Pub in Sydney sold its last 18 cans in 2011 or something lol.give it 5 years it will come back as a special edition at 60 bucks a case
SMH 24/11/11
It was rolled gold but KB Lager may be on the way out
THE consumption of alcohol in NSW risks becoming lonesome, morbid and drear as a last great historic link with local brewing, KB Lager, teeters towards extinction.
One of the few Tooth and Co's drops still on the market, KB Lager was once such a NSW favourite that CUB dared not drop the brand when the Victorian takeover occurred.
That was 38 years ago but now KB lager is almost harder to find than hen's teeth.
No longer on tap, it is available as takeaway cans in a dwindling number of pubs but has completely vanished from online liquor outlets.
In an apparent attempt to deflect attention from the KB Lager drought, CUB this week issued a limited edition Resch's Draught can - featuring the original can design from the early '60s. Only 5000 cartons have been produced, CUB says, to give NSW beer drinkers a taste of the past.
But that has not satisfied Brenden Lawless, the licensee of the Strawberry Hills Hotel in Surry Hills, who is down to his last 18 cans of KB.
He said CUB had told one of his managers that KB Lager was no longer available. ''It is so heavy with heritage, everybody's dad drank it,'' Mr Lawless said. ''KB added character to our fridge and put a smile on drinkers' faces but now, shocked would be the best word to describe it. I was begging the man from CUB, 'Don't cut us off, don't cut us off'. It's our best-selling beer.''
KB is a contraction of Kent Brewery, named by John Tooth as a homesick nod to the England he left when he started making beer on the Parramatta Road site in 1835.
- Some say KB went on to become a patriotic part of NSW life, as XXXX did in Queensland. The beer wars of the 1970s and '80s featured massive advertising campaigns with blokey images of handlebar moustaches and racecallers spruiking the product, and the tipple acquired the slang names Kid's Beer and Rolled Gold.
In recent times, KB served as a prop for the fictitious rugby league boofhead Reg Reagan, aka Matthew Johns, a shtick that failed to excite consumers.
Mr Lawless renovated his hotel last November and decided to stock the fridge with KB Lager to ''bring back memories''.
''It hit a chord with the 30-plus crowd … soon as they see it they say, 'Oh, that's the beer my dad used to drink, I'll get three of those,' '' he said.
''I actually spoke with a bloke from Carlton about six months ago because I wanted to get it on tap. And he told me they were probably going to discontinue it.''
Some have not waited for a taste of nostalgia, however. The KB flag from the Strawberry Hills Hotel bottle shop has been souvenired already.
