Archives for April 2017

Your Views On Imported Beer

April 5, 2017 By Jay Brooks

For our 122th Session, our host will be Christopher Barnes, who writes I Think About Beer. For his topic, he’s chosen to elicit everyone’s Views on Imported Beer, which he explains more fully:

I love imported beer, specifically Belgian and German beer. They’re what I drink. My cellar is made up of Belgian beers, my fridge is full of them, and there a few stashed around in a closet or two as well. Imported beer is my life. I drink them. I write about them. I travel to experience them. In fact, my career involves working with Imported Beer. I manage several prominent import portfolios for a Oregon craft focused wholesaler. And while I have a vested interest in the success of Imported Beer, it doesn’t lessen my passion for the traditional beers of Europe. As craft beer sales have surged across America, sales of imported beers have suffered. I’m going to ask a couple of questions.
For American and Canadians: What place do imported beers (traditional European) have in a craft beer market?
For Non North Americans: How are American beers (imported into YOUR country) viewed? What is their place in your market?

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So what’s your take on imports, or as some people say disparagingly, foreign beer? How do they fit into the craft movement, or the beer landscape in its entirety? Are they useful, out-dated, a necessary evil, a valid category, what? I need to know, dammit. SO please let us know your “Vues sur la bière importée,” or your “Ansichten über importiertes Bier,” or even your “Bekeken op geïmporteerd bier.” Personally I’d like to know your “Opinie na temat piwa importowanego” and your “Synspunkter om importeret øl.” But don’t forget your 輸入ビールの眺め or your Просмотры на импортированном пиве.

To participate in the April Session, on or before Friday, April 7, 2017 — which is this Friday, just a few days away — write a post about your views on imported beer. “Leave a comment with a link to your post in the comment section” of the original announcement, and “have fun and please do participate.”

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Beer In Ads #2236: The Sturdiest Peoples Of The Earth Drink Beer

April 4, 2017 By Jay Brooks

Tuesday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1908. In the first decade of the 20th century, Schlitz Brewing, then one of the largest breweries in the U.S. after the industry had shrunk from over 4,000 to around 1,500 in just 25 or so years, did a series of primarily text ads, with various themes. In this ad, which begins with this boast — “The Sturdiest peoples of the earth drink beer” — and then explains how beer drinkers are less nervous then other people, and less likely to have dyspepsia, too. Of course, while dyspepsia sounds bad, it’s just a fancy word for indigestion. The ad goes on to detail the many other ways in which drinking beer (though not drinking too much) is good for you. These are my favorite sentences. “The barley is food; the hops are a tonic. The trifle of alcohol is an aid to digestion.”

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The Nickel (Beer) In New York

April 4, 2017 By Jay Brooks

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This is an interesting article I stumbled upon, from a Time magazine article about Sam’s Bar & Grill in St. Mark’s Place in the East Village of New York City. It was from April 4, 1949

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The Nickel In St. Mark’s Place

Monday, April 4, 1949

Pale and shaken, 51-year-old Sam Atkins backed away from himself with a feeling somewhere between disbelief and awe. By a single, splendid cerebration he had been lifted out of the ruck into the status of a television curiosity. In his humble Manhattan saloon, Sam had decided to cut the price of beer (the 7-oz. glass) from a dime to a nickel.
Up to that moment Sam was just a pensioned pumper driver from the Bayonne (N.J.) fire department, and Sam’s bar & grill was like any neighborhood joint around St. Mark’s Place on the Lower East Side. Its only distinctive touch was Sam’s cousin, “Bottle Sam” Hock, who amused the trade by whacking tunes out of whisky bottles with a suds-scraper. But the customers got a joyful jolt when Sam opened up one morning last week.
All around the walls, even over the bar mirror, tasteful, powder-blue signs proclaimed in red letters: “Spring is here and so is the 5¢ beer.” The early birds drank and took their change in mild disbelief. The nickel wasn’t obsolescent after all. The word spread. Sam’s bar & grill started to bulge like Madison Square Garden on fight night. People drank, shook hands with strangers and sang.

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Then something went sour. The two breweries that supplied Sam cut him off, and an electrician came around and took the neon beer sign out of the flyspecked windows. Somehow, it seemed, Sam had betrayed free enterprise. An organization of restaurant owners muttered that Sam might not be cutting his beer, but he was cutting his throat. The Bartenders Union threw a picket line in front of the place because it was nonunion.
But Sam hung on. He signed up with the union, managed to get his beer through a couple of distributors and a Brooklyn brewery, announced that he was going to have the windows washed, and keep at it. Said he solemnly: “The people want it.” By this week Sam’s idea had spread to other saloons in Washington, D.C. and New Jersey, and Sam was getting more trade in a day than he had drawn before in a week. The nickel beer was here to stay, Sam announced.

Beer In Ads #2235: The All Important

April 3, 2017 By Jay Brooks

Monday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1907. In the first decade of the 20th century, Schlitz Brewing, then one of the larger breweries in the U.S. after the industry had shrunk from over 4,000 to around 1,500 in just 25 or so years, did a series of primarily text ads, with various themes. In this ad, with the title “The All Important,” you might understandably wonder what is the all important? It’s purity, of course, which is “absolute cleanliness” and “freedom from germs.” And that is more or less what it means. Google’s definition is “freedom from adulteration or contamination.” I certainly wouldn’t “knowingly drink beer that was not.”

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Beer In Ads #2234: The Doctor Says “Drink Beer”

April 2, 2017 By Jay Brooks

Sunday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1908. In the first decade of the 20th century, Schlitz Brewing, then one of the larger breweries in the U.S. after the industry had shrunk from over 4,000 to around 1,500 in just 25 or so years, did a series of primarily text ads, with various themes. In this ad, a doctor apparently prescribes beer for “the weal and convalescent,” so if it’s good enough for “those who need strength” then it should be pretty good for you, too.

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Beer In Ads #2233: Schlitz, For Fifty Years

April 1, 2017 By Jay Brooks

Saturday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1909. In the first decade of the 20th century, Schlitz Brewing, then one of the larger breweries in the U.S. after the industry had shrunk from over 4,000 to around 1,500 in just 25 or so years, did a series of primarily text ads, with various themes. In this ad, celebrating their 50th anniversary, having been founded in 1849, they’re talking about their purity, and “common beer, usually, costs you just as much as Schlitz,” so the inference is that you might as while buy the Schlitz.

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