Canadian Rice Beer
[ABOVE +BELOW] - In the mid-1960s, the owner of the KINGSBEER brand, Canadian Breweries. (which owned both the Dow and the Dawes brands) changed the labeling of the beer to stress it was an All-Malt beer, but, of course, it might have included malted rice.
[ABOVE + BELOW] In ads, Frontenac "Blue Label" Special was compared to the largest adjunct lagers in the US - only one of which, Budweiser, was noted for using rice at the time (early 1920s). Frontenac Breweries Ltd. of Montreal also brewed an all-malt pilsner, Frontenac "Red Label" Standard.
[BELOW] - After Repeal in the United States, Drewry's set up a US subsidiary and contracted with the Sterling Brewers of Evansville, IN to brew Drewry's beers for the US market. Several years later, in 1936, new US owners (including the president and other officials of Detroit Pfeiffer Brewing Co.) took over the Muessel Brewing Co. of South Bend, IN, bought the rights to "Drewry's" brand, renaming the company Drewry's Limited U.S.A., and began brewing Drewry's Lager and Drewry's Old Stock Ale which they heavily advertised as "Canada's Pride Since 1877" or referring to it as an "American brewed Canadian Ale".
In 1954-55, Molson entered the Ontario market, building a new lager brewery in Toronto to brew its first lager beer, CROWN & ANCHOR, which was initially marketed as a "RICEBEER" ("BIERE DE RIZ" in French). By the next year, the reference to rice was dropped and the beer simply referred to as "MOLSON'S LAGER".
At the time, the Ontario market was approx. 30% lager, while in Molson's home market of Quebec, it was only around 6%.
Coincidentally, Molson released it lighter GOLDEN ALE the same year.
CROWN & ANCHOR Lager seems to have been replaced by Molson's CANADIAN LAGER around 1959-1960.
