Pabst Blue Ribbon Malt

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lcaillouet

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I am trying to buy some Pabst Blue Ribbon Malt for my uncle for Christmas. He used to make beer a long time ago and has all the equipment but says he can't find this malt. We are in the New Orleans area and there used to be a beer making place in the city but since the storm it no longer exists. I saw someone mention this malt in this forum. Does anyone know if this is still available and if there is a place on the internet I can buy it from? I am not even sure if it is still available. If not is there something any of you would recommend that might be comparable?
 
Just did a quick Google search an was not successful. I suspect that since Pabst Brewing is no more and the brand only exists to be brewed by another brewing company (Miller?) they most likely no longer sell malt extract.
 
I've checked all of my recipe databases & not a one. I haven't had a PBR in about 25 years, so I don't remember what it tasted like, which might be a good thing. ;) An American light lager kit from Austin would be a good place to start.
 
I've had plenty of PBR, and to me it's always tasted like slightly beer flavored cardboard soda. It's the 'in' thing at the bars around here to order it as an 'anti-beer' (fight the power of craft breweries, man!:rockin: )

I looked on eBay. I think the freshest thing you'll find that's PBR extract is from the 1950's.
 
That's the stuff! Though at $16.40 per 2.2 lb tin, it's pricier than imported extract syrups. I might just get some to give the old Prohibition Bathtub Pilsner a try!

Pabst and Premier merged in 1932. Blue Ribbon was the nation’s most popular brand of malt extract. Premier Malt Products, Inc., a Decatur, Ill. company produced the malt extract, having snatched the words “blue ribbon” from Pabst, maker of Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. Malt extract obviously was associated in the public’s mind with beer because of the prevalent use to which the product was being put—so that confusion was bound to have occurred as to the source of Blue Ribbon Malt Extract, despite a federal appeals court pronouncement to the contrary.

Now Pabst is still brewing, though no longer at Pabst-owned breweries (the last Pabst brewery closed in 2001). PBR is produced by SAB/Miller.

Ain't history neat? As a side note, the last Pabst brewery to close is the one in Fogelsville, PA. Boston Beer purchased it from Diageo this year; now Samuel Adams beers are flowing therefrom. My wife and I drove by it on Tuesday - it's right on I-78 - and steam was filling the sky from the mashtun stacks. Almost brought tears to my eyes, that did.

Bob
 
PBR used to make a lite beer with only 70 calories. I drank it for a while when I was really into working out. It was the lowest calorie beer I ever found. I actually looked for PBR not too long ago, no wonder I couldn't find it.
 
I've had plenty of PBR, and to me it's always tasted like slightly beer flavored cardboard soda. It's the 'in' thing at the bars around here

Yes, PBR sure has become popular in the NW the last few years. I'm guilty, I drink it every so often, mainly when I go camping. :tank:

:mug: to Gresham! I grew up there. :)

HOW ABOUT THOSE OSU BEAVERS!!!!
 
If I'm right the Pabst family was also instrumental in getting the ski industry/resorts going in the US. I still have fond memories of slamming a near frozen PBR on the chair-lift while night skiing at Brighton...
 
I confess I used to drink the heck out of PBR, until they got bought out and the workers got screwed out of their pensions. Screw em.
 
I am trying to buy some Pabst Blue Ribbon Malt for my uncle for Christmas. He used to make beer a long time ago and has all the equipment but says he can't find this malt. We are in the New Orleans area and there used to be a beer making place in the city but since the storm it no longer exists. I saw someone mention this malt in this forum. Does anyone know if this is still available and if there is a place on the internet I can buy it from? I am not even sure if it is still available. If not is there something any of you would recommend that might be comparable?

Ha! Blue Ribbon malt! I used to buy that at the supermarket many moons ago. AFAIK Blue Ribbon disappeared from distribution back in the 1970s. To sub just for the malt you could use any light malt extract and I was going to suggest Alexanders or Premier as the closest sub but I see the Premier-Blue Ribbon link was already posted. I would also agree with the other post about investigating buying a good extract ingredient kit to make the beer. Homebrewing has come a long way since the Blue Ribbon brand went away.

In the pre-legal days of homebrewing you could send to an address on the Blue Ribbon can for recipes. A couple of weeks later two envelopes would be in the mailbox. One was on company letterhead and had recipes for adding malt extract to many baked goods and such. The other envelope was plain white with no return address. It had a hand typed recipe for making a batch of homebrew.
 
My first "homebrew" and first taste of alcohol was a batch made by a buddy and me when we were 14 or 15. A can of Blue Ribbon malt, 5 lbs, of sugar, Water and a packet of Fleishmann's bread yeast. We fermented it in a warm corner of the cellar and drank it warm out of gallon cider jugs.

Got drunk and sicker than dogs :drunk:
 
I don't mind a PBR, great beer when it is time for canned beer. Don't forget that the BJCP guidelines list commercial examples in order of "best example first" and for category 1B Standard American Lager PBR is number 1.
 
