Some may say the best beer in the United States comes from the Northeast, but no one can deny that the Midwest — particularly Wisconsin — is our country’s regional macro beer mecca. Hey, there’s a reason so many Wisconsin beer brands call themselves old: There’s Old Milwaukee, Schoen’s Old Lager, and, of course, Old Style. In all its red, white, and blue canned glory, G. Heileman Brewing Company’s Old Style has captured the hearts of Midwesterners since its inception. And though its popularity has waxed and waned over the decades, it’s managed to stand the test of time, unlike some other brews under the Heileman umbrella. A testament to its quality? Perhaps. A testament to how profoundly inoffensive its flavor is? Also possible. Here, we chronicle its rise to macro stardom.
Old Style was originally brewed with old-school fermentation techniques.
When Old Style first debuted in 1900, G. Heileman Brewing Company proudly advertised the beer’s fermentation process, called kräusening. Rather than employing forced carbonation (a method that forces carbon dioxide into a beer after its first round of fermentation), kräusening is a double-fermentation process that adds fermenting wort, or kräusen, to a new batch of beer to kick start fermentation. Since the kräusen contains active yeast, it is met with little resistance in its new environment and assists with a clean, speedy ferment. G. Heileman Brewing originally claimed that kräusening gave its lager “extra carbonation and complex richness.”
It wasn’t always called Old Style…
G. Heileman
