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Archives for April 16, 2022

Beer In Ads #4061: Michaele Fallon Elected Miss Rheingold 1947

April 16, 2022 By Jay Brooks Leave a Comment

Saturday’s ad is for “Rheingold Beer,” from 1947. This ad was made for the Rheingold Brewery, which was founded by the Liebmann family in 1883 in New York, New York. At its peak, it sold 35% of all the beer in New York state. In 1963, the family sold the brewery and in was shut down in 1976. In 1940, Philip Liebmann, great-grandson of the founder, Samuel Liebmann, started the “Miss Rheingold” pageant as the centerpiece of its marketing campaign. Beer drinkers voted each year on the young lady who would be featured as Miss Rheingold in advertisements. In the 1940s and 1950s in New York, “the selection of Miss Rheingold was as highly anticipated as the race for the White House.” The winning model was then featured in at least twelve monthly advertisements for the brewery, beginning in 1940 and ending in 1965. Beginning in 1941, the selection of next year’s Miss Rheingold was instituted and became wildly popular in the New York Area. This ad introduced the winner of the Miss Rheingold 1947 contest, Michaele Fallon. I couldn’t find much information about her. She appears to have been born in 1920 under a different name and worked as a model. In this ad, titled ”Michaele Fallon Elected Miss Rheingold 1947!”

Filed Under: Art & Beer, Beers Tagged With: Advertising, History, Rheingold

Historic Beer Birthday: William H. Biner

April 16, 2022 By Jay Brooks 2 Comments

east-idaho
Today is the birthday of William H. “Billy” Biner (April 16, 1889-January 5, 1953). Biner was a journeyman brewer who worked for numerous breweries over his long career. He was born in the Montana territory to Swiss immigrant parents. His father, Theophil Biner, knew Leopold Schmidt and even worked at his Olympia Brewery. Biner sent two of his sons, including Billy once he’s finished with a career as a boxer, to brewing school in Milwaukee. Biner’s first brewing job was at the Phoenix Brewery in Vancouver, British Columbia in 1912. He then worked as the brewmaster for at least eight more breweries, from Los Angeles to Canada. The breweries he worked at included the Mexicali Brewery; the Orange Crush Bottling Company in L.A.; the Mexicali Brewing Company again after it was rebuilt following an earthquake; then the Kootenay Breweries, Ltd. in both Nelson and Trail, in BC, Canada; followed by the Ellensburg Brewing Co. in Washington, and then in 1937 he founded his own brewery, the Mutual Brewing Company. But it didn’t last thanks to World War II and supply issues, and it folded. Afterward, he moved on to both Sicks’ Century Brewery in Seattle and the Silver Springs Brewery in Port Orchard, Washington. Finally, he ran the East Idaho Brewing Co. in Pocatello, Idaho until 1946, when he retired from brewing and bought his own bar, the Leipzig Tavern in Portland, Oregon. He stayed there until a year before he died, which was in 1953.

You can read his biography at Brewery Gems, written by Gary Flynn working with Joseph Fulton, the grandson of Billy Biner.

Filed Under: Birthdays, Breweries, Just For Fun Tagged With: British Columbia, California, Canada, History, Idaho, Oregon, United States, Washington

Historic Beer Birthday: Alan Eames

April 16, 2022 By Jay Brooks 1 Comment

fedora-whip
Today is the birthday of Alan D. Eames (April 16, 1947-February 10, 2007). Eames was an anthropologist of beer and a writer, and was known as both the “Indiana Jones of Beer” and “The Beer King.”

alan-eames-younger

From Wikipedia:

Eames acquired a reputation as the “Indiana Jones of beer” in reference to his global quest to learn about the origins of beer and the role it played in ancient societies and cultures. Eames visited 44 countries. In Egypt he found hieroglyphics about beer, and travelled on the Amazon River in search of a lost black brew. In the Andes, Eames trekked in search of a brew made from strawberries that were the size of baseballs.

