Historic Beer Birthday: Emil Resch

February 15, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Emil Resch (February 15, 1860-April 17, 1930). He was the youngest brother of Edmund and Richard Resch, who founded the Lion Brewery in Australia, although it was later known as Resch’s Brewery. The brewery was taken over by Tooth and Co. in 1929, but today is owned by Carlton and United Breweries.

This biography is from the Australian Dictionary of Biography:

Emil was born on 15 February 1860 at Aalen, Württemberg, and after serving his apprenticeship in the brewing and malting trade arrived in Australia on 28 September 1882. After a short time in Melbourne he joined his brothers at Wilcannia, and in 1885 took over their Lion Brewery on Umberumberka Creek, Silverton. In 1888, when the brewery had an annual output of over 90,000 gallons (409,148 L), he opened a cordial factory in Argent Lane, Broken Hill. He became an original trustee of the German Club at Broken Hill in 1892 and next year returned to Germany where at Aalen he married Emma Schwartz (d.1945) on 15 August.
Retaining his brewing interests at Broken Hill, in 1898 Resch went to Melbourne and became general manager of Melbourne Brewery and Distillery Ltd (Victoria Brewery). He was naturalized in December 1899. In 1905 Emil, William Baillieu and Carl Pinschof, representing the Victoria and Carlton breweries, began discussions with Nicholas Fitzgerald, Montague Cohenand others which led to the formation of Carlton & United Breweries Pty Ltd on 8 May 1907. Emil, who with Baillieu had bought the Victoria Brewery and incorporated it in the merger in exchange for shares in the new company, was general manager of Carlton and United in 1907-14.
Emil Resch died on 17 April 1930 at his Kew home, survived by his wife, one of his two sons, Carl, and five daughters. He was buried in the Presbyterian section of Boroondara cemetery.

Because his career is so intertwined with his brothers, this is his older brother Edmund’s biography, also from the Australian Dictionary of Biography:

Edmund Resch (1847-1923) and Emil Karl Resch (1860-1930), brewers, were the sons of Johann Nicolaus Resch, ironmaster, and his wife Julia Bernhardine Louise Wilhelmine, née Heitmann, both of Saxony. Edmund was born on 9 June 1847 at Hörde, Westphalia, and arrived in Australia in 1863. In 1871, after mining in Victoria, he moved to New South Wales where he and his mate were the first to strike copper at the Cobar South mine. After prospecting for a year between Cobar, Louth, Bourke and Gilgandra he went to Charters Towers, Queensland, where he built, then operated a hotel for four years. He sold out because of ill health and about 1877 bought with a younger brother Richard Frederick Edward Nicolas (1851-1912) a cordial and aerated water factory at Wilcannia, New South Wales. Next year he visited Germany, where at Munich, on 17 October 1878, he married Carolina Rach (1855-1927).
Business flourished, for Wilcannia was a busy river port and centre of a vast pastoral district. In September 1879 Edmund and Richard opened the Lion Brewery and in 1883 purchased a brewery at Cootamundra, renaming it the Lion Brewery; by 1885 they had branches at Silverton, west of Broken Hill, and Tibooburra on the Mount Browne goldfield. On 11 August 1885, however, the partnership was dissolved by mutual consent, Richard carrying on at Cootamundra and Tibooburra and Edmund at Wilcannia, where he built up an enviable reputation as a skilful brewer.
In 1892 Edmund Resch installed a manager and retired to live in Melbourne. In 1895, however, he moved to Sydney to manage Allt’s Brewing & Wine and Spirit Co. Ltd for a banker who had assisted him in his early business career. In 1897 he purchased the brewery for about £67,000 and in 1900 also acquired the business and plant of the New South Wales Lager Bier Brewing Co. Ltd. Assisted by John Herbert Alvarez (d.1913), his able accountant and manager, and his sons Edmund (1879-1963) and Arnold Gottfried (1881-1942), who had both studied modern brewing methods in Europe and the United States of America, Resch embarked on a large building programme, centralizing his combined interests in Dowling Street, Redfern. In July 1906 Resch’s Ltd was incorporated with an authorized capital of £150,000.
Resch’s second business career was even more successful than his first. In 1901 he told a Legislative Assembly select committee on tied houses, where he was reprimanded by the chairman Richard Meagher for answering ‘in an acrimonious way’, that he was the only brewer in New South Wales who did not use ‘salicylic acid and other antiseptics’ in his beer, and, not surprisingly, that he was against tied houses. He successfully advertised in 1904-14 as ‘brewer by appointment to His Excellency the Governor-General’: his ales, beers and stout captured much of the State’s market. From 1903 to October 1913 he was consul in Sydney for the Netherlands government and on his retirement he was appointed knight of the Order of Orange-Nassau. Wealthy, but uncultivated, he lived in great style at Swifts, a Gothic mansion on Darling Point built by (Sir) Robert Lucas-Tooth; sailing on Sydney Harbour was his chief recreation. During World War I Resch contributed generously to the war effort and made up the difference in pay for about sixty employees who had enlisted, but in November 1917, following an indiscretion, he was arrested and interned in Holsworthy camp.
Edmund Resch died at Swifts on 22 May 1923, survived by his wife and sons, and was buried in the Anglican section of Waverley cemetery. Probate of his estate was sworn at £316,828. In 1929 Resch’s Waverley Brewery was taken over by Tooth & Co. Ltd in exchange for shares issued to the Resch family.

