Cans of Genesee Cream Ale were de rigueur when I was growing up in Eastern Pennsylvania in the late 1970s. The simple green can design is emblazoned in my memory of that more simple time. It was certainly one of the favorite beers of my youth — at least in my memory — probably because cream ales are such a light, undemanding style. They fell out of fashion for a number of years, but lately several craft brewers are resurrecting the style as their lightest offering. It’s a much better alternative than making a low-calorie beer or American-style lager. High Falls Brewing, who has owned the brand for many years now, abandoned the all-green design sometime in the 1980s and when I carried it at BevMo in the mid-1990s all that was available were bottles with a paper label. Which is a shame. The beer itself I recall wasn’t great but was certainly serviceable and a decent session choice. It was that plain green can that had us all enraptured, though in retrospect I have no idea why.
High Falls is now trying to tap into that nostalgia I feel for the brand with a new retro-styled website at www.geneseecreamale.com. It’s a nice site but I don’t think they went back far enough because they’re still showing that damned paper label and a bottle on the main page. It does suffer the problem I have with virtually all big brewery sites — Flash. They’re so over the top with using flash technology instead of HTML that I hate navigating them. Maybe I’m in the minority here because I started hand-coding HTML back in the mid 90s, but I find it very annoying.
Sure, it’s a nice piece of breweriana, made to look older than it is, but where’s the can?
Frankly, this is how I will always remember Genesee Cream Ale. If they really want to tap into nostalgia, they need to bring back this can.
While in college in upstate NY studying Old & Middle English, I catered a medieval feast instead of writing a term paper. Chicken stewed in mead was one recipe, but there was no mead to be had, so I used Genny Cream Ale and honey instead. Lots of green cans in the kitchen!