Eames claimed to have found the world’s “oldest beer advertisement” on a Mesopotamian stone tablet that dated to roughly 4000 B.C.[1] The tablet depicted a headless woman with large breasts holding goblets of beer in each of her hands. Eames claimed that the tagline to the tablet was “Drink Elba, the beer with the heart of a lion.” Eames believed that beer was the most feminine of drinks, and thought that ancient societies considered it a gift from a goddess rather than a god, as from the gods Ama-Gestin and Ninkasis. With Professor Solomon Katz of the University of Pennsylvania, Eames formulated the theory that beer was an important factor in the creation of settled and civilised societies.

Eames-sa

Here’s Eames’ obituary from the New York Times:

Alan D. Eames, who cultivated his reputation as “the Indiana Jones of beer” by crawling into Egyptian tombs to read hieroglyphics about beer and voyaging along the Amazon in search of a mysterious lost black brew, died on Feb. 10 at his home in Dummerston, Vt. He was 59.

His wife, Sheila, said he died after suffering respiratory failure while he slept.

Mr. Eames called himself a beer anthropologist, a role that allowed him to expound on subjects like what he put forward as the world’s oldest beer advertisement, dating to roughly 4000 B.C.

In it a Mesopotamian stone tablet depicted a headless woman with enormous breasts holding goblets of beer in each hand. The tagline, at least in his interpretation, was: “Drink Elba, the beer with the heart of a lion.”

He explored similar topics in seven books, the best known of which was “The Secret Life of Beer” (1995), in myriad radio and television appearances and in speeches at colleges and other institutions. A typical title: “Beer: A Gift from God, or the Devil’s Training Wheels.”

Mr. Eames, who followed the golden liquid to 44 countries, often told about his perilous trek high in the Andes in pursuit of an ancient brew made from strawberries the size of baseballs. Or about Aztecs forbidding drunkenness except among those 52 years of age or older. Or about accounts that said Norse ale was served with garlic to ward off evil.

Mr. Eames’s favorite and perhaps most startling message was that beer is the most feminine of beverages. He said that in almost all ancient societies beer was considered a gift from a goddess, never a male god. Most often, women began the brewing process by chewing grains and spitting them into a pot to form a fermentable mass.

Alan Duane Eames was born on April 16, 1947, in Gardner, Mass. His father was Warren Baker Eames, a Harvard-trained anthropologist. By the time he was 11, young Alan was advertising his magic act. He graduated from Mark Hopkins College in Brattleboro, Vt., now closed.

In 1968, he moved to New York City and opened an art gallery. He spent evenings at the New York Public Library researching beer.

His beer-related business ventures began in the mid-1970s with his acquisition of Gleason’s Package Store in Templeton, Mass., which became known for its large beer selection. He conceived, designed and operated Three Dollar Dewey’s Ale House in Portland, Me., and another with the same name in Brattleboro.

He found ways to cash in on his celebrity, including helping market Guinness stout. In an interview with The St. Petersburg Times, he lauded its “rich dark color, the creamy white head that leaves delicate traces of foamy lace on the inside of the glass.”

He concluded, “It is one of the great joys in this vale of tears.”

Mr. Eames was the founding director of the American Museum of Brewing History and Fine Arts in Fort Mitchell, Ky., known for its festive “beer camps.” He contributed items on subjects from ancient times to the mid-19th century to the Encyclopedia of Beer.

But beer did not always pay expenses, and Mr. Eames sometimes had to take jobs like packing boxes in a vitamin factory and tending bar.

Mr. Eames is survived by his fourth wife, the former Sheila Momaney; his sons, Adrian and Andrew, both of Dummerston; his daughter, Elena Eames of Brattleboro; his stepsons Logan and Riley Johnson, of Dummerston; his father, of East Templeton, Mass., and York Beach, Me.; his mother, Mavis Franks of Denham Springs, La.; his sister, Holiday Eames of Westminster, Vt.; his half-brother, Mark Warner of Baton Rouge, La., and one grandson.

