PABST CHEESE

[wolfy]

I remember my dad lamenting the passing of Pabst's Brick Cheese and never being able to taste it again.   He said that all the 'beer joints' used to sell it to their patrons & that there was always a bowl of soda crackers available on the bar top for spreading & eating the cheese snack.

https://www.atlasobscura.com/articles/what-did-pabst-do-during-prohibition?utm_source=Atlas+Obscura+Daily+Newsletter&utm_campaign=06138930ed-EMAIL_CAMPAIGN_2020_04_14&utm_medium=email&utm_term=0_f36db9c480-06138930ed-69712057&mc_cid=06138930ed&mc_eid=537596707d

[wsdstan]

That is an interesting site.  I knew that Coors went into the ceramics business but didn't know about Pabst's cheese business and the others.  Coors also made malted milk during prohibition. 

My Dad drank Coors and that was about all I remember of beer in our house.  He ate Limburger cheese on crackers all the time too but never came home with a Pabst cheese.  There was a cheese called Liederkranz that we bought a lot and I liked it better than the Limburger. 

[Plumber]

wsdstan, your Dad had quite a range of tastes. Limburger is one of the strongest cheeses, and Coors is one of the weakest beers.
My Dad liked German brick cheese, and it was very strong.

[wolfy]

This may be interesting for some of you, MOE for one....as it reveals in this article, the old discontinued PABST-ETT and its wildly popular competitor-successor, Kraft VELVEETA pasteurized, processed cheese products are linked in more ways than one.


http://www.vintagerecipeblog.com/2012/05/pabst-ett-cheese.html

[wsdstan]

Interesting.  While we eat a fair bit of Velveeta these days back in the late sixties, when we were Alpine skiing a lot and camping in the high country in the summer and fall, we ate a lot of that European packaged cheese spread that came in those little round boxes with up to twelve little triangular packets of the spread.  It was good stuff, especially on rye bread or those crisp rye crackers whose name escapes me at the moment.  The Pabst-ett cheese packaging reminded me of those cheeses.

[Moe M.]

This may be interesting for some of you, MOE for one....as it reveals in this article, the old discontinued PABST-ETT and its wildly popular competitor-successor, Kraft VELVEETA pasteurized, processed cheese products are linked in more ways than one.


http://www.vintagerecipeblog.com/2012/05/pabst-ett-cheese.html

 Funny, my Grandfather and my Grandmothers brother who lived with them loved their Pabst Blue Ribbon beer,  Carlings Brewery was just about 20 miles from us so Black Label was popular around here,  Schlitz was another popular beer back in the '40's, '50's, and '60's, allot of the old timers used to set the bottles out in the sun for a few days,  they said it made the beer stronger, I don't know about that,  but I do know that you could always tell when someone was have a bottle of "fortified" Schlitz, or if there was a skunk lurking about, 'cause they both smelled the same.

 But Cheese is another story, I love cheese and it's left me with allot of fond memories, I remember the American cheese that the little mom & pop grocery where mom and dad did their weekly shopping, I remember the farm cheese that we would buy a couple of times a year when we visited family in Quebec,  I remember the cheese that we would get from the Gov. food program for low income folks back in the early '60's,  once a month you'd go to the town hall and receive about a months worth of surplus food that the gov. bought from the countries farmers, one of the items we'd get every month was a five pound block of American cheese that tasted allot like todays Land-O-Lakes white American cheese.
 Another special cheese I'll never forget was from a prominent local eatery that my folks would go to pretty often,  at this place service was king,  when you were seated a waiter would roll a large food cart to your table loaded with a half dozen different appetizers, on the middle of the cart was round of imported sharp Cheddar Cheese and a huge bowl of individually packaged crackers of all types,  that Cheddar was the Best.
 I like all kinds of cheese but those above and one more more not yet mentioned have a special place in my cranial filing cabinet, the unmentionable cheese is for wolfy's benefit,  like Stan and his skiing and camping treat, we (I the Wife, and our kids) also had a   special treat of cheese and crackers while sitting around the fire at night, I don't remember it's name,  but it came in a pressurized can, it looked like a spreadable Velveeta and kind of tasted like it too,  but it was handy, just point the nozzle at your cracker and give it a squirt,  it wasn't gourmet by any stretch but it was great around the campfire, best part, it wasn't messy,  unless the kids decided to start squirting themselves, then all bets were off, and every one got hit with some. 

 What got me started on that    

 

[PetrifiedWood]

This may be interesting for some of you, MOE for one....as it reveals in this article, the old discontinued PABST-ETT and its wildly popular competitor-successor, Kraft VELVEETA pasteurized, processed cheese products are linked in more ways than one.


http://www.vintagerecipeblog.com/2012/05/pabst-ett-cheese.html

 Funny, my Grandfather and my Grandmothers brother who lived with them loved their Pabst Blue Ribbon beer,  Carlings Brewery was just about 20 miles from us so Black Label was popular around here,  Schlitz was another popular beer back in the '40's, '50's, and '60's, allot of the old timers used to set the bottles out in the sun for a few days,  they said it made the beer stronger, I don't know about that,  but I do know that you could always tell when someone was have a bottle of "fortified" Schlitz, or if there was a skunk lurking about, 'cause they both smelled the same.

