How was the alcohol in the communist world?

It's either


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for me, but I've never tried any Russian or Eastern European beers. I would imagine that they have the same beers as during the communist era, only sold by different companies. Can anyone shed some light on this?

Actually not, the most popular beer in Russia today is all new beer. Some might be build around an old brewery but the owners, recipe and machines are all new so if it is situated in the same building I would say that it's new beer.
The most popular is Baltika, Nevskoe, Starij Melnik, Klinskoe, Sibirskaja Korona and Tinkoff.
Of course, many of the local beer still exist, but I don't think that they are so good.
What is positive is that the Russian have started to drink more of Russian produced beer instead of buying expensive and not very tasty foreign beer. What is bad is that they have learned to make to good beer so they have created a new problem to a country already filled with problems.

Georgian wines reign supreme, there is nothing better IMO insofar as taste, texture, and "drinkability." The best come from the Kakheti region (over 700 years of wine-growing history lends its hand to the supremacy of their wine - particularly the Red).

The most popular stuff in the USSR was Zhigulevskoe. Canned beer from DDR was considered "elite" beer. You can buy Baltika almost anywhere(they have it in all alcohol stores here in Maryland). However, as Rem said, most of the beer isfrom new breweries. I don't know about the old ones' status.

Btw, Rem, how is it a problem? Alcoholics drink hard spitits. Beer is a light spirit like wine.

Pictures of Soviet beer labels

How common were pubs in the Soviet Union?

Has anyone else tried East Asian communist beers?

Bah, down with incoherent drunkards! Drink KAYL 'BAKHOVSKY beer, drink the beer with the double gold label!

Courtesy Alexander Rodchenko

That reminds me...I should update that Russian Avant-Garde thread.

Soviet Stolichnya.........I have one of the old bottles hehe.

Its got people hammering down a hammer and sickle

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Btw, Rem, how is it a problem? Alcoholics drink hard spitits. Beer is a light spirit like wine.

Sure if you drink one bottle, no problem. But if you get drunk on a regularly on a mixture of vodka and beer then you have your problem. I think that no alcohol alone is dangerous, but it's the amount. If you one night drink 4 dl vodka or the same amount alcohol in beer (I don't know how many beers you have to drink to come up to that amount) you can't say that the beer option is safer.

In my opinion many Russians drink anytime and everywhere, many teenagers drnks which is bad since alcohol is especially dangerous when you grow.

I haven't got any numbers, but instead of drinking less vodka and replace it with beer they still drink much vodka and more beer. Therefore they consume more alcohol than before.

Litterature tips Stephen White Russia goes dry alcohol, state society.

Sorry for off-topic joke, although it connected to Russian drinking habits.

In the end of 70-ies the first Pepsi factory was opened in Crimea (Jevpatoria probably). In the opening ceremony the leader of Pepsi company was asking food industry minister of USSR, what is the most popular drink in Russia? Vodka, honestly admitted the minister. Let's see after one year of production..., hopefully promised the Pepsi man.
After one year there was a meeting to make conclusions and newer plans for Pepsi in Crimea. The Pepsi man reminded to the minister his last year question - Vodka with Pepsi, answered the minister to a question.

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Soviet Stolichnya.........I have one of the old bottles hehe.

My dad would sometimes buy the old Soviet made Stolichnya and would remark that it was one of the only liquors that would actually print a picture of the factory on the label...
I guess it reminds us who made it.

By the way, there's no people hammering and sickling on the Stolichnaya bottle AFAIK. It's a picture of Moscow Hotel(built in the early 50's, associated with legend about Stalin, currently being demolished and rebuilt).

I don't know about then but now in Bulgaria there lots of nice local beers, vodka, wine and rakia especially. I think nothing has changed at all. Only that we get some western brands and that these same western brands bought the Bulgarian beer breweries

could you get Cutty Sark in the Soviet Union? Or would that have been too western? Black market acquisition I would guess?

mickeba

Yeah I've (being the sad individual I am) looked up the history of Baltika, apparently the Soviet government built a brewery in the 70s and Baltika as we know it was born.

Ironic, a new brewery being built in the Brezhnev era.

Ian

Vodka, Beer, Champagne. All quite fine.

I'd like to add on to that. In the 70's, to combat alcoholism, wine was promoted, as cheap sorts were promoted and the sale of vodka was only allowed after 11am on weekdays(the price also rose).

I remember visiting a Berioshka in Moscow in April 1989 and being confronted with a wall of vodka.

Stolichnaya was there, of course, as was Bison and Starka.

Starka, if I remember correctly, was darker incolour - looking more like a whisky than a vodka, but it was very nice

In the end I chose a bottle of Moskovskaya. Superb!!

Sore head in the morning though

We could get Heineken and Stella beers in the Berioshka, but we also drank draught beer in the hotel. Unfortunately I didn't know the name of it.

In Romania and Hungary we had this stuff that was much like Soviet rocket fuel, called Palinka. We still have it and just a small sip is enough to get most folks drunk and it burns all the way down. Most of it is homemade.