There’s also obits from the UK Guardian and Real Beer.

eames

Beer loses its historian

Above all others, Alan Eames loved Guinness. But after traveling the world to find new beers, it seemed too easy to love such a common one. He had another favorite, though: Fruitillata, a milkshake-like beer made with strawberries and corn, brewed only 10 days a year by a tribe in remote South American mountains. One year, he just happened to show up in time for a drink. But then, that was what Eames did.

Eames, a beer historian nicknamed the “Indiana Jones of Beer,” died in his sleep on February 10. He was 59. His career took him across the world, researching beers and the innumerable ways they’re made, and he wrote his findings in books such as Secret Life of Beer.

“He was very passionate about things, and he would develop intense interest in things,” said his wife, Sheila, who was living with Eames in Dummerston, VT. “There’s so much history in beer that he never grew tired of learning about it, reading about it, talking about it.”

She said his introduction to beer came at a beach party in Maine when he was 17.

It was a Ballantine IPA. “He wrote about the attraction of the green of the bottle, the perfect fit in the hand, the wonderful smack of it when the beer hit his tongue,” Sheila says. “He was always interested in history, but I think that was his first real life-changing event, as far as beer went.”

Secret-Life-of-Beer-Eames-Alan

Here’s some of the books he wrote, though he contributed to many more.

  • Ale Dreams
  • The Secret Life of Beer!: Exposed: Legends, Lore & Little-Known Facts
  • A Beer Drinker’s Companion (5000 years of quotes & anecdotes about beer)

And here’s an interview of Eames by Robert Lauriston, though I’m not sure when it took place. You can also listen to him on the Splendid Table program, from a show recorded February 12, 2000.

I remember when he passed away, and even wrote a blog post about him. I only met Eames once, but we spoke on the phone a couple of times. But by a weird quirk of coincidence, I ended up with several boxes of miscellaneous stuff that Pete Slosberg bought. The books in his collection were donated to UC Davis (I think) but the leftover papers, press releases and other oddball stuff ended up in my garage after Pete and Amy moved to a smaller apartment in San Francisco. But there was some pretty interesting stuff among the boxes.

quote-beer-is-a-gift-from-the-goddesses-a-soothing-balm-given-our-species-to-bring-joy-and-alan-d-eames-82-15-09

Filed Under: Birthdays, Just For Fun Tagged With: Archeology, History, Writing

Historic Beer Birthday: Mathias Leinenkugel

April 16, 2022 By Jay Brooks Leave a Comment

leinenkugel
Today is the birthday of Mathias (sometimes spelled Matthias) Leinenkugel (April 16, 1866-June 3, 1927). He was the oldest child of Jacob Leinenkugel, who in 1867, along with John Miller, co-founded the Spring Brewery in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. In 1884, Jacob bought out Miller and the name was changed to the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Co. Mathias served as president of the family brewery from 1907 until his death in 1927. Miller Brewing Co. bought the brewery in 1988, but it continues to be managed by the Leinenkugel family.

Jacob-Leinenkugel-family-1842
Jacob Leinenkugel and his family, though I’m not sure, it seems likely that Mathias is the tall boy standing next to his seated father.

This biography is from Chippewa Falls History:

Mathias “Matt” Jacob Leinenkugel was the oldest of the children born to Jacob Leinenkugel. He was born April 16th, 1866. He grew up in Chippewa Falls with the rest of the Leinenkugel family. In 1889, he married Kathryn M. Watzl. Kathryn was born in 1868 in Montpelier, Wisconsin to John and Maria Watzl. Growing up around the brewery, naturally Mathias started working there. He started work there as a salesman from 1900 to 1907. In 1907, he was promoted to President of the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewery. He stayed in this position until his death on June 3rd, 1927.

