"PBR" news and stories

Like countless coming-of-legal-age drinkers before me, I cut my teeth on Pabst Blue Ribbon. PBR was the perfect beer -- if you cared less about flavor than cost, a principle that rules many boozing decisions when you're young. And though I'm loathe to admit it now, I also bought into the brand's blue-collar appeal: I saw PBR as a rebuttal to Bud, Coors and their watery, domestic ilk. Ahh, misguided youth.

Truth is, no matter how many kooky bike races or arm-wrestling competitions that PBR sponsored, it was always a big dog masquerading as an underdog. (Its 2.7 percent market share is nearly three times as big as America's largest craft brewer, Sam Adams.) And it may get even bigger.

The brand, which also includes Schlitz, Colt 45, Lone Star and Old Style, was just sold for $250 million to businessman C. Dean Metropoulos. He no doubt hopes to make PBR as much a household name as Chef Boyardee or Vlasic Pickles -- other homogeneous foodstuffs he's built into billion-dollar powerhouses.

Photo: A sad culinary scene at Bonnaroo

Nearly 80,000 people descended on a farm in Manchester, Tenn., last weekend for Bonnaroo, a four-day music festival headlined by 1990s jam band Phish and rock star Bruce Springsteen. Because most of the attendees camped on the 700-acre site -- and individual tickets started at a whopping $225 -- most festival goers opted to forgo food from pricey vendors and rough it.

By noon each day campsites were filled with empty PBR cans, half-empty industrial-sized jars of generic peanut butter and remnants of canned beans warmed over propane ranges. A few industrious music lovers, however, weren't going to let a lack of gas or electricity keep them from eating well.

More photos, bison chili, pork chops and Rotel after the jump.

An old friend came into town this Sunday. We kicked off the celebration with a bottle of DeuS and, long story short, I haven't gotten around to blogging until today. Perfect time to catch up on this week's beer happenings with a beer blog round-up.

1. There's been a lot of chatter about the Men's Fitness list of "America's five best bars for beer lovers." In today's beer climate, limiting the list down to just 5 seems impossible, and, with as little offense to Men's Fitness as possible, I'm not sure if they are the magazine to do it.
   
2. The idea of healthy beer has been a headturner as a number of blogs and news sites have been running the story of scientists at Rice University who integrated the anti-aging chemicals from red wine into a new BioBeer. Here's what Discovery had to say about it.
3. Hipsters really seemed to Digg this article on Sloshspot discussing The Evolution of Pabst Blue Ribbon's Beer Advertising. Or you can just drop into Bob & Barbara's on South St. in Philadelphia and see it all firsthand.

So this year will mark the first annual Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival. Oh yeah. You'd be hard pressed to come up with a better tasting festival, at least in my opinion. I heartily applaud the creators of this one. PBR and bacon: what could be better

The Blue Ribbon Bacon Festival will be held in Des Moines, Iowa on March 1. Apparently this is National Pig Day, so the choice was obvious. A local pub, The High Life Lounge, will hold the honor of home base for the festival.

The big bacon event will draw people from all over the country and involve all kinds of bacony goodness. There will be $1 PBR, every kind of bacon containing food, and a bacon eating contest. The creator of the event, Brooks Reynolds, has donated smoked malts to local brewers so they can come up with smoky beers to go with bacon. And to top everything off, a chef from Chicago has created a maple bacon cheesecake with a Templeton Rye whiskey glaze. Yum.

My only question is "Can I Go?"