This story about the brothers is from a breweriana collector in Australia:

Edmund Resch arrived in Australia from Germany in 1863, probably with his younger brother Richard, and after spending time on Victorian and New South Wales mine fields and as an hotelier in Queensland, he and Richard bought a cordial and aerated water factory in bustling Wilcannia in 1877. Business flourished and in 1879 the pair opened the Lion Brewery in the township.

Four years later, the brothers expanded their activities by taking over Cootamundra’s Burton Brewery. Originally established by Mary Jane Rochester, Henry Morton and Frederick Henry Jackson in 1881, the new owners renamed it the Lion Brewery in line with their earlier establishment and in December 1883 advertised that “…for cleanliness, condition, fullness of the palate, great keeping qualities and mellow vinous flavour, our ales cannot be surpassed.”

In 1882, a third brother Emil arrived in Australia after serving a brewing and malting apprenticeship in Germany and following a short stint in Melbourne, moved to Wilcannia to join his siblings. By 1885, their expanding business empire also boasted branches at Silverton and Tibooburra, but in August that year, the partnership was amicably dissolved, with the various holdings split up between the brothers.

Richard continued the Cootamundra and Tibooburra businesses, and after trying unsuccessfully in 1888 to sell the former brewery, carried on until 1903, when he relocated to the Clarence River Brewery at Maclean. Operations ceased around 1915.

Edmund carried on at Wilcannia until 1892 when, after installing a manager to oversee operations, he moved to Melbourne intending to retire. This was short lived, however, and three years later he relocated to Sydney to take over management of Allt’s, a brewing, wine and spirit company, on behalf of a banker who had supported him in his early business activities.

After purchasing Allt’s Brewery in 1897 for more than £65,000, Edmund went on to acquire the New South Wales Lager Bier Brewing Company Ltd’s Waverley Brewery business and plant in Redfern three years later. Together with his sons Edmund and Arnold and his accountant/manager John Alvarez, he embarked on major construction works to centralise activities on the Dowling Street, Redfern site. Directories show that he also continued to operate his Wilcannia business until at least 1909.

Promoting himself between 1904 and 1914 as “brewer by appointment to His Excellency the Governor-General”, Edmund became so successful that his brewery’s output secured much of the State’s market. In 1906, Resch’s Ltd was incorporated with a capital of £150,000.

Historic Beer Birthday: Thomas Aitken

January 5, 2025 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Thomas Aitken (January 5, 1821-January 5, 1884). He was born in Scotland, but emigrated to Australia in 1842, when he was 19. “In 1851 he founded the Corio Brewery in Geelong, and later started the Union Brewery in Melbourne. By 1854 he was in business at Victoria Parade, East Melbourne, where he had built a new brewery, distillery and malthouse. The large complex was called the Victoria Parade Brewery,” which was later known simply as the Victoria Brewery. He also developed the formula for their most popular beer, Victoria Bitter, also in 1854. When Thomas died in 1884, his son Archibald took over the brewery, but today it is owned by Carlton & United Breweries, which in turn was acquired by SABMiller, although last year, Asahi Breweries bought Carlton & United.

This biography of the Aitken family was written in 2007 for the Townsville Bulletin.