Outside of the brewery, Mathias had a great family life with his wife and children. They lived at 821 North Bridge Street here in Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. In 1890, they had their first child, Josephine Katherine Theresa. She was born December 6th, 1890. She would go on to be married twice, and have three children. Her first marriage was to Joseph (John) Black on April 16th, 1912. They were married in Chippewa Falls and remained there after their marriage. Unfortunately, John passed away in 1932 (John Black Dies).

After John’s passing, Josephine re-married on February 15th, 1941 to Thomas Gibbons. They spent the rest of their years together in Minnesota, as Gibbons was Ramsey County Sheriff until the mid-50’s.

Leinenkugels-Chippewa-Pride-Beer--Labels-Jacob-Leinenkugel-Brewing-Co_29959-1

This is his obituary from Find-a-Grave:

Mathias Jacob Leinenkugel was born the oldest child of Jacob Mathias Leinenkugel and Josephine Imhoff (Imhof on her death card which was all in German). He was born 16 April 1866 in Sauk City, Sauk Co, Wis.

In 1867 his parents came to Chippewa Falls and his father Jacob, trained by his father Mathias in the brewery trade, began a brewery.

Mathias worked in the brewery as a salesman and in the 1880’s met Kathryn M Watzl who was living in Chippewa Falls. They married at St. Charles Borromeo Catholic Church in Chippewa Falls, Wis on 18 June 1889.

Mathias was eventually president of the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewery in Chippewa Falls. They lived at 821 N Bridge St.

Mathias and Kathryn had 3 children: Josephine Catherine Theresa Leinenkugel, Jacob Mathias Leinenkugel, and Karl J (became Carl) Leinenkugel.

Mathias was ill a couple years with pulmonary tuberculosis and died in Chippewa Falls, Chippewa Co, WI on 3 June 1926 at age 60 years 1 month and 17 days of age. His death was recorded in Vol 21 page 34 of the Chippewa Co Court House records.

Leinenkugel-brewery-1930
The brewery around 1930.

And this fuller history is from the website Chippewa Falls History:

When people hear the name Leinenkugel, most would think of the beer or maybe even Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. As the owner of Colette’s Tavern says, “Some people get hysterical when they find out I have it. The beer’s got some kind of charm.” Most, however, do not think of the rich and interesting history that has gone into the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company. Most of this history comes from its origins and how over five generations, the business has kept within the Leinenkugel family. To properly tell the history of this family, we must start at the beginning with Jacob Mathias Leinenkugel himself. Jacob Leinenkugel was born May 22nd, 1842 in Prussia to Matthias and Maria Leinenkugel. Jacob and his entire family arrived in New York on August 2nd, 1845. They had taken a ship, the American, from Amsterdam to New York, New York. Jacob Leinenkugel was three at the time of this trip. The Leinenkugel family settled in Prairie du Sac, Wisconsin and stayed there to raise their children. In 1865, Jacob Leinenkugel married Josephine Imhoff in Sauk City, Wisconsin. Two years later, Jacob, Josephine and their son, Mathias, all moved to Chippewa Falls when Jacob started the Spring Brewery, now known as the Jacob Leinenkugel Brewing Company.

Leinenkugel's-Spring-Brewery

The brewery was constructed in 1867 on property along the Duncan Creek which Jacob had purchased from Hiram Allen. Jacob Leinenkugel established the Spring Brewery with John Miller. In their first year alone, they “…delivered 400 barrels…with a small cart pulled by a horse named Kate.” Originally, the Brewery only had two teams of horses, which meant they could deliver kegs of beer up to ten miles outside of Chippewa Falls. “During the early years, Jacob Leinenkugel drove the wagon himself.” The Spring Brewery was named as such because it was built near the Big Eddy Springs in Chippewa Falls. These springs “…poured nonacidic, non-alkaline water that the brewery uses without treatment to this day.” The Spring Brewery soon became the Jacob Leinenkugel Spring Brewery Company when John Miller sold his share in 1883.

