Archives for January 2020

Beer In Ads #3245: Tuborg Brewery

January 31, 2020 By Jay Brooks

Friday’s ad is for Tuborg, from 1993. From the late 1800s until the 1980s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. I’ve been posting vintage European posters all year, and for the remainder of December will feature holiday-themed posters of all ages. “Tuborg is a Danish brewing company founded in 1873 on a harbour in Hellerup, an area North of Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 1970 it has been part of the Carlsberg Group.” This was created by Wibroe & Partners (now Wibroe, Duckert & Partners) and shows an illustration of an idealized Tuborg brewhouse. The text of the poster reads “På Tuborg har vi sat et par kedler Classic mere over” which translates as “At Tuborg we have put a couple of boilers Classic over,” though I feel confident that’s close, but not quite right.

Beer In Ads #3244: The History Of The Car Is Almost As Old As Tuborgs

January 30, 2020 By Jay Brooks

Thursday’s ad is for Tuborg, from 1993. From the late 1800s until the 1980s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. I’ve been posting vintage European posters all year, and for the remainder of December will feature holiday-themed posters of all ages. “Tuborg is a Danish brewing company founded in 1873 on a harbour in Hellerup, an area North of Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 1970 it has been part of the Carlsberg Group.” This was created by Wibroe & Partners (now Wibroe, Duckert & Partners) and shows Tuborg beer delivery vehicles from over the years. The text of the poster reads “Bilens historie er naesten lige så gammel som Tuborgs” which translates as “The history of the car is almost as old as Tuborgs.”

Beer In Ads #3243: A Little More Of Everything

January 29, 2020 By Jay Brooks

Wednesday’s ad is for Tuborg, from 1998. From the late 1800s until the 1980s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. I’ve been posting vintage European posters all year, and for the remainder of December will feature holiday-themed posters of all ages. “Tuborg is a Danish brewing company founded in 1873 on a harbour in Hellerup, an area North of Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 1970 it has been part of the Carlsberg Group.” This was created by Pete Wibroe, of Wibroe & Partners (now Wibroe, Duckert & Partners) and according to Tuborg’s website, this is “the iconic Tuborg Classic” poster. The text at the top, “På Fad,” on the awning after Tuborg Classic makes no sense, and is translated as “on dish.” But at the bottom right hand corner of the poster, it also reads “… lidt mere af alting” which translates as “a little more of everything.”

Beer In Ads #3242: Make Life A Little Greener

January 28, 2020 By Jay Brooks

Tuesday’s ad is for Tuborg, from the 1990s. From the late 1800s until the 1980s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. I’ve been posting vintage European posters all year, and for the remainder of December will feature holiday-themed posters of all ages. “Tuborg is a Danish brewing company founded in 1873 on a harbour in Hellerup, an area North of Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 1970 it has been part of the Carlsberg Group.” This is similar to a series of minimalist posters created that year by Wibroe & Partners (now Wibroe, Duckert & Partners) created a series of minimalist posters using just green and white in 1985 that was so popular that they continued to use the motif for several years after that. This one used similar thematic elements several years later, showing a toolbox containing several tools and a bottle of Tuborg beer. The text, “Gør livet lidt grønnere” is translated as “Make life a little greener.”

Beer In Ads #3241: Tuborg Green Jackpot

January 27, 2020 By Jay Brooks

Monday’s ad is for Tuborg, from 1994. From the late 1800s until the 1980s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. I’ve been posting vintage European posters all year, and for the remainder of December will feature holiday-themed posters of all ages. “Tuborg is a Danish brewing company founded in 1873 on a harbour in Hellerup, an area North of Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 1970 it has been part of the Carlsberg Group.” This is the second in a series of minimalist posters created that year by Wibroe & Partners (now Wibroe, Duckert & Partners) created a series of minimalist posters using just green and white in 1985 that was so popular that they continued to use the motif for several years after that. They were known collectively as Grøn Tuborg because the text on the bottom of all of the posters read “Hvad er det … der gør livet lidt grønnere?,” which Google translates as “What is it … that makes life a little greener?” This one used similar thematic elements ten years later but appears to be for some kind of sweepstakes contest. The text, “Fa en spilleplade, hvor du køber Grøn Tuborg” is translated as “Get a playing board, where you buy Green Tuborg.”