The home of Thomas and Margaret Aitken which stood near where the Aitkenvale library now stands. He would one day have a suburb and a street named after him but when Thomas Aitken jumped on board a ship bound for Australia, he was just a runaway in search of a better life in a new country.
Born 1825 in Edinburgh, Scotland Thomas Aitken was raised in an orphanage until, on reaching an age when he was able to fend for himself, he absconded from his guardians and boarded the vessel which was to change his destiny.
Upon arrival in his adopted country in the 1840s, Thomas was drawn to life on the land, working on farms around the Brisbane area, but his heart remained in Scotland.
‘‘He worked on cattle properties on what was then Moreton Bay,’’ John Aitken, 69 of Maroochydore said of his great-grandfather.
‘‘Then he went back to Scotland and married his wife, who was a daughter on a neighbouring property to where the orphanage was — he must have known her previously. Her family disowned them — they didn’t want her associated with a poor orphan but later the family came out to Australia as well.’’
Thomas and his new wife Margaret Aitken arrived in Australia on January 6, 1852 on the ship WilliamandMary, and worked the interior of Queensland as drovers before finally settling in Townsville.
‘‘They came up here to Townsville in about 1867,” Mr Aitken said. ‘‘He and his wife worked their way up from the areas along the D’Aguilar Highway which runs inland from Caboolture. They drove their cattle and travelled in horse drays and they came up through western Queensland, and finally they came into Ravenswood and into Townsville. It took them a number of years. The family Bible records where the children were born and they were born at different places along the way.’’
It was during these travels that the stockman, accustomed to austere living, chanced upon a remarkable discovery that would have changed his family’s fortune — but Thomas clearly was not materialistic by nature.
‘‘On the way through he was the first person to discover gold in Ravenswood,” Mr Aitken said of his greatgrandfather’s propitious find.
‘‘He found gold and then when he came to Townsville he told some people who went back and made their fortune out of it. Granddad was more interested in his cows.’’
With his focus solely on cattle, Thomas Aitken, after arriving in Townsville, procured a large parcel of land for grazing on what was then the outskirts of town.
‘‘He had 3500 acres on the Ross River — that’s a huge amount of land and I suspect it was some sort of land grant to get people to move into the country areas,’’ Mr Aitken said.
‘‘Their original house was a little log shanty down on the banks of the river and it got washed away in a flood. Then they built a fairly substantial homestead in an area just at the back of where the Aitkenvale Library is today. The property was originally hyphenated as Aitken-Vale.
‘‘He subdivided a lot of the property in his later years and he just retained about five acres around the homestead. Herveys Range Road was the main road through to Charters Towers back then, and the first stop on the stage coach was the Aitkenvale Arms Hotel (now the Vale Hotel). That was the first change of horses after you left Townsville on a trip to Charters Towers and that was just opposite where their house was,’’ Mr Aitken said.
Thomas and his wife remained in Townsville, raising five children, most of whom continued to live in the township. Elizabeth married Henry Kidner and built the Grand Hotel on Flinders St. Isabella married a Mr Covington — a ’pen-pusher’ for Charles Darwin on his Beagle voyage. Jane married Mr Buckpitt who owned a butcher shop on Flinders St East (where Avis now stands). Margaret married Germanborn Mr Maass and opened Townsville’s first soap factory in Sturt St. Charlotte went to live in Ayr but Mr Aitken’s grandfather John stayed in the region.
‘‘John was the only son — he and my grandmother Sarah lived with Thomas and Margaret for many years on the Aitkenvale property,’’ Mr Aitken said.
‘‘My grandmother used to tell us stories about how in Aitkenvale the water was from a hand pump and in the winter they used to have to pour boiling water down the pump to melt the ice in the mornings before they could pump it. If there’s such a thing as global warming that’s an indication — I don’t think you’d ever have to do that in Aitkenvale now.
‘‘The biggest disruption to their lives however was when there was flooding because they couldn’t get into town. The flood waters used to cut them off in the area of Rising Sun,’’ he said.
Travelling from Aitkenvale to the city was no easy matter in those early days with natural impediments frequently necessitating a more circuitous route, Mr Aitken said.
‘‘My grandfather worked at the Hubert Wells — the electricity generation and water supply works for Townsville. It was on Ross River Road opposite where The Cathedral School is now. The power was generated by coal and there was a railway line that used to go from Garbutt through to the power house.
‘‘He lived in Railway Estate and he used to go to work on his push bike from Railway Estate to Hubert Wells and if the tide was high and he couldn’t get across the creek at Sandy Crossing he used to have to go across Victoria Bridge because there was no Lowth’s Bridge. It was a long ride. When Lowth’s Bridge was built, my grandmother never called it Lowth’s Bridge, it was always the new bridge. It was rusting and falling apart when I first knew it but it was still called the new bridge,’’ Mr Aitken said.
While the Aitken family prospered in Townsville, they also had their share of misfortune when their spacious home burned down in 1899 and they also narrowly avoided tragedy in 1911 when the SSYongalavanished off Cape Bowling Green.
‘‘My grandmother sailed from Brisbane to Townsville on the Yongalaon the trip before it vanished. She was living in Davidson St in South Townsville at the time and told me how the locals used to walk to the river each evening to meet the returning search parties to find any news of the missing vessel,’’ Mr Aitken said.
Thomas Aitken, who died a wealthy man in 1897, is remembered today as a person of historic importance to Townsville and his name lives on not only in the suburb which is his namesake but also in Aitken St which was once a track leading down to the old homestead. Elizabeth and Charlotte streets were also named in honour of two of his four daughters.

