Looks like Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve has made a convoluted journey back to Oregon.
You can read the full press release from Molson Coors HERE. In broad strokes, Weinhards was a fairly large regional that got passed around like a hot potato. The beer wasn’t even brewed in Oregon for the last twenty odd years. Somehow the brand alone ended up in Molson Coors hands and has been passed down to one of their subsidiary breweries, Hop Valley.
As for the beer itself, it is a ” 4.7% alcohol-by-volume lager, first brewed in 1976 and acquired by Miller Brewing in 1999, will be brewed using its original recipe and Cascade hops from Oregon.”
By the time that I could legally drink, the allure of Weinhards was trending down. I still have brand affection but it is not based on the beer so much as nostalgia. How Hop Valley converts new twenty-one year olds is a bit of a mystery especially after their parent company essentially put the beer in the freezer and walked away.