Loyalhanna Pennsylvania Lager: Latrobe Aims for Yuengling?Aug 05 '03 (Updated May 31 '06) Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Loyalhanna Pennsylvania Lager comes close to Yuengling Lager but falls short on my tasting impressions. At $4.49 a six, it is worth a try though.
The Latrobe Brewery in Latrobe, PA, [Latrobe has been owned by the Labatt Brewing Company of Canada since 1987], is most known for Rolling Rock [www.rollingrock.com]. Rolling Rock is a beer I’ve drunk enough of over the years to be fairly comfortable stating that it is a benign beer, best served cold, and pretty much tasteless, one after the other. I still drink it occasionally. Rolling Rock is a session beer, not the worst thing you can drink, and attracts a following based on price, brand loyalty, and a sustained lack of adventure on the part of the American macro-drinking hordes. Consequently, I never imagined Latrobe would ever detract from the Rolling Rock stable with another brew, but they’ve just unveiled their new beer, Loyalhanna Pennsylvania Lager, in my area of Jersey and throughout Pennsylvania. They are aggressively making it a price leader at $4.49 a six pack, priced below Rolling Rock’s $4.99 and the other Macros of Bud, Miller, etc. I imagine that the introductory price will not last forever. Loyalhanna Pennsylvania Lager is seemingly not so much targeted at the younger beer drinker demographic (21-30 group) that Latrobe covets with Rolling Rock but more at confirmed Yuengling Lager fans. Yuengling has been making great strides over the past two years or more as it positions itself as a preferred regional brand with national aspirations. Loyalhanna Pennsylvania Lager is described as a “traditional amber lager” and derives its name from the Loyalhanna Stream that flows nearby to the Latrobe Brewing complex. Latrobe boasts that it is brewed with “premium malted barley” and the “freshest hops.” That strikes me as something of a curious boast as who would want a beer brewed with the “cheapest malted barley” and “dried out dregs of hops we stored in the basement and then forgot about” ? But at $4.49 and a memory for nostalgic beers awakened, I figured I could always pawn it off on unsuspecting macro-loving guests if it was horrible. So I tried it. It wasn’t horrible. The first one wasn’t so bad after cutting the lawn in 100% humidity (Jersey summers are not for the faint of heart). It wasn’t great either. Tasting Notes and Impressions I poured a second one into a glass. Loyalhanna pours to an amber color with a quick bubbly head that dissipates even faster. The taste is immediately sweet, malty, and with a secondary flavor of what I would describe as Corn or Karo syrup especially apparent as the beer warms up. The hops seem rather subdued here with just the barest hints of dryness and a touch of a floral note. There is a certain crispness and clean quality here of course, but the beer is generally unremarkable. Would I Have Another? Possibly. I have three left. In other words, Loyalhanna Pennsylvania Lager is an okay beer (two stars)but not one to seek out unless you are overly price conscious at the expense of your taste buds. I drink beer for taste considerations alone, outside of the other after effects. Loyalhanna doesn’t deliver much in the way of a taste profile but it is beer, which is enough for a lot of people. Served ice cold and wet, it’s not a bad ”lawn mower beer.” The taste is one most macro-beer lovers are familiar with, one that is certainly crisp but generally benign. That said, Loyalhanna Pennsylvania Lager comes close to Yuengling Lager (which runs $4.99 a six-pack in my area), but falls short on my tasting impressions. I find that Yuengling is more to my liking as I find its amber red lager comfortably consistent beer after beer and I enjoy its tart and tangy quality. The malt and hops seem better balanced without the syrupy aftertaste I found with Latrobe’s version. Yuengling will probably remain more of a regional favorite with me. Loyalhanna Pennsylvania Lager has a way to go in that regard but at the $4.49 price point, it will attract some attention. Whether or not it will convince the I buy no beer priced higher than $5.00-5.50 hordes to adopt it as their everyday beer remains to be seen. The other thought I would have on the psychology of pricing is this: By pricing it lower than its main regional competitor, Latrobe is actually sending a message that their version is not better but actually worse. If they had introduced Loyalhanna Pennsylvania Lager, at a higher price point than Yuengling, they would be saying the opposite. They would lose some sales from the overly price conscious beer drinker but they could then position the lager higher up the scale and compete with Sam Adams, Harppoon, and perhaps Otter Creek. I suppose that's why I'll never be a marketing whiz. 2006 Update With recent announcement (May 19, 2006) that Anheuser-Busch will purchase the Rolling Rock brands from InBev USA, the U.S. subsidiary of Belgian-based InBev, it’s likely that Loyalhanna will not show up again. It was an experiment that didn’t pan out for Latrobe and at this point, it’s likely that Latrobe itself will be a thing of the past, once the sale goes through. The sale does not include the plant. A-B intends to brew Rolling Rock and Rolling Rock Light at its plant in Newark, NJ. http://www.anheuser-busch.com/news/AB_buys_Rollingrock_051906.htm  |
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