And this short obituary appeared in the Melbourne Herald on January 5, 1884.

“He arrived in Melbourne in the year 1842, being at that time a youth of 19 with intelligence and energy to aid him in his career. In Scotland he had acquired a knowledge of the brewing trade, but he turned his attention to other pursuits at first and was fairly successful. The gold discoveries of 1851 gave an impetus to trade, and Mr Aitken, being of a speculative disposition, took advantage of the tide of affairs and started the Corio Brewery in Geelong. Melbourne, however, offered better advantages, and in 1852 he commenced business in the Union Brewery, Lonsdale street west; shifting two years later, to the site of the present Victoria Parade Brewery. Mr Aitken’s business venture developed into an extensive undertaking, the secret of success being the production of a good article, and the employment of business capabilities to push the trade. The premises owned by the deceased gentleman cover an area of more than three acres of land. The building is effective in design, with an imposing and ornamental facade to the front elevation. In 1861 Mr Aitken established the first distillery under the new Distillation Act, which also proved a success, and the business reached such proportions that the value of the property and plant is now close upon £80,000.”

Also, Gary Gilman, has a nice article about Aitken entitled The Inspirational Victoria Brewery, Melbourne, if you want to know more.

Historic Beer Birthday: Thomas Cooper

December 17, 2024 By Jay Brooks

coopers
Today is the birthday of Thomas Cooper (December 17, 1826-December 30, 1897). He was born in England, but moved to Australia when he was 26. He initially worked a variety of jobs, but in 1862 founded the brewery known today as Coopers Brewery “at his home in the Adelaide suburb of Norwood. He brewed his first recorded batch on 13 May 1862.”

Thomas_Cooper

This biography of Cooper is from the Cooper Brewery Wikipedia page:

[He] was born in Carleton, North Yorkshire, the youngest of 12 children of Christopher and Sarah (née Booth). His parents died when he was young (Sarah in 1830 and Christopher in 1832), and he was raised by his sister Ann. Thomas was apprenticed to a shoe-maker, and by the late 1840s, six of the seven living children had moved to Skipton. John, a shuttlemaker, lived in Bradford; Jane and Mary married; Ann was a housekeeper; Elizabeth and Martha were domestic servants.
In 1849 he married Ann Laycock Brown (1827–1872) in the Wesleyan Chapel in Skipton. Their first child, William (1850–1882), was born in 1850, and Sarah Ann (1851–1852) in 1851. In 1852, Thomas, the pregnant Ann, and their two children emigrated to South Australia, setting sail from Plymouth on the SS Omega on 29 May 1852. During the 86-day voyage, Sarah Ann was one of the six children who died, but their third child was born as they rounded the Cape of Good Hope, and was named Sarah Ann (1852–1854) in memory of her sister. The family arrived in Port Adelaide on 24 August 1852. Their first home was a rented two-room cottage near the Rising Sun Inn on Bridge Street in the then village of Kensington, about three miles east of the city. In the ten years before he commenced brewing in Norwood, Thomas worked initially as a shoemaker, then as a mason, and then as a dairyman, while Ann bore four more children: Mary Ann (1855–1856); John Thomas (1857–1935); Christopher (1859–1910); and Annie Elizabeth (1861–1921). In 1856 he purchased land in George Street, Norwood, and using his new skills as a mason, built a house which he described to his brother as having “6 rooms & Cellar & Passage” and 12 ft ceilings “on acct of Sumr heat”. In the same letter, and many others, he urged his brother and family to join him in South Australia, but this never eventuated.
On 13 May 1862, Thomas brewed his first recorded batch. He did all the work himself (purchasing, calling for orders, brewing, washing, filling, corking and wiring the bottles, delivering the finished product), possibly with the help of then 12-year-old son William, while continuing to attend the cows, run the dairy, and do the daily milk deliveries. Being unlicensed, in early June he sought “professional advice on the sale of beer” from a solicitor, which his ledger records as having cost 7s 6d. Towards the end of 1862 Thomas realised that to make a living as a brewer, he would need to increase his brewing capacity, so he mortgaged his property to Frederick Scarfe, the Mayor of Norwood, a butcher, and a customer of Thomas’s ale, for £300, and built a new brewhouse. In January 1863 he sold his cows and the milk delivery run. Although with half-a-dozen breweries in Adelaide, there was a lot of competition, Thomas’s ale was unique in that he used no sugar, “consequently, ours being pure, the Doctors recommend it to their patients”. Although one of the smaller South Australian brewers, Thomas gained a reputation for quality. By 1867 he had over 120 customers, some quite notable (e.g. Samuel Davenport, John Barton Hack, George Hawker, Dr Penfold and the Lord Bishop of Adelaide, but he did not supply public houses, “apparently because it was against his principles”.
Ann bore four more children before dying suddenly in 1872: Joseph Brown (1863–1888); Jane Amelia (1865–1943); Margaret Alice (1868–1869) and Samuel (1871–1921). She was survived by all five of her sons, and two of her six daughters.
Thomas remarried in 1874, and Sarah Louisa Perry bore eight children: Stanley Reasey (1875–1938); Thomas Perry (1876–1876); Francis Scowby (1877–1878) Frederic (1878–1952); Edward Booth (1880–1881); Charles Edward (1881–1936); Lily Louise (1881–1893); and Walter Astley (1882–1909).
When he died in 1897, Thomas was survived by his wife, and nine of his nineteen children – seven of his sons, and two of his daughters.

breweryandthomascoopershouse

This story is of Coopers’ beginnings is from the brewery website:

When Thomas Cooper used an old family recipe to brew his first batch of ale back in 1862, it would be fair to describe him as a novice craft brewer. Apparently he’d only intended it to be a tonic for his sick wife, but the resulting ale was so flavoursome that friends and neighbours soon came to appreciate it for more than just its ‘restorative’ properties. As demand for his naturally conditioned ales grew throughout the fledgling colony of South Australia, Thomas Cooper’s growing passion for brewing soon became his profession.
Before Thomas passed away, he handed over the reigns of the brewery to four of his sons, and so began a proud family tradition that has continued in an unbroken chain of six generations, for more than 150 years. While we’re still using Thomas Cooper’s original recipe, successive generations of Coopers have made improvements along the way.
The fusion of traditional Coopers brewing methods with cutting edge production technology has helped us grow our capacity and deliver consistent brew quality and flavour. As a result, we now have the ability to produce our naturally conditioned ales and stouts for a global audience, with absolute confidence that whenever one of our signature beers is poured, the drinker will enjoy a quality Coopers brew. This marriage of century-old brewing techniques and modern innovation is what makes Coopers unique in Australia’s brewing landscape.

