Tuesday’s ad is another one from the United Brewers Industrial Foundation, from 1941. This was well before the “Beer Belongs” series, but after World War II began. However, this ad ran in Collier’s in November, meaning it was shortly before the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, so it was just before America entered the war. As a result, this one is a bowling themed ad, “Right down their alley … a glass of mellow beer or ale!” War ads would follow next year, but for now things were still “mellow”.
This is useful to show a terminology now extinct, beer vs. ale. Beer meant lager, i.e., the type typically encountered such as Bud, Coors, PBR, etc., ale meant top-fermented beer or a beer of that character such as cream ale or Ballantine XXX. This terminology held on until early in the craft beer period, but is now passe. In England, beer until quite quite recently meant bitter or mild, or stout. Ale was a subset. Lager was viewed as something quite different and called, lager. But now, it’s all beer pretty much. So beer meant something opposite on each side of the pond but the differences have narrowed to the vanishing point.