A beer maker many drinkers haven’t heard of has become the top American brewer. Depending on how you define “American brewer.”

G.G. Yuengling and Son didn’t as much dethrone Budweiser, Miller and Coors as it had to wait for them to get acquired by foreign companies. Although December sales figures are preliminary, the maker of Yuengling Lager passed Boston Beer, brewer of Sam Adams, to take the crown for 2011, according to trade journal Beer Marketer’s Insights. The ranking is for beers brewed in the U.S. with American ownership.

“It’s a little ironic" that Yuengling is the No. 1 brewer, given its lack of a national profile, said Eric Sheppard, editor of Beer Marketer's Insights. “There are a lot of caveats.”

“It’s not that long ago Yuengling being the largest in the U.S. would have caused people to go, ‘Wha?’,” he said.

Despite its lack of recognition, Yuengling is no upstart. A family owned brewer founded in 1829 and based in Pottsville, Pa., the company sells seven brands and distributes its product in 14 mostly southeastern states. The company's signature brand is its flagship traditional lager.

“By default we’ve slowly climbed our way to the top after 183 years,” chief financial officer David Casinelli said.

He downplays any No. 1 talk, saying the Buds and Millers of the world, even if foreign-owned, “are brewed in American breweries with American jobs."

"Those rankings are more important to industry gurus," Casinelli told msnbc.com. "What’s important to us is we’re growing in an industry that’s declining.”

Anheuser-Busch, brewer of the iconic Budweiser brand, was bought by Belgian conglomerate InBev in 2008. Miller and Coors are owned by a multinational that is based in Britain and Canada.

According to figures supplied by Insight, with preliminary December numbers, Anheuser-Busch InBev has 47 percent of the American market and brewed 99 million barrels in 2011. MillerCoors is second at 28 percent with 60 million barrels.

Yuengling’s numbers that make them dominant? Two-and-a-half million barrels brewed, for a 1 percent market share. Boston is less than a hundred thousand barrels behind.

 Casinelli credits a push this year into the Ohio market that was “far more successful than we planned” for pushing them over the top. But if you live in, say, Texas or California, don’t plan on ordering one any time soon. The company has no more expansion plans at this time.

“We are a regional brewery," Casinelli said. “We will grow as we feel we can handle it. But we’re not going to run across the U.S. and become a national brand.”

But they don’t plan on going away either.

“We’re a fifth-generation business. Most don’t make it past, what do they say, two.”

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Clifton Vial, 52, climbed into the cab of his Toyota Tacoma on Monday night in Nome to see how far a road winding to the north would take him.

More than 40 miles out of town, at about 9:30 that night, he found out. As Pink Floyd's "Echoes" played on the stereo and temperature dipped well below zero in the darkness, Vial's pickup plunged into a snowdrift.

"I made an attempt at digging myself out and realized how badly I was stuck," Vial told The Anchorage Daily News. He was wearing tennis shoes, jeans and a $30 jacket from Sears. "I would have been frostbit before I ever got the thing out of there."

Vial found himself alone near Salmon Lake, on a road that doubles as a snowmachine trail in the winter and stretches inland from the Bering Sea city. Far beyond the reach of his cellphone, Vial slipped into a fleece sleeping bag liner and wrapped a bath towel around his feet. He occasionally started the truck to run the heater and listen to the radio.

Was anybody talking about him? Did they know he was missing? By the third day, Vial said, the truck was nearly out of gas. "I felt really pissed at myself," Vial said. "I shouldn't have been out there by myself unprepared for what I knew was possible."

Normally Vial carries a sleeping bag, extra gasoline and other survival gear in the 2000 Toyota, he said. But on this trip he had few supplies, no food and no water. Even his dogs, a pair of labs that usually accompany him on drives, stayed home.

Vial kept busy trying to think of ways to stay warm. His wife and daughter were out of town, searchers said. No one would know he was gone until he failed to show up for work at 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.

"He's a very punctual employee," said John Handeland, general manager for Nome Joint Utility System, where Vial works as an operator mechanic. "By 4 o'clock we figured something was wrong."

No one could reach Vial on the phone. Co-workers patrolling the town that night found no sign of his pickup.

Handeland called police on Wednesday when Vial missed work for a second day.

The Nome Volunteer Fire Department was alerted and Vial's co-workers and volunteer rescuers drove surrounding roads in search of the Toyota.

One searcher drove 41 miles along Kougarok Road -- just a few miles from where Vial sat shivering and stranded in his pickup -- but saw no tracks. The searcher turned back as daylight disappeared and the road conditions worsened, Handeland said.

Troopers joined the search. Rescuers looked for Vial on the ground and from the air, in planes and from a helicopter.

"When we get called on situations like this, it's a needle in a haystack," said Jim West Jr., a Nome fire department captain and search and rescue coordinator.

For Vial, the cold was worse than the hunger, he said. Still he scoured the pickup in vain for food.

His only provisions: Snow, and a few cans of Coors Light that had frozen solid in the cab.

Vial ate the beers like cans of beans. "I cut the lids off and dug it out with a knife," he said.

The overnight low temperature in Nome dropped from about 12 below Monday night -- not counting windchill -- to 17 below on Wednesday morning, said National Weather Service meteorologist Charles Aldrich.

Battling for warmth, Vial wrapped a bath towel around his feet and placed another over his knees and thighs. He shook his ankles and knees to keep moving. He stuffed rags in his clothes and unraveled tissue paper, jamming it down around his feet.

"When I was just sitting there in my coat in the sleeping bag liner I would pull my arms inside my T-shirt to try and utilize my body heat as much as I could," Vial said. "That worked fine for some time, as far as keeping my torso warm and my arms. But my legs and feet where getting pretty cold."

The wind rumbled like airplane engines, Vial said. He thought about his daughter, and about what would happen if no one found him in time.

"I tried to sleep when I could," Vial said, "but I knew that I might not wake up."

When he did close his eyes, Vial said, strange and vivid images appeared. "Saw my daughter. Saw my job. Saw some things that didn't look like people."

He would picture himself driving around Nome, saying hello to friends, only to snap awake and find himself back in the truck, freezing.

At one point Vial decided he would only fire up the pickup's engine once a day. "(The gas tank) was on `E' and the gas light was coming on," he said.

Vial never heard the rescuers arrive. It was early Thursday afternoon, three days after he first became stranded in the snow, when they pulled up behind his pick-up. A co-worker and another volunteer opened the door to the truck, he said.

They gave him a Snickers bar -- it seemed too dry to eat, he said -- and an orange soda.

Vial described the more than 60-hour ordeal in a short phone interview Friday from Nome. His daughter was home from Anchorage.

He planned to visit a doctor Friday afternoon, then return to work.

Vial's legs felt as if they'd been beaten, he said, but he found no signs of frostbite. "I weighed myself last night," he said. "I lost approximately 16 pounds."

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