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Archives for January 1, 2023

Beer In Ads #4310: The Rheingold Story, Part 1

January 1, 2023 By Jay Brooks

Sunday’s ad is for “Rheingold Beer,” from 1955. 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. Nancy Woodruff was elected Miss Rheingold 1955.” She was born in Detroit Michigan in 1933, but was raised in San Leandro, California. Humorously, one newspaper reported she attended “San Leandro high school in San Francisco,” and not in … San Leandro. When she was 18, two years ago, she moved to New York City to pursue a modeling career. She entered the 1952 Miss Rheingold contest and was chosen as a finalist, but list to Mary Austin that year. But tried again in 1954, and well, here we are. I’m not sure who her career fared after this year, as there’s not much information I could find. Apparently, she did some early television, but mostly commercial work. She married stock broker Jack Paul Adler of New York in 1956, and they appear to have had two children, before moving to Naples, Florida at some point. She passed away in early 2004. This is page one of an eight-page insert published in the Los Angeles Times on January 2, 1955 entitled “The Rheingold Story” and featuring the newly elected Miss Rheingold for 1955, Nancy Woodruff. Page 1 shows an early photo shoot with the newly elected Ms. Woodruff.

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

Historic Beer Birthday: Michael Joseph Owens

January 1, 2023 By Jay Brooks

owens-illinois
Today is the birthday of Michael Joseph Owens (January 1, 1859–December 27, 1923). He “was an inventor of machines that could automate the production of glass bottles.”

Michael-J-Owens-close

If you’ve ever opened a beer bottle, you’ve probably held something he had a hand in developing, because he made beer bottles cheap and affordable for breweries, and his company has continued to improve upon his designs. Based on his patents, in 1903 he founded the Owens Bottle Company, which in 1929 merged with the Illinois Glass Company in 1929 to become Owens-Illinois, Inc. Today, O-I is an international company with 80 plants in 23 countries, joint ventures in China, Italy, Malaysia, Mexico, the United States and Vietnam, with 27,000 employees worldwide and 2,100-plus worldwide patents.

MJOwens3-a
Michael J. Owens in front of one of his bottling machines from a film shot in 1910.

Here’s a short biography of Owens:

Michael Joseph Owens was an inventor of machines that could automate the production of glass bottles.

Michael J. Owens was born on January 1, 1859, in Mason County, West Virginia. As a teenager, he went to work for a glass manufacturer in Newark, Ohio.

During the late 1800s, Toledo, Ohio was the site of large supplies of natural gas and high silica-content sandstone — two items necessary for glass manufacturing. Numerous companies either formed in or relocated to Toledo, including the New England Glass Company, which relocated to Toledo in 1888. This same year, the company’s owner, Edward Drummond Libbey, hired Owens.

Within a short time, Owens had become a plant manager for Libbey in Findlay, Ohio. At this point in time, glass manufacturers in the United States had to blow glass to produce the bottles. This was a slow and tedious process. Owens sought to invent a machine that could manufacture glass bottles, rather than having to rely on skilled laborers, greatly speeding up the manufacturing process. On August 2, 1904, Owens patented a machine that could automatically manufacture glass bottles. This machine could produce four bottles per second. Owens’s invention revolutionized the glass industry. His machine also caused tremendous growth in the soft drink and beer industries, as these firms now had a less expensive way of packaging their products.

In 1903, after Owens had invented his bottle machine but before he had patented the invention, Owens formed the Owens Bottle Machine Company in Toledo. Libbey helped finance Owens’s company. This firm initially manufactured Owens’s bottle machine. By 1919, the firm had begun to manufacture bottles, and the company changed its name to the Owens Bottle Company. The company grew quickly, acquiring the Illinois Glass Company in 1929. The Owens Bottle Company became known as the Owens-Illinois Glass Company this same year. In 1965, the company changed its name one final time. It became and remains known as Owens-Illinois, Inc.

Owens retired in 1919. He did not live to see his company grow into such an important manufacturer of glass. He died on December 27, 1923, in Toledo, Ohio. Over the course of his life, Owens secured forty-five patents.

Michael Owens / sally

Here’s his biography from his Wikipedia page:

He was born in Mason County, West Virginia on January 1, 1859. He left school at the age of 10 to start a glassware apprenticeship at J. H. Hobbs, Brockunier and Company in Wheeling, West Virginia.

In 1888 he moved to Toledo, Ohio and worked for the Toledo Glass Factory owned by Edward Drummond Libbey. He was later promoted to foreman and then to supervisor. He formed the Owens Bottle Machine Company in 1903. His machines could produce glass bottles at a rate of 240 per minute, and reduce labor costs by 80%.

