By Hannah Frishberg
“I guess you could say that malt liquor is like a beer that makes you want to break stuff.” —Tim Teichgraeber, wine critic
Perhaps the most difficult transition to college life for me was the sudden lack of my favorite malt liquors: where had the West Coast hidden the St. Ides and Private Stock I knew and loved back East? In their place I found Steel Reserve, as well as the familiar Colt 45 and OE, but these were small comforts.
The reasoning behind the disparate brand distribution of 40s from coast to coast would seem to be deeply hidden in industry data, as the interweb provided no answers and Pabst Brewing Company still hasn’t returned my calls. Yet it remains that most Cali kids have never sipped on Private Stock nor come into contact with the Crooked I, while SR was a new experience for many Reedies from New York. And then, of course, we’re all united in our 8-ball consumption (except for Floridians, whose state’s legal retail limits have left them with a strange and deformed creation called the 32oz.). But what’s the story behind the 40? It is a tale soaked in beer and filled with conspiracy theories and advertising.
The term “malt liquor” was first documented in England in 1690, but it’d be a good while before people were suckin on 40s and holdin up .44s. Clix is often credited as the first American malt liquor (granted a patent in 1948), and the original 40oz is thought to be an A-1 brand beer from 1961, with many better known brands soon to follow. Far from being associated with blunts and broads, however, 40s were initially marketed as an upscale beer for middle class white folk, promoted with advertisements featuring ladies in pearls sipping Schlitz out of stemware. Olde English’s original slogan was Latin for “It is being thirsted for in Duluth” with a picture of an Englishman in a plumed hat.
For 20 years brewers promoted malt liquor as “The New Party Brew”, 40s being “champagne on a beer budget”. And then, in the 1960s, breweries began to realize that African Americans, who comprised 12-14% of the population, were consuming 30-33% of their product. Starting with Champale, companies began redirecting their marketing towards the black community, now featuring black couples in their ads under headings like “Live a little on very little” and “Get Set for Living”. In 1967, just two years after the Watts riots, Los Angeles based Maier Brewing tried to cash in on a new product blatantly aimed at minority drinkers called Soul Mellow Yellow Beer. This was met with protests led by the NAACP, and the brewery sullenly killed the brand.
Throughout the 70s, malt liquor continued to be marketed towards black Americans as a just-as-tasteful substitute to more expensive liquors. And then came the now infamous 1986 commercial with Billy Dee Williams holding a can of Colt 45, crooning “It works every time”. Never before had malt liquor tried to be sexy. Suddenly, 40s were much more popular, and other brands began jumping on the badass-bandwagon of marketing tactics. Instead of middle-aged couples and gospel composers, hip-hop artists were being hired to rap about products. St. Ides, a reference to a fifth-century Irish nun, had Ice Cube testifying it would “get your jimmy thicker” (sales increased by 25%), while Biggie and Eazy E promoted their 40s of choice independent of endorsements. Health advocates and community leaders were outraged by the commercials, public outcry at one point leading the federal government to suspend all St. Ides advertising for three days. Malt liquor was becoming gangster, but in an invasive corporate fashion at the expense of many.
The 90s became even less politically correct. The decade saw the introduction of such wildly offensive new 40s as Crazy Horse, the bottle featuring an Indian chief in full headdress (the Native American population was outraged, and the name was quickly changed to Crazy Stallion), Phat Boy, Bad Frog (banned in many states for its label of a frog flipping the finger), Johnny 3 Legs, and Mandingo Malt Liquor, marketed in a can bearing a map of Africa. They also saw the introduction, death, and subsequent deep mourning of 45oz and 64oz bottles.
With entrepreneurs hard at work plowing money out of ethnic culture, conspiracy theorists began decrying malt liquor as no less than a deliberate chemical warfare against the black community. Allegations began circulating that 40s in fact contained not malt liquor but liquid crack-cocaine and that the alcohol content was known to cause sperm-related fertility problems and birth defects. One essay, “40 Ounces of Genocide”, links the number of crowns on the OE label (33) to the units of currency paid by English slave traders to the Spanish government in a 1713 agreement known as the Asiento. Some noted that the Steel Reserve brand mark, the medieval symbol for steel stylized to look like the number 211, is the California penal code for robbery. Furthermore, the alphanumeric gang code translation of 211, based on the 2nd and 11th letters of the alphabet, is “Blood Killer”.
In recent years, malt liquor has been nationally replaced in popularity by craft beer, with only a few of these new breweries adding to the 40s selection: Dogfish Head Liquor de malt was produced for just under three years, sold in brown paper bags with hand pasted labels of the Dogfish Head logo, retailing for $6-8 per 40oz. Ontario’s Great Lakes Brewing came out with Dirtbag McQuaig’s Malt Liquor for Fine Gentlemen, refilling empty Olde English bottles with their own beer; it was never even sold in stores. Our current decade also saw the production of the rarest 40 of all time: Snoop Dogg’s Funky 40th limited edition individually numbered 40s (only 40 exist). One elated 40s enthusiast (with 938 different bottles, he has the largest collection in the world) was sent 40 #1 by Pabst, who also paid for him to come to Snoop’s party at the Playboy Mansion. But 2014 holds in store a new era for the 40: Miller Coor’s will debut plastic 40oz bottles, and Miller High Life is coming out with a special champagne bottle style. Furthermore, 40s might see a marketing shift once again, as their present target demographic have of late begun preferring the sweeter kick of tallboys in 24oz cans.
So raise a 40 and give thanks for this blessing of a beverage, these giant bottles of cheap beer featuring wild animals and graffiti-style fonts which keep our bellies warm and our decision making poor. They’re half the price, triple the size, double the alcohol, and a third the quality. They exist almost exclusively in America – so much so that websites like americanfood4u.de (“We bring America to you”) sells OEs to anyone in Germany nostalgic enough for their gangster nights in the states to pay $6 plus shipping for a single 40. So pass the 40 and back the fuck up, bitch, cause I just thought I’d let you know you can’t take my brew away from me. Rock that 40oz.
This article is dedicated to Private Stock Malt Liquor (1953-September 2013). I pray that you, like the Twinkie, may be resurrected by capitalism.
“Malt Liquor: A History.” faithfulreaders. Kihm Winship. April 29, 2012.
“The Story of the Forty.” 40ozmaltliquor. Bruz. November 4, 2013.