Tudor Cream Ale

Tudor Beer and Ale found its niche as the store brand for the famous Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company, better known as A & P.  The US grocery chain operated from 1859 to 2015, and was the largest grocery retailer in the nation for 60 of those years reaching its peak in 1930 with 16,000 stores.

From 1949 through the mid 1980s Tudor beer was produced in nine different locations by eight different breweries in a total of six states. The first was brewed in New York, and then the breweries followed a similar path as A & P, expanding to cities like Chicago, IL and Norfolk, VA both locations where A & P was well established. Therefore, you can find the Tudor Cream Ale flat top can with stamps from a variety of locations.

All of the breweries that supplied A & P with Tudor Beer and Ale used the same label. The green was extremely popular, particularly in Virginia and can still be found at dump sites around the state if you feel like trying to discover your own original. Other labels followed in red, white and blue or brown on pale yellow.

As A & P faced increasing competition from discount grocers and large chains like Walmart, it struggled to remain profitable. In the 1970s and 1980s, it began drastic store-closing programs which reduced the total number to less than 1000. It was at this same time that the demand for its house brand of beer (Tudor) plummeted, and production of the beer was suspended by the mid 1980s