It is said that “Jacob Leinenkugel…was more than a brewer of Leinenkugel’s beer. Described as a noble, magnanimous man and a generous contributor to Notre Dame Church, he served two years as mayor.” Indeed, Jacob Leinenkugel was more than just a brewer. He also had a rich family life. He had five children with his first wife, Josephine. The oldest, Mathias “Matt” Jacob was born in 1866. Their oldest daughter, Rose, was born in 1867. Their next oldest son, William, was born in 1870. Susan, the second oldest daughter, was born nine months later in 1870. And finally, they had one child who was born in 1873 but sadly passed away as an infant. Josephine Leinenkugel passed away in 1890, at the age of 44. A few years later, Jacob Leinenkugel re-married in 1892. He married Anna Wilson and had two children. Della, the oldest, was born in 1894 and Edward was born in 1896.

Leinenkugel-fermenting-tanks-1897
Leinenkugel’s fermenting tanks in 1897.

Leinenkugel-chippewa-pride-tray

Filed Under: Birthdays, Breweries, Just For Fun Tagged With: History, Wisconsin

Historic Beer Birthday: Emil Schandein

April 16, 2022 By Jay Brooks Leave a Comment

jacob-best
Today is the birthday of Emil Schandein (April 15, 1840-July 22, 1888). He was born in Bavaria, Germany, but emigrated to America when he was sixteen, in 1856. Arriving first in New York, he moved shortly thereafter to Philadelphia, and moved around quite a bit, until finally settling in Milwaukee, Wisconsin in 1866 where he joined the Philip Best & Co. brewery staff. That same year he married Best’s daughter Lisette, and her father sold the remaining half of the business to her husband, making Frederick Pabst president, and Schandein vice-president. Schandein was a director of the brewery from 1873-1888. When he passed away in 1888, Lisette was elected vice-president.

Emil-Schandein

This is the Google translation of Emil’s German Wikipedia page:

Schandein was born in 1840 in Obermoschel . His parents were the royal tax and community beneficiary Joseph Wilhelm Schandein (1800-1862) and Louisa Schandein (b. Barth). His uncle was the historian Ludwig Schandein.

At the age of 16 he emigrated to the USA and settled in Philadelphia . After working in different cities, he moved to Watertown, Wisconsin, in 1863. There he married Elizabetha “Lisette” Best, a daughter of the breeder owner Phillip Best.

Together with his brother-in-law Frederick Pabst, he bought shares in his Philip Best Brewing Company and from 1873 until his death took the post of vice-president.

In addition to his work for the brewery, Schandein was one of the founders and first president of the German Society of Milwaukee. He was also director of the Northwestern Life Insurance Company, the Second Ward Savings Bank and President of the Milwaukee Brewers Association.

Emil Schandein died in 1888 during a stay in Germany. He is buried at the Forest Home Cemetery in Milwaukee.

Only after his death was in 1889, the Saddle Your Mansion, a villa in the German Renaissance style, on the 24th and Grand Avenue (now Wisconsin Avenue) in Milwaukee completed. The Milwaukee County Emergency Hospital was built in 1929 on the site of the building.

His widow, Lisette Schandein, assumed his post as vice president after his death until 1894. She died in 1905 during a stay in Germany.

Shandein bequeathed part of his estate to the Kaiserslauter Kreisrealschule and to the Pfälzisches Gewerbemuseum. The Schandeinstrasse in Kaiserslautern is named after him. The Schandeinstrasse in Speyer, however, is named after his uncle Ludwig.

phillip-best-stock-1873

This Phillip Best Brewing Co. stock certificate, from 1873, is signed by then-president Emil Schandein.

This is from the “National Cyclopaedia of American Biography, Vol. III,” published in 1891:

Emil-Schandein-cyclopedia-1
Emil-Schandein-cyclopedia-2

Filed Under: Birthdays, Just For Fun Tagged With: Germany, History, Wisconsin

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