Beer In Ads #3240: Green Tuborg

January 26, 2020 By Jay Brooks

Sunday’s ad is for Tuborg, from 1985-1990. From the late 1800s until the 1980s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. I’ve been posting vintage European posters all year, and for the remainder of December will feature holiday-themed posters of all ages. “Tuborg is a Danish brewing company founded in 1873 on a harbour in Hellerup, an area North of Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 1970 it has been part of the Carlsberg Group.” This is the second in a series of minimalist posters created that year by Wibroe & Partners (now Wibroe, Duckert & Partners) using just green and white that was popular enough that 35 years later they’re still doing Tuborg’s advertising. According to what I uncovered about this ad series, it began in 1985 but was so popular it continued, with some later modifications, until by 1990 there were over 50 of them, with the best ones available to buy as a poster. The text on the bottom of all of the poster reads “Hvad er det … der gør livet lidt grønnere?,” which Google translates as “What is it … that makes life a little greener?” I found this image which seems to be for a book or possibly a portfolio you could buy, I’m not sure exactly. Seven of the fifteen posters shown I featured this month, but the rest are ones I could not find individually, which is a shame because it was a very creative and inventive campaign.

Beer In Ads #3249: Tuborg & Sunbathing Making Life A Little Greener

January 25, 2020 By Jay Brooks

Saturday’s ad is for Tuborg, from 1985. From the late 1800s until the 1980s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. I’ve been posting vintage European posters all year, and for the remainder of December will feature holiday-themed posters of all ages. “Tuborg is a Danish brewing company founded in 1873 on a harbour in Hellerup, an area North of Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 1970 it has been part of the Carlsberg Group.” This is the second in a series of minimalist posters created that year by Wibroe & Partners (now Wibroe, Duckert & Partners) using just green and white that was popular enough that 35 years later they’re still doing Tuborg’s advertising. This one features an overhead view of a woman sunbathing with a bottle of Tuborg sitting next to her on the towel. The text on the bottom of all of the poster reads “Hvad er det … der gør livet lidt grønnere?,” which Google translates as “What is it … that makes life a little greener?”

Beer In Ads #3248: Tuborg & A Park Bench Making Life A Little Greener

January 24, 2020 By Jay Brooks

Friday’s ad is for Tuborg, from 1985. From the late 1800s until the 1980s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. I’ve been posting vintage European posters all year, and for the remainder of December will feature holiday-themed posters of all ages. “Tuborg is a Danish brewing company founded in 1873 on a harbour in Hellerup, an area North of Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 1970 it has been part of the Carlsberg Group.” This is the second in a series of minimalist posters created that year by Wibroe & Partners (now Wibroe, Duckert & Partners) using just green and white that was popular enough that 35 years later they’re still doing Tuborg’s advertising. This one features a woman in a polka dot dress sitting on a park dress holding a bottle of Tuborg. The text on the bottom of all of the poster reads “Hvad er det … der gør livet lidt grønnere?,” which Google translates as “What is it … that makes life a little greener?”

Beer Birthday: The Beer Can

January 24, 2020 By Jay Brooks

Today is “Beer Can Appreciation Day,” because on this day 85 years ago — January 24, 1935 — the humble beer can was sold for the very first time. So join me in wishing the beer can a happy birthday.

Below is an article I wrote about beer cans alnost 15 years ago telling the story of their history.

The beer can debuted in 1935, when an otherwise obscure brewery from New Jersey — Gottfried Krueger Brewing Co. — test-marketed them in Virginia, as far from their home market as possible. Breweries may have been initially reluctant, but the public loved cans — they were an overnight sensation. By the end of that first year, Schlitz (then one of America’s biggest brewers) had their beer in cans and every other brewery quickly followed suit.

krueger-can

The beer can was invented by American Can, who patented “Vinylite,” a plastic lining for cans marketed under the brand name “Keglined.” Over the years, the technology continued to improve, from tin to all-aluminum, from cone tops to flat tops, from clumsy openers to pull tops, yet one seemingly intractable problem remained: metal turbity. That’s the technical term for metal leeching into the beer, and consumers increasingly complained about the tainted metallic flavor in canned beer.

krueger-can-back

But then craft beer became popular, and with it better beer evangelists preached that canned beer could never be good. And that remained conventional wisdom for decades, made virtually dogma. During that same time, however, research by the can companies solved the metal turbidity problem. Using an organic polymer — really a water-based epoxy acrylic — that was sprayed inside each can during manufacturing, it could now honestly be said that the beer never touched the metal.