Sunlight makes beer oxidize.  It's why a lot of beer is sold in dark colored bottles, to protect from light.  That skunky taste is from the oxidation.  It wouldn't get stronger unless there was incomplete fermentation at the time it was bottled, AND it was unpasteurized. 

A lot of home brewers will add a tiny, measured bit of sugar to their beer before bottling it, to re-start fermentation and develop the carbonation in the beer.  If the beer is bottled after complete fermentation (all of the sugar has already been consumed by the yeast) it will be flat when you open it.  Commercial breweries just add CO2 directly before bottling, like soda bottlers.  Some more serious home brewers are set up for this too.  My dad did it for like a decade and by the time he got tired of it, he was milling his own grain, had a dedicated chest freezer adapted for lager fermentation, and had CO2 infusion cannisters and the whole bit.   He finally sold it all off and decided that "good beer" is available everywhere now, so no need to make it himself. 

[wolfy]

Moe, I've learned that almost anything will 'get you started,' most of the time!    Like both of you geezers, I remember almost all of those varieties that you've brought to mind.  Like JiffyPop popcorn and its close cousin, 'aerosol cheese'....both of which were novelty items rather than gourmet fare, were still very much a necessity to the boys in our Scout troop.     On winter camps the cheese would freeze in their packs and not dispense at all....and the JiffyPop, which the boys seemed insistent on heating over a campfire that was so hot you couldn't get closer than 10 feet to it, was always burnt to a crisp with lots of blackened & unpopped kernels.

As for the treatment of the problem of the frozen aerosol cheese....one kid used his hatchet to get at his stash. .......but another kid, that I remember, particularly, solved the problem by nestling his can of sprayable queso in a bed of good hardwood coals at the edge of the fire.         The result, as you may have guessed, quickly gave everyone around the fire an unintended, but FREE sample!

[Pete Bog]

   Like Jiffy Pop popcorn, Kraft Easy Cheese, the cheddar cheese in an aerosol can is still available. I have a can of Walmart brand and a box of Ritz crackers in the pantry for when the grand kids visit. I have two grandsons that like to get 'em for stocking stuffers for Christmas. Ritz crackers not required. Just straight from the can.
    They'll eat that but not the pickled pigs feet or pickled herring. Hunh, kids.

[madmaxine]

 Cheeze Whiz.

[Moe M.]

Moe, I've learned that almost anything will 'get you started,' most of the time!    Like both of you geezers, I remember almost all of those varieties that you've brought to mind.  Like JiffyPop popcorn and its close cousin, 'aerosol cheese'....both of which were novelty items rather than gourmet fare, were still very much a necessity to the boys in our Scout troop.     On winter camps the cheese would freeze in their packs and not dispense at all....and the JiffyPop, which the boys seemed insistent on heating over a campfire that was so hot you couldn't get closer than 10 feet to it, was always burnt to a crisp with lots of blackened & unpopped kernels.

As for the treatment of the problem of the frozen aerosol cheese....one kid used his hatchet to get at his stash. .......but another kid, that I remember, particularly, solved the problem by nestling his can of sprayable queso in a bed of good hardwood coals at the edge of the fire.         The result, as you may have guessed, quickly gave everyone around the fire an unintended, but FREE sample!

