New company North American Breweries is pouring $10 million into their Rochester HQ brewery High Falls Brewing, which falls into line with my anticipation that they’d use the place as a source for domestically produced Labbatt Blue.

I did not, however, expect them to change the name back to The Genesee Brewery, nor did I think they’d express any interest in reviving the Genesee Beer brand. That’s a ballsy move.

Standard American Lager from any manufacturer exists within a tight style spectrum; all brands look and taste pretty similar. As the documentary Beer Wars demonstrated, even extremely brand-loyal beer consumers have difficulty picking their brand out of a range in blind taste tests.

With such similar products, the only way the large lager manufacturers can differentiate their product is by positioning and hyperexpensive image advertising, battling for the same saturated market which, incidentally is stagnant, or reaching up to 2% growth at best.

Does NAB have the scratch to go toe-to-toe with Coors, SAB Miller and InBev/Anheuser Busch?  Probably not. But they don’t have the production capacity or enormous costs of those companies either. It looks like the smart play for Genessee is to use the Yuengling model as a case study, drive loyalty in the home market, and position via product pride.

Genesee Beer, the beer that saturated bars and supermarket shelves back in the ’70s, is hard to get nowadays. Let’s hope that NAB’s decision opens the tap lines once again.

-Mark