Owens and Libbey entered into a partnership and the company was renamed the Owens Bottle Company in 1919. In 1929 the company merged with the Illinois Glass Company to become the Owens-Illinois Glass Company.

Michael-J-Owens

To read more about Owens’ contributions, check out Michael Owens’ Glass Bottles Changed The World, by Scott S. Smith, Owens the Innovator at the University of Toledo, Today in Science, and the West Virginia Encyclopedia has a history of the Owens-Illinois Glass Company.

michael-owens-glass-bottle-machine-no-6

Filed Under: Birthdays, Just For Fun, Related Pleasures Tagged With: Bottles, History, Packaging, Patent, Science of Brewing

Historic Beer Birthday: Francesco Peroni

January 1, 2023 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Francesco Peroni (January 1, 1818-September 2, 1893) [Note: some sources say 1894]. He was born in the Province of Novara and his family made pasta. In 1846, he founded the Peroni Brewery in Vigevano. Production was moved and expanded to Rome in 1864, and was later managed by Francesco’s son, Giovanni, beginning in 1867.

According to the Peroni Brewery Wikipedia page:

The Peroni company was established under the founding family name in the town of Vigevano, Italy, in 1846. Due to booming business, a second brewery was built in Rome. The company was moved to Rome by Giovanni Peroni in 1864, six years prior to Rome becoming the Italian capital in 1870. Throughout the late 19th and early 20th centuries, the company became one of the most prominent brewing companies in the newly unified Italian nation.

It is probably best known worldwide for its pale lager, Nastro Azzurro, which was the 13th best-selling beer in the United Kingdom in 2010.

By 2016, Peroni was owned by Miller Brands U.K. of SABMiller. As part of the agreements made with regulators before Anheuser-Busch InBev was allowed to acquire SABMiller, the company sold Peroni to Asahi Breweries on 13 October 2016.

This is somewhat of a fluff piece about the Peroni Brewery from Louisiana’s Rouses Market blog:

Like so many of the great food and beverage institutions of Italy, the story of Peroni begins in the nineteenth century. That’s when Francesco Peroni, an entrepreneur in the country’s north, opened a brewery in the city of Vigevano.

To drink beer is to drink the Earth itself, and location was everything to Francesco’s operation. It was practically designed by God for beermaking: the Alps provide glacial ice and water, and the arable land between the Adda and Brembo rivers offers fertile fields for growing crops. Thus Birra Peroni, as he called his company, offered perhaps the finest beer in Italy—pale and medium and well suited for food and conversation. Right away, the country just could not get enough of the stuff.

In 1864, two decades after opening its first brewery, Peroni had to open a second site in the city of Rome (itself no slouch in agriculture). It was the only way to keep glasses full in thirsty Italy. Seventy years later—a blink of the eye in the time scales of Italian companies—Peroni was the biggest brewer in the country. Today, it’s one of the biggest in the world.

It is no accident that practically every civilization in history has, at some point, independently invented beer. In fact, some scholars assert that, beyond its obvious appeal, beer is the reason civilizations exist in the first place. The hypothesis—though, of course, they didn’t know any of this at the time—goes like this: grain is not really very tasty—and especially the grain consumed by prehistoric humans. (It’s not like they had Tony’s to spice things up.) And some parts of the grain—like the bran your least favorite cereal is made from—are especially hard to digest, while others are easy to make use of but difficult to get to. Grain was and is a vital source of nutrition, and for a civilization to thrive they would need to grow it in abundance and consume it eagerly.

Enter beer. Its repeated discovery was likely an accident, perhaps the result of rainwater soaking into stored grain and fermenting over time. (The fermentation was very likely accidental and certainly a mystery.) This yielded a rich, dark liquid, which, at some point, a bold and possibly desperate human being decided to drink. Whatever the reason, no matter the circumstance, it kept happening. People realized pretty quickly—time and again—that beer was amazing, and they wanted more. Humankind had just found its new favorite thing.

While one might imagine early civilizations as an endless begrudging toil in the fields to harvest horrible-tasting grains and perhaps boring, butterless bread, it improves dramatically when you add beer. You’ve suddenly got industrious tribes cultivating every square inch of land imaginable, because more grain means more beer, and more beer means fewer nights sitting around the campfire thinking about how cold it is, or how hungry you are, or how bad everyone smells, or what the wolves are up to in the shadows. Instead, you’re tipsy and telling everyone about that saber-toothed cat you took down with your bare hands, and, inexplicably, dancing much better than you used to.