Unfortunately, the only beer in cans was not the type that most beer geeks would willingly quaff. The other great hurdle to getting craft beer in a can was the cost. You could buy a cheap, used bottling line but canning lines were quite massive and very expensive. And the people who made cans were used to selling them to big breweries, and so the minimum run for a can was something on the order of a full railroad car, too many and too expensive for even the biggest microbreweries.

But then the bottom fell out of microbrewing, and by the late-1990s equipment suppliers were also feeling the pinch. Hoping to survive the economic downturn, Canada’s Cask Brewing Systems created an affordable solution. They designed a small manual canning line that was cheaper than the average bottling line and persuaded Ball Corporation (a leading can manufacturer) to significantly reduce their minimum orders. All they had to do was convince someone to try canning their beer.

And so Cask started appearing at trade shows and repeatedly sending literature to breweries. When Dale Katechis, of Oskar Blues, in Lyons, Colorado, first read the pitch, he “just laughed and laughed,” thinking there’s “no way this can be done.” But the more he looked into it, the less he laughed. A few months later — in 2002 — Dale’s Pale Ale was released, the first craft beer to be hand-canned. By 2005, Oskar Blues was the biggest brewpub in the U.S. and Dale’s was declared by the New York Times to be the best pale ale in America.

The Oskar Blues team became evangelists for canned beer with the slogan “the canned-beer apocalypse.” Other small breweries noticed Dale’s success and he was only too happy to show them the light. Today, there are nearly forty [in 2006] craft brewers hand-canning their beer.

There are almost as many kinds of beer in cans as there are styles these days, too, from extreme, strong offerings like Surly’s Furious (a 100-IBU Imperial IPA) and Old Chubb (a Scotch Ale) to more unusual beers like Maui Brewing’s CoCoNut Porter and 21st Amendment’s Hell or High Watermelon to lighter lagers like Sly Fox’s Pikeland Pils and Steamwoks Steam Engine Lager. And now that New Belgium Brewing, one of the largest American craft brewers, is canning their popular Fat Tire Amber Ale, expect to see many more beers in cans in the future.

The biggest challenge is unmaking the dogmatic perception of beer in cans as an evil. It’s a persistent prejudice, but is slowly beginning to change as the advantages to canned beer become more widely known. They keep out all UV light, avoiding the skunky taste of clear and green glass. Cans have lower oxygen levels, meaning longer shelf life. They won’t break; they chill faster and can be taken more places, especially where glass is prohibited. And they’re more environmentally friendly, using less packaging plus more of the can is recyclable, with more used in manufacturing recycled cans. Cans are also lighter, resulting in lower transportation costs and fewer fossil fuels needed.

But in the end, the only thing that matters is how the beer tastes. Side-by-side can vs. draft taste tests reveal that it is virtually impossible to tell the difference. That, coupled with the real advantages of the packaging, means that craft beer in cans is where the future of craft beer is heading.

shaun-cans
Shaun O’Sullivan, co-owner of 21st Amendment, showing off one of his early can designs. 21A was the third brewery in California to can their beer.

When I originally wrote that article, around two dozen small breweries were canning their beer, and when I first posted this in 2011 that number had quadrupled, with over 100 small brewers canning their beer. In 2015, the Canned Beer Database lists 480 breweries offering their beer in cans. It’s great to see good beer in cans become more and more common, and we should continue to see more canned beer from craft brewers in the future. Why not pick up some today and see for yourself how good it now is from a can, especially as we celebrate “Beer Can Appreciation Day.”

krueger-cream-ale-flat

Beer In Ads #3247: Tuborg & A Bicycle Making Life A Little Greener

January 23, 2020 By Jay Brooks

Thursday’s ad is for Tuborg, from 1985. From the late 1800s until the 1980s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. I’ve been posting vintage European posters all year, and for the remainder of December will feature holiday-themed posters of all ages. “Tuborg is a Danish brewing company founded in 1873 on a harbour in Hellerup, an area North of Copenhagen, Denmark. Since 1970 it has been part of the Carlsberg Group.” This is the second in a series of minimalist posters created that year by Wibroe & Partners (now Wibroe, Duckert & Partners) using just green and white that was popular enough that 35 years later they’re still doing Tuborg’s advertising. This one features a person on a bicycle with a bottle of Tuborg in a basket. It likes her dress (is that a dress?) is made from the same fabric as the striped shirt ad from a few days ago. The text on the bottom of all of the poster reads “Hvad er det … der gør livet lidt grønnere?,” which Google translates as “What is it … that makes life a little greener?”