How true. Back in the spring of 1978 I was sitting in my dorm room drinking a bottle of Hamm's I purchased on sale at the low price of $ 2.99 a case. One of my floor mates started making fun of me for drinking such inferior beer. Some of you may remember that Olympia brewery had recently purchased Hammm's and was making a marketing push in the midwest with an ad campaign that alluded to some fairy like creatures called Artesians that made Olympia so much better than whatever we used to drink. They had a slogan "it's the water". Now I being a good midwesterner grew up in the "land of sky blue waters" knew that it was the "water best for brewing" and challenged my fellow student to a bind taste testing. Actually, my cynical thesis was that as Olympia had bought up Hamm's, the beer was identical, only the packaging was different and he was paying $6 / case for the label.
My room mate presided over the tasting, being from Peoria, he was a Pabst man (also $2.99 / case). Low and behold, they actually did taste different. I was successful choosing Hamm's as my beer while the Artesians also preferred Hamm's, proving my thesis wrong while proving Jim Koch correct.