Tuesday’s ad is for Stegmaier Brewing Co., from between 1933-1945. The “Home of Gold Medal Beer” was Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania. I love these grand illustrations of breweries, testaments to industrialization, this one was a postcard. I’m not sure why there’s a passenger train chugging by, maybe that’s how the brewery executives commute to and from work?
Archives for November 17, 2015
Patent No. 1832587A: Method Of And Apparatus For Dealcoholizing Beer
Today in 1931, US Patent 2061240 A was issued, an invention of Claude B. Schneible, for his “Method of and Apparatus for Dealcoholizing Beer and the Like.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:
This invention relates to -a method of and apparatus for dealcoholizing beer and the like and will be readily understood from the following description in conjunction with the accompanying drawings.
Möbius Beer
Today is the birthday of mathematician August Ferdinand Möbius, for whom several mathematical items are named, although the most famous is certainly the Möbius Strip. Although the Möbius Strip was discovered by two different mathematicians around the same year, 1858, it bears his name and not fellow German colleague Johann Benedict Listing.
A Möbius Strip “is a surface with only one side and only one boundary,” so that it looks like it turns in on itself, but if you could walk around on top of one, you’d never come to the end. “The Möbius strip has the mathematical property of being non-orientable. It can be realized as a ruled surface.”
I recalled seeing a famous beer label using a Möbius Strip, and a quick search revealed the one I was thinking of was Arizona Brewing’s flagship beer “A-1,” which used a multi-colored version.
Beer History has a good article about the brewery, A-1: The Western Way to Say Welcome
by Ed Sipos. The original A-1 label had an eagle on it, but by the 1950s Anheuser-Busch, which was spreading their tentacles nationally, decided to sue Arizona Brewing claiming the eagle on their label was too close to their own, and Arizona couldn’t afford to defend the lawsuit, and decided instead to simply change the label.
A can of A-1 from 1965-66.
And not too long ago, Tuscon-based Nimbus Brewery introduced a new version of A-1 Beer, though I’m not sure if it’s still being brewed.
Apparently there’s also a Mobius Infused Lager that looks like a gimmicky contract beer. It appears to be a generic lager “infused with taurine, ginseng, and caffeine.” Ugh, does that sound like a bad idea.
Patent No. 2061240A: Beer Pump
Today in 1936, US Patent 2061240 A was issued, an invention of Oscar J. Leins, assigned to the Milwaukee Gas Specialty Co., for his “Beer Pump.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:
This invention relates to an improvement in beer dispensers or pumps of the type designed for use by the consumers in drawing or dispensing beer or similar beverages from kegs, barrels or similar containers.