 I've been told that,  the "almost anything can get me started" appears to be an endearing quality that people seem to like about me,  well, that and the fact that I've managed to still be around and have memory good enough to remember allot of funny stories from my over three quarters of a century of living on this rock.
 Cheese Whiz (Thanks Tony),  probably not the healthiest stuff (akin to Velveeta I suppose) to eat,  but again, like Velveeta it's handy and serves a purpose,  funny how the mind lets you smell and taste things from your past that you haven't had in decades.
 Talking about Jiffy Pop, it was a pretty popular item among kids and some older folks as well I suppose,  but I never had a use for the stuff,  I love popcorn, there's an electric popcorn maker sitting on the our farm table as I type this, I made up a huge bowl of the stuff night before last, my wife and I enjoy some of the British mystery shows on PBS, my wife records them and when we get a few together we make a night of it watchin Midsummer Murders, Doc Martin, Father Brown and a few others, and sharing a bowl of popcorn.
 Back in the day my Mom and Dad made popcorn in a small stock pot, add oil, a cup of popcorn, put it on the stove, cover it with a lid, when it started to pop shake the pot, when it stops popping it's done, pure over some melted butter and a palm full of course salt and enjoy.
 Even while in the scouts we always made popcorn in a pan or kettle of some kind,  using Jiffy Pop was kind of like cheating, anyhow, the one and only (that I can remember) tine that we ever tried Jiffy Pop was one a leave peeping trip we took the kids on, it was a planned day trip into the Berkshires in western MA., it was a wonderful fall day and nobody really wanted to go home, so we drifted from MA. into NH., it got late so we pulled the pickup into a small campground for the night.
 The Pickup had a camper cap on it and we always kept some sleeping bags and camping gear in the back,   we also had a little food left from the sandwich stuff the wife had packed,  well I'll tell you it may have been just about a hundred miles north of home but it was much colder than it was at home at this time of the year,  we were camped a few miles from Franconia Notch and the Old Man of the Mountain and it got freezing a$$ cold in those mountains.
 The place we were camped in had some of those big class A motorhomes parked not far from our site,  and there was a nice little brook the ran right by our campsite, which was frozen solid when I got up that next morning,  anyhow that night I built a respectable fire and we were crowded around it trying to store as much of the heat off the fire as we could while the wife made what was left of the sandwich stuff, and it wasn't much.
 Well the lady from one of the monster motorhomes must have took an interest, because she came over to give us one of them Jiffy Pop foil pans, there were only five of us then, me, the wife, and three young ones, I thanked her and she didn't linger (it was cold).
 The kids took the wrapper off the foil pan and put it over the fire, it didn't take long to start popping and within a minute or so we were left with a bloated foil pan full of steaming burned little lumps of what looked like charred punk wood, wolfy knows what I'm talking about.
 So, after one of the coldest nights we've ever spent camping the sky finally brightened and we all piled into the cab of that F-250 and waited for the heater to start pumping out some warm, it was about 6:30 am. when the trucks cab started to show signs of warming and we pulled out of the campground,  we ended up driving through those mountains until about 9:30 when the sun finally made it over those mountains and started giving off some radiant heat.
 We spotted a small diner up ahead and I aimed the truck in it's direction and said to the family, I guess that's the last time you guys want to go camping at this time of the year, our oldest (about 12 yrs. old at the time said "No way, I want to come back next weekend, if we can bring a heater", it turned out to be a great trip after all,  but we never did give Jiffy Pop another try.   

[wsdstan]

We made popcorn the way you describe with the pot, oil, popcorn, and when the first one popped you shook it to keep the stuff from burning.  It worked well and just reading your post took me back to that kitchen and I could see everybody sitting at the kitchen table waiting for it to be done.  My mom would melt a stick of butter (seemed like) and poured it over the popcorn and added enough salt to float a body.  We loved it.

JiffyPop we had a few times but like others have noted if not done right it is a mess.

Cheese Whiz was not the first cheese in a can but it was the most well known I suspect.  We bought that stuff in the biggest jar they had and it made good cheese sandwiches and was good when grilled too.  It is still being made today.  There is an spray can of cheese around called Easy cheese but we have not tried it. 

[wolfy]

I couldn't remember what brand that aerosol cheese-grenade was that exploded in the campfire, so a quick search revealed its history.   Aerosol cheese was invented in 1965 under the Snack Mate label and was most likely the bomb of my memory.  It eventually morphed to the Easy Cheese label and is still available.....to kids & other terrorist groups.

[madmaxine]

OK.

So you have Velveeta, Cheeze Whiz, and Jiffy popcorn.

So how long can you survive?

Add potted meat.  Just 'cause.

[wsdstan]

I got beef jerky, it lasts forever I think.

[madmaxine]

Tried that.

Need Mylanta with that prep.

[wsdstan]

 

[madmaxine]

Back to PBR.  The whitewater river folk I hang around with in the summer time are divided on beer.  The rafting customers and the Atlanta kayakers drink microbrewery beer.  The raft guides and dirtbag kayakers drink PBR (or the equivalent).  I'm in the latter group.

burp

[wsdstan]

Me too.  Microbrewery beer seems to be aimed at millennials.   

[wolfy]

I've become a bit of a beer-snob due to the limitations of the Keto diet.  No carbohydrate-enriched microbrewery beer for me....Michelob Ultra has only 2.6 grams of carbs per serving.  What that means to me is that if I don't eat anything that has carbs in it all day....I can drink 20 bottles of beer at one sitting and still stick to the plan!      Heather, of course, disagrees.

[madmaxine]

I tried Ultra.  I really really tried.  It just never grabbed me.  So I just don't drink beer when I'm on keto. 

[wolfy]

Yeah, I don't either, I think the partial 12-pack that we have in the garage refrigerator has been there for at least a couple of months.  When you can't have 'real' beer, one of those M-U beers tastes pretty danged good, occasionally.  We usually split one when we have a meal that calls for one....like tonight, we're having corned beef & cabbage.

Well, I guess we won't.  I just went out to the garage to bring one in for our evening meal and discovered that it's all frozen solid.  I'm glad I checked....most of the aluminum bottles were bulged and ready to start leaking!

[crashdive123]

Yuengling has been my go to beer for quite some time.  They are the oldest brewery in the US for a reason.

[madmaxine]

My tongue gets all twisted up trying to pronounce that.  Ling ling.  wing ling; jingle ling, hingy ling.  Now I'm just confucious.