Ten thousand years of human industry, a steady improvement in beermaking, and one family’s devotion to quality bring us to Peroni. More than a beer, the name is a symbol of Italian glamor and practically a lifestyle for its drinkers. Peroni’s two most famous beers, by far, are its original beer, named after the company, and Nastro Azzurro, a pale lager. The latter is made with a corn exclusive to the company—Nostrano dell’Isola maize—which imbues the beer with its color, clarity and characteristic citrus, spice, and bitter balance. The beer is brewed with Saaz-Saaz and Hallertau Magnum hops, responsible for Nastro Azzurro’s ephemeral touch on the palate. Taken together, with two-row spring barley in the mix, you get a premium beer notable for its especially crisp finish. If human civilization has done nothing else, it has given us Peroni—Italy bottled and delivered the world over.

The Peroni Brewery in 1846.

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

Historic Beer Birthday: Gustave Amos

January 1, 2023 By Jay Brooks

Today may be the birthday of Gustave Amos (1840-1910), but the exact month and day is unknown. He was a Protestant Lutheran originally from Wasselonne, in northeastern France. He founded the Brasserie Amos in 1868, which was located in Metz, which is part of the Moselle, which is in the Lorraine area of Eastern France. His father, Jean Amos, owned and operated a candle factory, then a soap factory, but it was his Uncle Edouard, who was a local brewer, that introduced Gustave to brewing when he was very young. The Amos brewery kept growing and doing very well, but in 1910, Gustave was killed in accident when he was struck by a cab right outside the front door of the brewery. His son, Gustave Amos, Jr. continued to run the brewery and it stayed in the family until his great-grandson, Gérard Frantz, sold the brewery in 1988 to the German group Karlsberg (called Karlsbräu outside Germany to avoid confusion with Carlsberg) in Homborg. They closed the brewery in 1993.

This brief biograpy of Gustave is from L’Histoire sous un autre Angle, translated by Google:

Gustave Amos, the founder of the brewery, comes from a large family in Wasselonne. Born in 1840, he is the grandson of Frédéric Georges Amos who settled in Wasselonne during the revolutionary period, around 1795. Coming from a patrician family of reformed Württemberg which dates back to the beginning of the 16th century, Frédéric Georges will become the ancestor of a line of industrialists, officers, engineers and doctors. Nowadays, two streets in Wasselonne recall this illustrious family. If two streets in Wasselonne honor the Amos family, Canada has preferred to give the name of this family to one of its towns.

The location of the first Brasserie Amos at the corner of Holandre-Piquemal and Belle-Isle streets in the Îles district.

This account of the brewery’s early history comes from Le Blog des Bibliothèques Médiathèques de Metz in a post entitled “Last Sips of Amos:”

Contrary to what the collective imagination retains, the beer industry made its appearance in the Metz region before the annexation of the department by Germany. Indeed, the Amos brewery opened its doors in 1868! It was founded by Gustave Amos, a young brewer from Wasselonne (Bas-Rhin), in line with the family business. An excellent master brewer and remarkable businessman, Gustave Amos quickly succeeded in raising his brewery to the forefront of Moselle beer producers, even though the city of Metz had more than fifteen active breweries. First located in the city center, the company moved to the Sablon district shortly after the War of 1870.

Brewery employees before World War 1.

During the entire period of the Annexation, Gustave Amos made a point of surpassing the Germanic breweries which had established themselves in the Metz region. At that time, the Amos brewery became the meeting place for the Metz bourgeoisie of French origin in Metz. An anecdote reported by the Bière et brasseries de Moselle website tells us thatin 1895, a 72-year-old former notable from Metz, exiled to Pont-à-Mousson, cycled daily to Metz to join the regulars’ table, between 5 and 7 p.m. Thus, the “native” inhabitants of Lorraine could freely taste a local beer with the nose and beard of the Occupant! Faced with the success encountered, Gustave Amos transformed his company into a Société Anonyme in 1908, allowing his children to succeed him and the family business to remain independent. Great good for him, because barely two years later, he died hit by a cab in front of his brewery. Gustave-fils therefore took over the management of the Amos company. Although competition from German breweries was fierce, on the eve of the First World War, Amos was the third largest Moselle brewery, with an annual production of 70,000 hectoliters. This strong activity can in part be explained by the presence of a large garrison stationed in the city; in addition, the German immigrant population consumed a lot of beer … and this despite the controversy reported inLa Gazette lorraine , the official French-speaking press of the occupier, according to which brasseries of French origin served beer in glasses of smaller capacity than German mugs!

Another view of the brewery from the other side.

Moselle beer and breweries picks up the story:

Gustave moved to Metz in 1868. He rented for three years, then bought from Jean-Baptiste Reinert, the brewery located at the corner of the rue Hollandre- Piquemal and d’Heltz, opposite the Belle-Isle hospital. The places quickly became too small and, in 1874, the brewery moved to Sablon.

The larger Amos brewery in Sablon.
Although the one in Metz was no slouch.

Filed Under: Birthdays, Breweries, Just For Fun Tagged With: France

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