We Asked 7 Brewers: Which Discontinued Beer Would You Bring Back From the Dead?

Beer isn’t immune to trends. Certain styles gain steam while others fall out of favor; ingredients cycle in and out of season; and new techniques take the place of traditional ones. It’s hard to believe it, but there was a time when the hazy IPA wasn’t ubiquitous. To make room for these new approaches, some beloved brews get cut from production. And beer nerds never forget a beer that blew their minds, then disappeared from shelves forever.

We reached out to some of these professional beer nerds — a.k.a. brewers — to help us curate a sort of cemetery of beloved beers that are no longer in production. So which cans would they want to come back from their proverbial graves? Some mention their own releases that might have been abandoned too soon, while others cite craft classics that paved the way for experimental brewing. All of them sound tremendously nostalgic for these lost suds.

The beers brewers would bring back from the dead:

Firestone Walker Velvet Merlin
Latrobe Brewing Company Rolling Rock
Firestone Walker Pale 31
Mikkeller George Bourbon BA
Anchor Brewing Co. Steam
Cisco Brewers Summer of Lager
Westbrook Brewing Two Claw

“Velvet Merlin is the beer we’d like to see in full production. That is our famous, bourbon barrel-aged oatmeal stout. There’s an occasional special batch brewed every now and then, but it would be terrific to see that brewed year-round.” —Brew Team, Firestone Walker, California

“The beer that I miss the most is Rolling Rock. Not just any Rolling Rock, but a Rolling Rock ‘from the glass lined tanks of Old Latrobe.’ When the original brewery in Latrobe was closed down in 2006, it was a sad day for everyone in Pennsylvania. Ever since then, it is a shadow of what it once was. Give me a case of old-school Rolling Rock ponies, and I’d be in heaven.” —John Kimmich, co-owner and head brewer, The Alchemist, Stowe, Vt.

“I don’t know if this counts because I think they have made a small batch here and there, but it doesn’t make it to Chicago anymore. Pale 31 from Firestone Walker was the first hoppy beer that really blew my mind, and I fell in love with it. I was devastated when it went away from the Chicago market, and I tried in vain to home brew it. I would even pour some DBA into my home brew in an attempt to replicate their technique. It’s been a while and I’ve had many great hoppy beers since then, but nothing has quite scratched that itch.” —Mike Schallau, co-founder and brewer, is/was Brewing, Chicago

“Our ‘George Bourbon BA,’ an imperial oatmeal stout with coffee and vanilla aged in bourbon whiskey barrels at 13.8 percent ABV. People love it and have been asking for it.” —Dionisis Papagiannis, head brewer, Mikkeller, Copenhagen, Denmark

“Anchor Steam is the first beer that comes to mind that we’ve lost in the last few years. It had such an influence on the American craft scene. I still remember learning about historic and traditional beers, and having to call this style ‘California Common’ if made somewhere else because Anchor had a copyright on the style name ‘Steam,’ or so the rumor went. In the 2010s when I was first getting into the industry, it was a really popular style for smaller breweries, but Anchor was the consistent one you could rely on picking up anytime. We really have Anchor Brewery to thank for keeping the style alive and available to inspire many craft brewers into recreating it in their own lineups in the early days of the craft industry boom.” —Ash Kinart-Short, technical brewer, New Belgium Brewing, Fort Collins, Colo.

“Summer of Lager, hands down, would be what we bring back.” —Silas Gilbert, head brewer, Cisco Brewers, Nantucket, Mass.

“Most people would say Two Claw. It’s a New England-style IPA we made for many years but stopped producing a few years ago.” —Erik Rzeczycki, brewer, Westbrook Brewing Company, Mt. Pleasant, S.C.

The article We Asked 7 Brewers: Which Discontinued Beer Would You Bring Back From the Dead? appeared first on VinePair.