here's a new house beer at Carmel's Hog's Breath Inn. "Pale Rider Ale", which borrows its name from Clint's 1985 Western, made its debut at his landmark San Carlos Street restaurant and bar during the first week of August, 1997. "I'm not really in the beer business," Eastwood said, "Anything that I make from this will go to charity, like Paul Newman does with his spaghetti sauce."
Brewed and bottled by Celis Brewery, an Austin, Texas, subsidiary of the Miller Brewing Company, Pale Rider Ale will be introduced into the Carmel-Monterey area and then eventually throughout the West.
Alot of names were tested at first before finally settling on the Pale Rider name. Everyone's first choice for the beer's name was simply "Hog's Breath", after Eastwood's famous Carmel, California restaurant. That name could not be cleared, however, due to fact there are many other bar's across the country with the same name.
The actor himself preferred "The Beer With No Name", a play on the anonymous antihero he portrayed in three "Spaghetti Westerns" he made in the 1960's.
After all of the legal hurdles of getting the name chosen were cleared, Clint Eastwood helped in testing the beer to get the taste just right. "I don't drink much. When I do, I prefer a beer or a glass of wine. Testing wasn't all that tough," Eastwood said.
Sample taste testings were held at a jazz festival Clint did at Carnegie Hall in early 1997, then again at a cast party in Savannah during the shooting for the film, 'Midnight in the Garden of Good and Evil.'
All of Eastwood's proceeds from Pale Rider Ale sales will be donated to his favorite charities around the country, including the Carmel Youth Center and the Boys and Girls Club of the Monterey Peninsula.
Note: As of 08/31/00, Celis Brewery has discontinued making Pale Rider Ale.
