By the time Blitz-Weinhard was sold to the Pabst Brewing Company in 1979, Olde English Malt Liquor had become their top brand.

Michael Hagan's idea of a good time is to guzzle a few bottles of Olde English "800" Malt Liquor and smoke PCP with his fellow gang members in the slums of south central Los Angeles.

- The first line of an August 1987 Time magazine story called "Life And Death With the Gangs"[5] In August 1989, when the brand was owned by Pabst and targeted by the brewer towards the "urban contemporary market", a coalition of "22 public interest groups involved in minority issues" criticized the marketing of Olde English ﹘which as a malt liquor has a higher alcohol content than most beers﹘ or what they characterized as an "emphasis on Black and Hispanic consumers.

In 1992, Pabst introduced Old English 800 Draft, a cold-filtered instead of pasteurized "draft-style" malt liquor.

[7][8] Olde English received the gold medal in the American Style Specialty Lager category in 1997.