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WNY and the love of Blue Collar and Labbats Blue


Jrb1979

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I have always wondered why Buffalo loves the Blue Collar identity and their love of beers like Blue and Genny? There is far better beers out there then either of them. Give me Ellicottville or Saranac over either. 

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Grew up in Buffalo and never liked beer.  At family and dorms events mostly had big brewery domestic beers.  Only way I liked the beer was in cooking chicken, ribs or fish.

 

I did occasionally go to Canada on beer runs.  A guy would come around and ask if anyone wanted free Chinese food and people raised their hands.  He'd tell them hold your id in hand because we are going to Canada to get it.  He'd pick 5 guys and we would get in his car and drive over border.  He'd fill tank, gas was cheaper then,  load 6 cases into car and go to a restaurant for some takeout.  We would return to border and border guard would ask and our rehearsed response was "Beer, gas and Chinese food." with us all showing ID out windows.  Did this enough times and occasional the beer runner would contact me to find 5 guys to go saving him the step.  Sometimes after event he'd share a beer or two me and I thought that was good.

 

Post college I discovered my taste in brews and it was not big brewery domestic beers.  Canadian beers (Molson XXX and Bradors) as well as some draft beers, the motor oil called Guinness, some stouts and ales and some German beers. Mexican beers taste worse than Genesee.  Yea they are a bit more expensive than case of Miller but I do not drink that much and when I did usually would have enough good beer before big brewery domestic beers were brought to table that I cared less.

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Because BFLo is a "labor" town.  Most company HQs were from other cities.  The city did well during the World Wars and other war times. MORE terrible during times of peace.  During WWII labor had ti be brought in and was strictly controlled by Fed Labor Czar.  Companies couldn't hire or fire without approval.  BFLo has a culture of being very strong laborwise.

 

It is simply NOT, or has NOT been cultivated in a management, middle manger type culture.  I mentioned that most companies in BFLo governed their operations from far off corporate HQ's or even by the Feds DC.  Of course, when companies retract, downsize, where do they downsize back to?  Their corporate base which was often away in some far off other city.

 

BFLo has a labor town culture.

 

BFLo was a brewery town too.  Then the corporates, national brands crushed it.  BFLo then missed the micro-rebirth.

 

Always at wrong place at wrong time.

Edited by ExiledInIllinois
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I think that love of Blue is going to slowly die off.  There's way too much available today thanks to the micro brew explosion.  It'll always be there, but once you have an entire generation of drinking who have been exposed to the current market, the tastes are going to shift.  Of course, Labatt will start to make other options as well.

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11 hours ago, Augie said:

I always enjoyed me some Labbats. I can find it occasionally in the south. A close friend from Canada calls it......something I cannot post here. 

Been in the Richmond area since '04.  Used to drive up to DC to go to Wegmans.  They slowly worked their way S, and now we have 2 stores.  Don't know if they will go farther south, but ya never know?  Wegmans in Richmond has:  Webers, Sahlens, Bison Dip and Blue etc., etc.

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The "blue collar" came from all the industrial plants, that are now mostly gone.  All those plants were surrounded by neighborhood bars, where the employees used to cash their checks.  They also paid their current bar tab and started a new one.  They drank whatever was "on tap;"  Iraquois, Manru, Schmidts, Kochs, Simon Pure, Carlings, etc.

 

They were happy with whatever was availablere after 8-10 hours in the mill/plant.  Can't imagine anyone of them having any interest in the modern craft beers. 

 

Hope we keep the Blue Collar ID.  Better than pencil neck.

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36 minutes ago, shrader said:

I think that love of Blue is going to slowly die off.  There's way too much available today thanks to the micro brew explosion.  It'll always be there, but once you have an entire generation of drinking who have been exposed to the current market, the tastes are going to shift.  Of course, Labatt will start to make other options as well.

Which is not a bad thing. A lot of micro brews are really good. Seeing some of the big brews slowly die down is a good thing. Light and bland tasting beer will be a thing of the past soon. 

1 minute ago, Marv's Neighbor said:

The "blue collar" came from all the industrial plants, that are now mostly gone.  All those plants were surrounded by neighborhood bars, where the employees used to cash their checks.  They also paid their current bar tab and started a new one.  They drank whatever was "on tap;"  Iraquois, Manru, Schmidts, Kochs, Simon Pure, Carlings, etc.

 

They were happy with whatever was availablere after 8-10 hours in the mill/plant.  Can't imagine anyone of them having any interest in the modern craft beers. 

 

Hope we keep the Blue Collar ID.  Better than pencil neck.

Having a Blue Collar Identity is fine, what bugs me is how people want the Bills and Sabres to represent that. The fanbase can't stand talented me first kind of players that usually put your team over the top. Look at when the Bills were trying to get Antonio Brown and how a lot of Bills fans don't want a "DIVA"  like that on my team. The older Bills fanbase needs to live in the now and stop trying to keep things like they were in the past. 

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14 minutes ago, Jrb1979 said:

 Light and bland tasting beer will be a thing of the past soon. 

 

This is incorrect.  Light beer will always have a place.  You even see some micro-breweries making light beers now.

 

Bland tasting?  Yeah that might slowly die off.  But a cheap 30 rack is a godsend to the tailgater/BBQ-er who wants to share and doesn't want to be hungover by 2:00pm.

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i had no idea that is a thread on this side.  it's ***** stupid.  for some reason the op doesn't realize that local beer tend to be more popular in the area that they're made.  

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21 minutes ago, LeviF91 said:

 

This is incorrect.  Light beer will always have a place.  You even see some micro-breweries making light beers now.

 

Bland tasting?  Yeah that might slowly die off.  But a cheap 30 rack is a godsend to the tailgater/BBQ-er who wants to share and doesn't want to be hungover by 2:00pm.

i have no idea why this is hard to understand.

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1 minute ago, Gugny said:

 

It isn't.  To most.

one would think.

 

i also don't understand why the op thinks the people in wny only drink light beer, specifically blue or genny.  people all over this country drink light beer, and people from wny drink craft beer.  it's completely a preference as to what someone wants.  i do both, but it depends on the situation.  how in the world is this a thing?

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I keep IPA and light beer in my fridge at all times.

 

Like you ... if I'm drinking for an extended period of time, it will be primarily light beer.  I'll normally start off with 2-3 of the IPAs, or mix them in.  But I can't drink IPAs all day long.

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