Quote:
Originally Posted by esquire
I was a kid in the 80s but just from advertising, popular culture and such I recall that imported beer had a lot of cachet... Heineken, Foster's, Carlsberg are a few brands that come to mind. Carlsberg seemed much more common then than it is now. The popular imports were mainly lagers that tasted exactly the same as the stuff that was popular here at the time... I honestly wonder how many people could tell the difference between Heineken and Canadian.
Of course, beer snobbery as it is known today didn't really exist then, except for a tiny group of homebrewer hobbyists and maybe people who came from the UK and other places with a wider ranges of beer than what was known here at the time.
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At one time at the Brewer's Retail stores in Ontario, there were only a handful of "imported" brands available and they only came in stubbies. I think they actually were brewed in Ontario under licence.
My Dad told me that when he moved to Timmins in the early 1970s he went to a Brewer's Retail store here and wanted to try something different. He got a 12 pack of Guinness and a 12 pack of Heineken if I remember correctly. Well most Ontarians know that you would order at the cash register and the cashier would talk into a microphone where someone working in the back would hear the order, go get it and roll it out on that thing. You would never see the person in the back. Well after my Dad ordered his "exotic" brands the guy actually came out from the back and wanted to see who exactly ordered that beer and he was almost laughing. He told my Dad that he was the first person he had who ordered those kinds and apologized that there was so much dust on them!
BTW, all of our Beer Stores in Timmins still have the roll out thing. (sort of like a conveyor belt but it's made of small wheels so you can roll cases out. Here's a short video clip:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wpgi3WJCi4M