Metal-Sign-Thomas-Cooper

This more modern history is by Martin Wooster, which was part of a longer travel piece he did for All About Beer in 2000 about Australian breweries, entitled “In the Shadows of Giants:”

The brewery that has done the most to provide Australians with choice and diversity is Coopers of Adelaide. But even when given clear directions, it’s a hard brewery to find. It’s quietly nestled in the shady Adelaide suburb of Leabrook, hidden beneath towering jacaranda and lilly pilly trees. For a brewery that’s been making beer on its site for over 100 years, it’s an amazingly quiet place.
The Coopers story begins in 1862, when Thomas Cooper, a British emigrant, decided to make some ale to help his ailing wife Ann deal with a fever. Ann Cooper came from a brewing family, and Thomas Cooper used her recipe. In south Australia’s relatively hot climate, Cooper had to adapt the British recipe, making his ale bottle conditioned to last longer and adding sugar to spark the secondary fermentation. The result was a style known as “sparkling ale.”
Cooper then followed with Coopers Extra Stout. Like the ale, the stout is bottle conditioned and can age for a long time. The Lord Nelson Hotel in Sydney serves five-year-old Coopers Extra Stout⎯when it mellows and develops port-like notes.
Thomas and Ann Cooper had 10 children; when she died in 1874, Thomas Cooper married Sarah Perry and had 10 more children. Eleven of these children survived into adulthood, ensuring that there were lots of Coopers to continue the family name. Coopers is the only Australian brewery controlled by descendants of its founder. “We wouldn’t want to be the generation that sold the brewery,” says marketing director Glenn Cooper.
Like most family-owned breweries, Coopers has gone through hard times. Coopers refused to adapt to changing times; it did not make lager until 1968, and until 1982, secondary fermentation for its ale and stout still took place in giant wooden casks called “puncheons.” While many younger drinkers thought that the cloudy beers were something only grandpa drank, Coopers stubbornly stuck to its traditional ways. The result was that, even when Australian beer was at its blandest, consumers knew that a good beer didn’t have to be a lager.
Coopers paved the way for us,” said Blair Hayden, managing director of the Lord Nelson Hotel, Sydney’s only brewpub. “It showed Australians that there was something else to drink besides lagers.”
What saved Coopers was homebrewers. Homebrewing was legalized in Australia in 1973, and Coopers at first sold sacks of wort that could be fermented with the addition of yeast. But customers found the sacks cumbersome, so in 1977 Coopers was the first brewery to market malt extracts for homebrewers. Coopers engineers also built the canning equipment needed to mass produce the extracts, and created a special lid to ensure that the Coopers yeast packets were securely fastened to the cans.
According to Glenn Cooper, Coopers currently has 35 percent of the world market for homebrew kits and 80 percent of the Australian market. Sales, he says, are largest in countries with high beer taxes, such as Canada and the Scandinavian nations.
In the 1990s, Coopers has diversified into many other areas. In the early 1990s, it began to enter the honey business through its Leabrook Farms subsidiary. Why honey? “Like malt extract, it’s a heavy, viscous substance,” Glenn Cooper said. Another Coopers division makes gourmet vinegars.
The core of Coopers business remains its beers. Under the leadership of head of brewing operations Tim Cooper (who abandoned a career as a cardiologist to work in the family brewery), Coopers now has 10 beers, adding several filtered beers and a dark ale to its portfolio. In 1998, the company released Extra Strong Vintage Ale, the first vintage-dated beer ever issued in Australia. Production of the ale, which is designed to age for up to 18 months, is limited to 25,000 cases, for sale only in Australia.
Production, Glenn Cooper says, is increasing by 18 percent a year. And Coopers beers are becoming more available in America. They are available in most Outback Steakhouses, and, repackaged under the Old Australia label, are also sold in most Trader Joe’s stores.

thomas-cooper-statue-adelaide
This statue of Thomas Cooper is at the side of the Coopers Brewery today.

Beer Birthday: Paul Holgate

December 10, 2024 By Jay Brooks

holgate
Today is the 57th birthday of Paul Holgate, who’s the co-founder of the Holgate Brewhouse is Melbourne, Australia. I met Paul in Melbourne a few years ago, when I was there to judge at the Australia International Beer Awards. Getting to know Paul was great fun, and, like me, he’s an old-timer in beer terms. Join me in wishing Paul a very happy birthday.

paul-holgate
Paul’s profile photo on Facebook, from 2017.

paul-holgate-cheers
From the brewery website.

