Hi everyone....I hope you can shed some light on this for me.
I work with an old Marine and he is always asking me why he can't Amstel in the US marketplace. Just plain Amstel, not Amstel light. I looked around on Google, and it seems that everything US related redirects to Amstel Light. Am I missing something? It seems the only way I can buy some, if I wanted to, would be to go through a UK site.
Amstel, Heinaken, same company? I feel like this is the root of my problem!
SOS!
Thanks guys!
S.
Yes, it is. Heineken and it's old US importer, Van Munching, were very conservative companies and when Heineken bought Amstel (mid-60's, IIRC) Van Munching decided NOT to continue bringing the beer in the US as it would simply "steal" sales from Heineken. When "light", low calorie beers became the fad, VM also didn't want to canabalize Heineken sales with a "Heineken Light", so the two companies settled on "Amstel Light" for that segment of the market. (All of this info coming from the book by Van Munching's grandson, "Beer Blast"). Heineken has since bought the Van Munching family out, thus the company that imports the beers into the US is now known as "Heineken USA", and that's also why there's a "Heineken Light" in the US, now, probably.
Heineken owned a brewery in Canada and used the Amstel name for it (that's where the import "Grizzly Beer" came from in the US), so there was once a Canadian Amstel but the brewery was sold (now known as Lakeport- recently bought by Labatt/Inbev), but don't know if the beer is still brewed under contract up there or if Canada gets "real" Amstel or only "Amstel Light".
There's still a Heineken/Amstel brewery in the Carribean, that does brew regular "Amstel".
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