, I’d take an old-school American lager over an experimental 8%-er any day for the simple reason that they drink well. It’s precisely that instinct that raises a larger question: What happened to America’s old regional beers?
Before national consolidation and the abundance of craft beer, American drinking culture ran on fiercely local loyalties. Hamm’s belonged to Minnesota lakes and hunting cabins; Narragansett to Rhode Island’s clam shacks. While Yuengling poured through Pennsylvania coal country, Schlitz and Genesee each carried an authentic relationship to their own respective geographies, workforces, and ways of drinking. Whether a crisp American adjunct lager, cream ale, or working-class amber lager, these beers were not designed around exclusive ingredients, nor were they gunning for maximum flavor. In fact, their credentials were quite simple: Drinkability plus place equals enduring cultural impact.
As a former bartender who is often surrounded by world-class craft beer, I’ll always appreciate the quiet relief of a straightforward regional lager that honors beer’s social purpose. These old-school American beers deserve to be everywhere not because they are quaint relics, but because they preserve something American drinking culture increasingly struggles to hold onto: affordable flavor, unmistakable regional identity, and beer that authentically belongs.
Schlitz
This old-school Midwestern classic was brewed in Milwaukee in 1849 by Joseph Schlitz, meaning it emerged alongside the development of modern America. Sadly, after 177 years, the final batch of Schlitz was brewed on May 23 after parent company Pabst announced it would be halting production due to rising costs. Formerly known as “the Beer that Made Milwaukee Famous,” Wisconsin Brewing Company brewmaster Kirby Nelson spearheaded production of the final batch, which honors a historic 1948 recipe and is slated for a regional limited release in summer 2026…