Beer Birthday: Nick Galton-Fenzi

October 18, 2024 By Jay Brooks

Today is the 45th birthday of Nick Galton-Fenzi (October 18, 1979- ). He is from Perth, in Western Australia, where he’s the “Innovation and Product Development Brewer at NAH Limited, Consultant Brewer at Golden Bosun Tavern and Product Developer at Carib Brewery St Kitts & Nevis LTD” though his main gig seems to be Nick’s Ale House in Perth. Over his 25 years brewing commercially, he’s worked at and/or owned 50 different places in 23 countries. I first met Nick in South Africa judging the African Beer Cup a few years ago and have subsequently run into him in various beer competitions around the world, and he’s a great international ambassador for good beer. Join me in wishing Nick a very happy birthday.

Nick and me in Colorado earlier this year for World Beer Cup judging.

Nick and me with Markus and Pete in Minnesota for World Beer Cup judging.

Out at a bar in Capetown, South Africa, with Nick in the back center.

Beer In Ads #3864: Foster’s Kangaroo Pouch

September 30, 2021 By Jay Brooks

Thursday’s ad is for “Foster’s Lager,” from 2002. This ad was made for Carlton & United, who made Foster’s Lager, although it was later part of AB-InBev but more recently was sold to Asahi. It was started by two American brothers who emigrated to Australia in 1886, and started selling it in 1889. In 1907, the Foster brothers merged with four other Melbourne breweries to created Carlton & United Breweries. The Foster’s brand barely sells in Australia, but began importing to the UK and the US in the early 1970s, and thanks to very successful advertising became a popular international brand. This one features a bottle of Foster’s with a pouch, and inside the pouch, naturally, is that most quintessential of Australian animals, the kangaroo.

Beer In Ads #3863: Our Message From Down Under

September 29, 2021 By Jay Brooks

Wednesday’s ad is for “Foster’s Lager,” from 1984. This ad was made for Carlton & United, who made Foster’s Lager, although it was later part of AB-InBev but more recently was sold to Asahi. It was started by two American brothers who emigrated to Australia in 1886, and started selling it in 1889. In 1907, the Foster brothers merged with four other Melbourne breweries to created Carlton & United Breweries. The Foster’s brand barely sells in Australia, but began importing to the UK and the US in the early 1970s, and thanks to very successful advertising became a popular international brand. This one features a cartoon ad which I believe is from around the time of the Olympics the last time they were in Los Angeles, which was 1984.

Beer In Ads #3862: Men At Work

September 28, 2021 By Jay Brooks

Tuesday’s ad is for “Foster’s Lager,” from 1983. This ad was made for Carlton & United, who made Foster’s Lager, although it was later part of AB-InBev but more recently was sold to Asahi. It was started by two American brothers who emigrated to Australia in 1886, and started selling it in 1889. In 1907, the Foster brothers merged with four other Melbourne breweries to created Carlton & United Breweries. The Foster’s brand barely sells in Australia, but began importing to the UK and the US in the early 1970s, and thanks to very successful advertising became a popular international brand. This one features the Australian rock band Men at Work, best known for their hits “Down Under” and “Who Can It Be Now?”

Beer In Ads #3861: Australian For Male Bonding

September 27, 2021 By Jay Brooks

Monday’s ad is for “Foster’s Lager,” from 1994, I believe. This ad was made for Carlton & United, who made Foster’s Lager, although it was later part of AB-InBev but more recently was sold to Asahi. It was started by two American brothers who emigrated to Australia in 1886, and started selling it in 1889. In 1907, the Foster brothers merged with four other Melbourne breweries to created Carlton & United Breweries. The Foster’s brand barely sells in Australia, but began importing to the UK and the US in the early 1970s, and thanks to very successful advertising became a popular international brand. This one features a Rugby scrum and the tagline: “Australian for Male Bonding” and an oil can of Foster’s and the tagline: “Australian for Beer.”

Beer In Ads #3860: Foster’s Boomerang

September 26, 2021 By Jay Brooks

Sunday’s ad is for “Foster’s Lager,” from the 1950s, I believe. This ad was made for Carlton & United, who made Foster’s Lager, although it was later part of AB-InBev but more recently was sold to Asahi. It was started by two American brothers who emigrated to Australia in 1886, and started selling it in 1889. In 1907, the Foster brothers merged with four other Melbourne breweries to created Carlton & United Breweries. The Foster’s brand barely sells in Australia, but began importing to the UK and the US in the early 1970s, and thanks to very successful advertising became a popular international brand. This one features a blue tray for “Foster’s Lager” and the tagline “Australia’s National Beer.”

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