Walgreens holds a excessive seat on the spherical desk of America’s pharmacy-convenience retailer hybrids. And whereas it boasts a strong number of toothpaste, Haribo gummies, and Band-Aids, its beer aisle is one other story. Most of the time, it’s a sorry lineup of low cost, home macro swill, a handful of imports, the compulsory White Claw Selection Pack, and perhaps a couple of sixers of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. Primarily, the identical stuff could be discovered at fairly actually every other retailer that sells beer.
However not all that way back, Walgreens carried a lager that couldn’t be discovered wherever else. A personal label surprise within the vein of Dealer Joe’s in-house exclusives and Costco’s Kirkland Signature brews, it glided by the unabashedly unsexy title of Massive Flats 1901.
Massive Flats was a 4.5 p.c ABV American lager that first hit retailer cabinets in December 2010. As for the title, each can featured the next description: “Brewed in upstate New York, Massive Flats 1901 Premium American Lager pays homage to the flat boats that traveled the world’s rivers delivering items to early settlers. Simply because the water performed an important position within the settlers’ high quality of life, the pristine water used within the brewing of Massive Flats 1901 Premium Lager is important to the crisp, recent style of this conventional American brew.”
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In line with Star Information On-line, Massive Flats 1901 was developed by Novato, Calif.’s Vineyard Alternate, a beverage firm that produced personal label beers for different shops together with Costco, Kroger, and 7-Eleven. As famous on the can, the beer was certainly brewed in upstate N.Y., although precisely the place stays unclear. The Star Information On-line article claims that Massive Flats 1901 cans listed their manufacturing web site as Brewers Alternative in Rochester, however so far as we will inform, no such brewery exists. Some consider the title was a placeholder for Rochester’s Genesee Brewing Firm. It’s the same sleight of hand that Dealer Joe’s employs for its private-label choices: Whereas cans cite “Joesphsbrau Brewing Co.” because the producer, TJ’s beers are produced by a handful of breweries across the nation, none of which are literally referred to as Josephbrau Brewing Co. One other supply claims that Massive Flats 1901 was brewed by a North American Breweries, Inc. facility in upstate New York.
Regardless, by most accounts Massive Flats 1901 was an unremarkable beer — a nondescript brew that tasted near-identical to its macro neighbors on the shelf. However the place Massive Flats 1901 outshined the competitors was in its value level: $2.99 per 6-pack.
Whether or not or not the brewers behind it have been making an attempt to make a full-flavored beer, it didn’t matter. So far as clients have been involved, it was all concerning the cut price. A 2011 evaluation of Massive Flats 1901 printed within the Herald-Tribune was merely titled “For 45 cents a can, it’s … not that dangerous” (the author purchased it on sale). In the meantime, in a blind-tasting panel, 4 Chicago-based beer lovers truly mistook the beer for Previous Fashion and PBR, each of that are usually well-respected macro brews. By February 2011, Massive Flats 1901 was obtainable in 4,600 of Walgreens’ 7,655 areas nationwide.
After its preliminary debut, the beer obtained little to no press, save for a late 2015 article that poked enjoyable at polarizing critiques of it on BeerAdvocate.com. And by Might 2019, it had reportedly been discontinued regardless of its cut price value and satisfactory profile.
So why did Walgreens pull its beloved lager from the cabinets? It’s exhausting to inform. The corporate by no means supplied an evidence, nor did it formally announce its discontinuation. Sooner or later, shares ran dry and the beer simply stopped coming in. Regardless of the case was, it presumably wasn’t as a result of gradual gross sales. A Reddit thread about Massive Flats 1901 from two years in the past yielded an outpouring of feedback mourning its demise.
“One retailer I labored at couldn’t hold the crap in inventory, it offered so nicely!” wrote one consumer. “We had so many individuals lose their minds once they discovered that we didn’t carry it anymore!!” wrote one other.
Like many regional lagers and ultra-bargain beers of many years previous, Massive Flats 1901 now resides in that nice brewery within the sky, however it’s clearly not forgotten. And given the present state of inflation, a $3 6-pack feels like a greater deal than ever.
