Pabst Blue Ribbon has been sold in these United States since the late 1800s. It's fine, nothing special. But around the turn of the 21st century, something... changed. People started drinking PBR. Like, cool people, and a lot of PBR. What happened next would become the stuff of brewing industry lore, as this middling lager basked in the word-of-mouth indie sleaze cachet that big corporate beer brands would kill for. Joining Taplines today is Steve "Stix" Nilsen. These days, he's the vice president of "cult indoctrination" at Liquid Death, but from 2009 to 2018, he was part of the lifestyle marketing team at Pabst tasked with boosting Blue Ribbon’s bona fides in the scene — like, *every* scene — without going bust. It’s PBR, it’s Stix Nilsen, it’s the Blue Ribbon hipster halo, and it’s right here right now, on VinePair’s Taplines. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

The gag, codified as it was on slapdash websites like Bros Icing Bros, was simple: hide a Smirnoff Ice for your bro to find, and he’d have to get down on one knee and chug it. But even at the time, icing's social and commercial impacts were a bit more complicated, and its legacy is a fascinating example of how the early social internet shaped (and scandalized) the beverage alcohol business. Joining Taplines today to discuss icing’s indelible, low-ABV legacy is Brandon Wenerd, the publisher of BroBible dot com, which covered the viral phenomenon in real-time as the Aughts came to a close. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Conventional business-school wisdom is that most consumer boycotts won't work, because it's almost impossible to put organize a big enough group of customers to make a difference in a big company's bottom line. But starting in 1957 a coalition of labor unionists, Chicano activists, LGBTQ+ advocates, and more began a powerful boycott against Coors Brewing Company over the company's policies and politics that lasted three decades. Here to tell us about a pivotal turning point in what's believed to be the longest boycott in American history is Allyson Brantley, Ph.D., an assistant professor of history at University of La Verne and the author of "Brewing A Boycott." Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In the early Aughts, as the craft brewing industry recovered from its slump the prior decade, macrobrewers started to realize that they couldn't just ignore the beardos and their bizarre "microbrews" anymore. But as they say, if you can't beat 'em, join 'em. We tapped our pal Anat Baron, the creative force behind the revelatory 2009 documentary "Beer Wars" and the former general manager of Mike's Hard Lemonade, to take us back to the days when Anheuser-Busch tried to clone craft beer with so-called "crafty" knockoffs — and how it used its powerful distribution network to make sure those beers got to supermarket shelves, even though nobody wanted 'em. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

A lot of people know that in 1978, the Carter administration loosened federal laws about homebrewing with a stroke of the executive pen that has been partially credited with launching the craft brewing industry. But far fewer know what that pivotal moment was actually like. So we called someone who did: Charlie Papazian, the iconic founder of both the Brewers Association and the American Homebrewers Association. Listen in as Charlie takes us back to the pre-Carter era of bland adjunct lagers, clandestine garage brews, and the early, barely legal days that would eventually bloom into the American craft brewing industry as we know it. Don't forget to like, review, and subscribe! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.