I love Pabst even though I hate beer, which makes my stomach violently clench. I don’t drink the stuff, but I will drink Pabst if there’s no other alcohol around. I love Pabst the way a mother loves her criminal son. I shouldn’t because it makes me so nauseous, but I can’t help myself. I was born and raised in Milwaukee, Wis., less than a mile from one of Pabst’s own current breweries – Miller Valley on 42nd Street and State Street. The smell of beer yeast, which smells like a rotten egg fart, pervades my childhood memories, and even now I can recall how the yeasty breezes floating up from Miller Valley interfered with my childhood games. I credit this early childhood experience with beer for my distaste now. At the same time, I can’t deny Pabst’s positive presence in my life. Once I came of age, my friends and I were always scheming for ways to drink. My job at the Milwaukee County Zoo provided the best means to achieve this, and I became an official hook-up because I could score kegs of warm Pabst for free.
Granted, warm Pabst is nasty, but to 16-year-olds, it’s freedom. Taking the first foamy sip from the red plastic keg cup was the way I defied the Catholic rigidity in my life. It was more gratifying than yelling back at my parents during their daily bitch session about whatever I had done wrong that day. I toasted them at least once every time I drank for driving me to be naughty. I stopped drinking beer shortly after I started drinking alcohol and moved to hard liquors like vodka and whiskey, to which I’m still quite partial. I’d rather be sober than drink beer and am known to turn it down when everyone else is out to get sloppy drunk, except Pabst. I’ll drink Pabst.
The one time in my life I was almost drunk off beer, it was Pabst Blue Ribbon, all the way. When the opportunity to write this column arose, I eagerly jumped on it because of my history with Pabst. In fact, I immediately called my father, a 40-year-beer-drinker, to chat about it. “Pabst has gone the way of the dodo bird,” my father said. “I’ve been drinking it since 1963 when it was good, but now it’s just watered down piss. I don’t bother.”
He switched to Miller Genuine Draft and hasn’t looked back since. I’ve seen him turn down Pabst, and my father is not an elitist about anything. Pabst Brewing Co. has been brewing beer since 1775 – for longer than the U.S. is old – but has been around as a company since 1844. In that time, it has always been one of the innovators.
PBR was one of the first beers offered in a can. In the late 1800s until the early 1900s, it was packaged with a blue ribbon tied around its neck.
People asked for the blue ribbon and later it became known as Pabst Blue Ribbon. During World War II, PBR was sold only to American troops during World War II in an olive green can because of tin rationing.
Pabst Brewing Co. was bought out by another company sometime in the 1980s, and the recipe changed as a result. It’s not like Pabst was made of the finest or most expensive ingredients, but apparently the original recipe – the very product itself – was seen as fair game to the new owners. Capitalism can be ruthless, especially when it comes to product quality.
My friend Aaron Bell is also from Milwaukee and attends the University. Bell works at Little’s Market, where even the clock has the PBR logo, and he sells a significant amount of PBR as part of his job.
“We have more ways of selling Pabst than any other beer here, for sure,” Bell said. “It comes in more varieties of quantity than any other beer we sell in the store … tall boys, 40s, six-packs of 16-ounce cans, half-racks, full cases, and even 18 packs of bottles, man, and nothing beats Pabst in a bottle.
“All I know is that Pabst is the national beer of Nepal,” said Bell, “and I can’t wait to visit.”
All I know is: PBR me ASAP, and I hate beer.

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