All things considered, it is NOT your grandfather's Sterling.

The usual disclaimer applies: One's taste in beer is highly subjective.

This fact duly noted, and as reflected by Sterling's 1970s and 80s incarnations, I formerly found it ... shall we say ... not to my liking. Before I was legal age, my heart would sink when those charged with procuring beer produced a case Sterling.

It's an understatement to suggest that times change, and thankfully so.

I've tasted the most recent version of Sterling, and found it a pleasing, mild Pilsner. That's fair enough, and although I retain suspicion of "heritage" brands, I'm entirely sincere in wishing the current owners of Sterling's identity all the best as they seek to re-establish the brand and open a dispensary and taproom in Louisville.

I'm left to ponder a question that probably can't be answered. What did Sterling taste like in its prime, before being cheapened and profaned in the usual post-war fashion, leaving it a bad taste in the memories of older folks like me?

What would it have been prior to Prohibition? Granted, numerous Pre-Prohibition Pilsners are being brewed these days, but even if one resolved to do the legwork and research, and actually make this style the model for a revival like Sterling's, isn't it true that it wouldn't succeed?

I'd love it, but no one else would. Perhaps my suspicions would be better turned inward.

Sterling Beer owners have confidence in future of ‘heritage’ brand, by Kevin Gibson (Insider Louisville)

Todd Jackson is the first to admit he’s still finding his way in the beer business. After buying the more than century-old Sterling brand with his brother Ken in 2012, he’s had three different brewing partners and a packaging concept that was well received but ill-fated.

But Sterling has high hopes for a bright future. Recently, it was reported that the Sterling owners and its investor group, Louisville Sterling LLC, had a contract to purchase a pair of currently empty buildings in the Highlands at 1300 and 1306 Bardstown Road, with the intent to open a taphouse and brewery operation.

Sterling web site ... can we have another discussion about age verification on beer sites?

_

Idle 1980s thoughts about bad beers and old men.

I was thinking back to when my love affair began ... with bars, taverns and watering holes. It was before I began traveling, so these were the local spots -- some of them dives, others with slightly more dignified pretensions.

Seeing as I was just south of 21 when it started, pretty much all the patrons were older than me, and it seems that when it came to the old men, who in retrospect probably meant anyone older than 40, most of them were drinking traditional manly, old-man beers like Pabst, Sterling and Miller High Life.

At some point shortly thereafter, when I was in my mid-twenties, I became aware that almost all of them had switched to Lite, Bud Light and even Old Milwaukee Light. Price seemingly wasn’t the issue; if anything, they’d traded up and were paying more to cover the cost of Miller’s and Bud's television ads.

After long consideration, I concluded that a lifetime of Sterling and City finally had gotten to them, and when they realized that light beer was socially acceptable to their peers, under the rationalization that it was less filling, thus enabling them to drink even more beer than ever before, they fled their traditional brands as fast as their terminally damaged taste buds would carry them. Better the nothingness of wet air than something terminally foul ... and you could hear the sighs of relief in air-conditioned lounges and softball fields all across the nation.

It pleases me that local brands like City and Sterling are back, in altered form; in short, drinkable. The Pabst renaissance over the past two decades as yet puzzles me. It tastes nothing like the Pabst I remember. In fact, it tastes like nothing at all.

Wait, I forget; that's the point, isn't it?