A Chilly Reception For A Nice, Cold Beer

There was a time when Old Style equaled Chicago and Chicago equaled Old Style.

Back in the days when every Cubs game was guaranteed to be on WGN, white Old Style signs hung perpendicular to a bar on virtually every street. Cubs fans could tell you in their sleep that Old Style was fully kraeusened at the G. Heilmann Brewery in LaCrosse, Wis., having been broadcast that message in between seemingly every inning. Parents would send their young down to the store for a loaf of bread, a cartonof eggs and a 24-pack of Old Style cans.

It felt right that Chicago would have a signature beer, reflecting the true priorities of the true blue-collar city it was. But with progress came change. The city gentrified under Mayor Daley and has been steadily peeling away its crime, pollution, segregation -- and gritty, working-class charm. The brewery, meanwhile, was bought out by a larger fish, a success (or victim, depending on your point of view) of the assimilative American economy.

And now that economy has imposed a new beer, of its own breed, on the city, as giant brewer MillerCoors has chosen to locate its headquarters here.

Don’t get me wrong; I’m a big fan of Miller Lite. And I’m not the only one -- it’s probably the best-selling beer in the city these days. (Both Miller Lite and Bud Light claim to be tops. The companies really, really don’t like to divulge sales numbers, but from what I could piece together for a magazine article I wrote earlier this year, they arrive at their conclusions by counting in very different ways and the Miller Lite argument seemed more credible, apart from which anecdotal evidence would seem to support Miller’s claim.) I even prefer it to present-day Old Style, which is currently mass-produced by Pabst and no longer has the taste or texture it did in the 1980s.

Still, even if Miller Lite is first in our livers, as a national brand it could never be first in our hearts because it belongs to everyone. I would rather give the title of Chicago beer for the 21st Century to Chicago-based Goose Island, even though it’s brewed for and by the damn yuppies and traders who somehow replaced the factory workers as the flesh and bones of the city.

MillerCoors, after all, is the second-biggest brewer in America. Its laundry list of brands includes, obviously, Miller, MGD, Miller Lite, Miller Chill, Coors, Coors Light, and Keystone Light, as well as some you wouldn’t expect, such as Leinenkugel’s and Blue Moon. This proletarian company is even responsible for importing the staid Molsen brand. And unless you believe that the merger of Anheuser-Busch and ImBev will really end up with headquarters in St. Louis, MillerCoors could someday be the biggest American brewer.

All of this means that a city with a storied love affair with beer -- we rioted to overturn Dry Sunday laws in the 1800s; we gave Al Capone fame and fortune in exchange for fermented grains -- once again has a pervasive brand that calls it home. It should be a perfect fit. But it feels all wrong, because it’s not our great beer and they can have it.

Me, I’ll choose to forget my troubles with a cold bottle of LaCrosse Lager, made by City Brewery of LaCrosse, Wis., which will never admit that it’s the second coming of Old Style but does occupy the old G. Heilmann facility and employs its brewery to krausen its lager. I just wish the Cubs were on WGN.