When I was in college, we had maybe 10 beer types available, and several were cheaper versions of the main one, like RW&B and PBR.
They all tasted pretty much the same, and "Coors" was this extremely rare magical stuff that I thought was favored by folks who don't like beer taste. We also had Stroh, which was "fire brewed". No one every explained to me why that was some kind of a thing. There were a couple of German beers in some stores here and there, St, Pauli Girl I recall, and Heineken, but we couldn't afford them. One bar downtown had Schlitz Dark on tap and I really liked that stuff. Miller Lite was off in the future.
Bud, Miller, Schlitz, PBR, Stroh, and derivatives. That was basically IT.
Compare that with today, it's pretty amazing. I have to credit Sam Adams in part for this revolution. Europeans used to scoff at US beers for obvious reason.
I was in Seattle in 1988 (or so) at a conference and chanced upon this thing called a "brew pub". It was fascinating, they made their own beer on site, and had great salmon sandwiches. What a concept. They had DIFFERENT beers that really tasted GOOD and not like horse piss in the rain.