Beer of the Weekend #101: Olympia
The beer this weekend is Olympia brewed by the Pabst Brewing Company of Woodridge, Illinois.
This is not your average BotW. Yesterday I took a sixer of Downtown Brown to my uncle’s place for Thanksgiving. Nobody drank it. My uncle opened a bottle, took a sip, then set it down in front of me and said, “You can have it.” So, instead of bringing it back to Huntington, I drank the entire six pack last night. (By the way, the B+ I gave it was spot on. It’s good, but not as good as I remember.) Though I wasn’t hung over this morning, I felt like skipping my weekly tasting tonight; I drank enough beer. But, I decided to do it, opting for a lager to keep things clean, crisp, and uncomplex. I just wanted something inoffensive to quench my thirst. Olympia will hopefully deliver.
Sure, I don’t like drinking out of cans, but this was all the Olympia BevMo! had. I was shocked to see it, too. One of the reasons I bought it was because I have never seen Olympia and wanted to take advantage of it while I could.
Yes, Pabst is now headquarted outside of Chicago. Where it and Olympia are brewed is a mystery to me. Traditionally brewed in Turnwater, Washington, Olympia’s Wikipedia page says it’s now brewed in Irwindale, California at the Miller/Coors plant (I’ve seen the brewery from the 210). The Turnwater brewery was closed in 2003 by SABMiller, which I thought was Pabst’s parent company. However, the owner of Pabst is listed as S&P Company. The Mervgotti always said PBR was brewed in San Antonio, where the headquarters relocated after moving from Milwaukee in the ‘90s, but I’m unsure where it’s currently brewed.
Serving type: Twelve 12-ounce cans. The half-life date on the side of the case reads JAN2510. That’s the thing about Pabst products: instead of a born-on or freshness date, they feature a somewhat useless half-life date — the day the beer is halfway between its brewing date and the time when it will skunk (there’s likely three or for months on either side). As long as the half-life date is still in the future, or sometime in the recent past, the beer should be good. I will say, from experience, that Pabst brews keep well. In college we drank PBRs that were nearly a year past their half-life date. No matter what, though, the fresher the better.
Appearance: Poured a light straw yellow. Very pale. Two fingers of white, billowy foam developed and dissipated quickly to leave a ring around the edge.
Smell: Dishwater. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. There’s a metallic overtone, likely from the can. Otherwise corn dominates the smell. Reminds me of, along with washing dishes, a real dive bar.
Taste: Not much taste, but there a basic floral presence — much more than I was expecting from the smell, but still nothing close to spectacular. There is zero bite.
Drinkability: “It’s the Water”, eh? I think they used too much of it. But whatever. It’s a decent, inoffensive beer, and easy drinking.
Fun facts about Olympia:
-Price: $7.49/12-pack.
-Serving temperature: 35-40ºF.
-Alcohol content: 4.73 percent ABV.
-Food pairings: BA recommends barbeque, Indian, Latin, Thai, peppery cheeses like Monterey and Pepper Jack, and shellfish.
-Drinking Olympia makes me feel so ‘70s. Seriously. The cans look like they haven’t been redesigned since before Watergate (thankfully, though, my batch doesn’t feature pull tabs, so I know it’s been brewed recently). Plus, Olympia is one of those classic, working man brews of the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s in the company of Hamms, Schlitz, PBR, Rainer, and Grain Belt. Though I don’t think he drank much beer, I can picture a case of Olympia in Raymond Carver’s fridge.
-When he was in the Navy, my dad apparently drank a lot of Olympia while stationed in Long Beach. He has a small scrap/memory book from that time and there is an Olympia bottle label pasted in it.
The Quiet Man’s grade: C-.
This is not your average BotW. Yesterday I took a sixer of Downtown Brown to my uncle’s place for Thanksgiving. Nobody drank it. My uncle opened a bottle, took a sip, then set it down in front of me and said, “You can have it.” So, instead of bringing it back to Huntington, I drank the entire six pack last night. (By the way, the B+ I gave it was spot on. It’s good, but not as good as I remember.) Though I wasn’t hung over this morning, I felt like skipping my weekly tasting tonight; I drank enough beer. But, I decided to do it, opting for a lager to keep things clean, crisp, and uncomplex. I just wanted something inoffensive to quench my thirst. Olympia will hopefully deliver.
Sure, I don’t like drinking out of cans, but this was all the Olympia BevMo! had. I was shocked to see it, too. One of the reasons I bought it was because I have never seen Olympia and wanted to take advantage of it while I could.
Yes, Pabst is now headquarted outside of Chicago. Where it and Olympia are brewed is a mystery to me. Traditionally brewed in Turnwater, Washington, Olympia’s Wikipedia page says it’s now brewed in Irwindale, California at the Miller/Coors plant (I’ve seen the brewery from the 210). The Turnwater brewery was closed in 2003 by SABMiller, which I thought was Pabst’s parent company. However, the owner of Pabst is listed as S&P Company. The Mervgotti always said PBR was brewed in San Antonio, where the headquarters relocated after moving from Milwaukee in the ‘90s, but I’m unsure where it’s currently brewed.
Serving type: Twelve 12-ounce cans. The half-life date on the side of the case reads JAN2510. That’s the thing about Pabst products: instead of a born-on or freshness date, they feature a somewhat useless half-life date — the day the beer is halfway between its brewing date and the time when it will skunk (there’s likely three or for months on either side). As long as the half-life date is still in the future, or sometime in the recent past, the beer should be good. I will say, from experience, that Pabst brews keep well. In college we drank PBRs that were nearly a year past their half-life date. No matter what, though, the fresher the better.
Appearance: Poured a light straw yellow. Very pale. Two fingers of white, billowy foam developed and dissipated quickly to leave a ring around the edge.
Smell: Dishwater. That’s the first thing that comes to mind. There’s a metallic overtone, likely from the can. Otherwise corn dominates the smell. Reminds me of, along with washing dishes, a real dive bar.
Taste: Not much taste, but there a basic floral presence — much more than I was expecting from the smell, but still nothing close to spectacular. There is zero bite.
Drinkability: “It’s the Water”, eh? I think they used too much of it. But whatever. It’s a decent, inoffensive beer, and easy drinking.
Fun facts about Olympia:
-Price: $7.49/12-pack.
-Serving temperature: 35-40ºF.
-Alcohol content: 4.73 percent ABV.
-Food pairings: BA recommends barbeque, Indian, Latin, Thai, peppery cheeses like Monterey and Pepper Jack, and shellfish.
-Drinking Olympia makes me feel so ‘70s. Seriously. The cans look like they haven’t been redesigned since before Watergate (thankfully, though, my batch doesn’t feature pull tabs, so I know it’s been brewed recently). Plus, Olympia is one of those classic, working man brews of the ‘60s and ‘70s. It’s in the company of Hamms, Schlitz, PBR, Rainer, and Grain Belt. Though I don’t think he drank much beer, I can picture a case of Olympia in Raymond Carver’s fridge.
-When he was in the Navy, my dad apparently drank a lot of Olympia while stationed in Long Beach. He has a small scrap/memory book from that time and there is an Olympia bottle label pasted in it.
The Quiet Man’s grade: C-.
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