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[QUOTE="Townie72, post: 336399, member: 780"]
OK, Toga," that's like just your opinion, man". In order to qualify you as a judge, you first have to answer  few questions:
 
1. What beer were Bert and Harry the spokes people for? ("Bert and Harry" not "Bert and Ernie")
2. What was "the one beer to have when you are having more than one"?
3. What beer sponsored a Miss (Name of Beer") Contest and had posters showing all the contestants located in bars and taverns?
4. What beer was the "three ring sign" associated with? (Purity, Body and Flavor were the interlocked rings)
 
If you pass the test, you no doubt know that Schlitz and Rheingold were two completely different animals. At the time (Pre-1970), Schlitz was a national brewer; like Budweiser, and was a "premium" beer at $7 a case.
 
Rheingold was less expansive ($5 a case). A regional brewer out of NYC, it was very "dry" with some bitterness. It was advertised as the "Dry Beer". It had a core of devotees as did Shaeffer and Piel's in NYC and Ballantine and Schmidts in Philadelphia.
 
This was before the beer industry decided that they'd make all the beers in one big brewery and just put it in different bottles. Then it all tasted the same ... so the uniqueness of the regional brews disappeared. SO if your experience is after the collapse of the regional brewers and the sale of their labels to large companies, I'd say you were right. But you weren't drinking real Rheingold. You were drinking generic beer in a can with a Rheingold label.
 
Thus setting the stage for the current fad of craft beers which are a reaction to the "one beer fits all" strategy of the major brewers.
 
After writing that I feel exactly like "Cliff Clavin" must have felt after pontificating.
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