A trip down memory Lane -

Pabst Blue Ribbon Pale Dry was the first malt extract I used and the only one I knew of when I began my home brewing, around 1964 when I was 18 years old. Just the bare essentials back then....We used the can of extract, corn sugar, and Fleischmans yeast in an open pottery crock covered with a kitchen towel. Used a light bulb underneath for heat. The refinement was Sparkletts bottled water! Floated the hydrometer in the beer until it got down to the "B" marker. Had to bottle it then, no matter what time of day or night it was, because it was READY! It packed quite a wallop (and quite a headache, too).

Never had a bottle explode like the rootbeer I made! It was fun.

Nobody was snooty about it back then....
 
In my junior year at Bellarmine College Preparatory I had a Biology class, and we were assigned a term paper, on some subject of our choice. Around that time my pal Bob Minardi and I happened to be walking past a bakery just off campus, and the smell of yeast assailed us on the sidewalk. We were at the age one discovers beer, and couldn't help but think more of the beverage than bread as we inhaled deeply.

Aha! Here was a great idea for a biology project. Let's make beer! We ran the idea by our teacher, a young, liberal, enthusiastic Jesuit, and he thought that sounded like a fine idea.

Now, this was 1966, well before the dawn of the information age, so research was hard work, involving little wooden drawers and suspicious librarians. It was also still illegal to make beer at home, so we were stymied. About all we knew was that we needed water, malt, hops and yeast, but could find absolutely no information about how to make beer, much less a recipe.

We found yeast at the grocery store without any problem of course, and while we were in the baking aisle we stumbled on a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon Malt Extract. So we had some ingredients, but still no recipe. We wrote to the company that made the malt, asking if they could help us out.

In due course, they replied on fancy letterhead, explaining that no, they couldn't help, as Blue Ribbon Malt Extract was intended for baking, and brewing beer at home was of course prohibited by law. Time was running out...

But the very next day after we received that formal reply, a plain envelope with no return address appeared. Inside was a beer recipe!

We borrowed a ceramic pickling vat from a friend of the family, obtained some bottles and a capping press, followed the recipe without any trouble, and brewed up some of the worst tasting beer you can imagine. I can't remember what we did for hops. But it was BEER! We wrote up our procedure, and turned in the paper with a sample of the product. Of course, I hardly need to mention that we got an A.
 
In my junior year at Bellarmine College Preparatory I had a Biology class, and we were assigned a term paper, on some subject of our choice. Around that time my pal Bob Minardi and I happened to be walking past a bakery just off campus, and the smell of yeast assailed us on the sidewalk. We were at the age one discovers beer, and couldn't help but think more of the beverage than bread as we inhaled deeply.

Aha! Here was a great idea for a biology project. Let's make beer! We ran the idea by our teacher, a young, liberal, enthusiastic Jesuit, and he thought that sounded like a fine idea.

Now, this was 1966, well before the dawn of the information age, so research was hard work, involving little wooden drawers and suspicious librarians. It was also still illegal to make beer at home, so we were stymied. About all we knew was that we needed water, malt, hops and yeast, but could find absolutely no information about how to make beer, much less a recipe.

We found yeast at the grocery store without any problem of course, and while we were in the baking aisle we stumbled on a can of Pabst Blue Ribbon Malt Extract. So we had some ingredients, but still no recipe. We wrote to the company that made the malt, asking if they could help us out.

In due course, they replied on fancy letterhead, explaining that no, they couldn't help, as Blue Ribbon Malt Extract was intended for baking, and brewing beer at home was of course prohibited by law. Time was running out...

But the very next day after we received that formal reply, a plain envelope with no return address appeared. Inside was a beer recipe!

We borrowed a ceramic pickling vat from a friend of the family, obtained some bottles and a capping press, followed the recipe without any trouble, and brewed up some of the worst tasting beer you can imagine. I can't remember what we did for hops. But it was BEER! We wrote up our procedure, and turned in the paper with a sample of the product. Of course, I hardly need to mention that we got an A.

I salute you and this post :rockin:.
couldn't find a salute smiley so i'll rock out to this post.

Do you brew today?
 
I remember Blue Ribbon malt extract from the 1980's. It was available both hopped and unhopped. (hopped was harder to find) IIRC, it didn't say "Pabst" on the label anymore, but it looked like a Pabst logo.

You could make nasty high-alcohol beer that'll give you a headache right quick by mixing a can of syrup with a can of sugar to make 5 gallons. (ferment with whatever dried beer yeast you can find) Or pretty-good beer using 2 cans of syrup and no sugar.

That was so long ago, I don't remember if I used the hopped syrup, or boiled it with my own hops.
 
I salute you and this post :rockin:.
couldn't find a salute smiley so i'll rock out to this post.

Do you brew today?

Yes, I have recently taken it up. I'm doing BIAB IPA's, and keg 5 gallons about once a month. Gotta say, they taste a whole lot better than the high-school brew...
 
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