Wednesday’s ad is for a presumably short-lived New York City brewery, Brewer’s Best Associates, Inc., which was located at 620 Fifth Avenue. The ad for their Pilsener Beer is from 1947. The normally authoritative American Breweries II doesn’t even have a listing for the brewery, which is odd. It’s the first time I’ve looked up a brewery and it wasn’t listed. Given that I’ve never heard of it and there doesn’t seem to be a record of the brewery, it’s funny that their slogan is all about remembering their name, “The New Big Name in Beer.” I guess it didn’t work out as they’d hoped. The other funny thing in the ad is the endorsement from “Ted Collins, owner of Boston Yanks Pro-Football Team and famous radio producer.” The Boston Yanks were a short-lived team that only played from 1944-47. In 1948, they relocated to New York City and were the New York Bulldogs for a season before becoming the New York Yanks until 1952, when they played their final season in Texas as the Dallas Texans. As for the beer, I guess it wasn’t “the beer you’ve been waiting for” after all.
UPDATE: An alert reader (thanks Beer Dave!) offered some additional information about Brewer’s Best.
Brewers Best was actually not a brewery. This was a franchise of sorts. Brewers Best was brewed at about 25 different small breweries around the US. The headquarters in NY was essentially a sales office. This brand had national distribution through the network of small brewers who brewed the beer under contract.
That logo reminds me, just a little, of Brooklyn Brewery.
There were several breweries involved in this project somewhat like Billy Beer many years later. I collect breweriana from a small local brewery, now closed, The Menominee-Marinette Brewery from Menominee. MI. and Marinette, WI. and I found a Brewers Best paper label from this brewery but I have never seen a bottle or can sporting this label.
Definitely a brand contracted out for brewing like Billy Beer. No way a brewery was ever located at 620 Fifth Avenue on Manhattan.
My hometown of Sebewaing, MI, in the “Thumb Area” northeast of Saginaw, had The Sebewaing Brewing Company from the 1890s until 1965. It had the mid-Michigan contract to brew “Brewers’ Best” Beer, as some have discussed above.
The Brewers’ Best system allowed national advertising to help promote these small breweries in the late 1940s-early 1950s, who were already getting strong competition from the growing national brands such as A-B, Schlitz, Pabst, Carling, Stroh’s and so many others.
I’m seeking more information about the Brewers’ Best program, but as has been stated, it must not have lasted long. The great sebewaingbrewingcompany.com site has an entire section about Brewers’ Best. The website is the work of a grandson of the last brewmaster. Since most folks couldn’t pronounce (the native American word) of Sebewaing, even the bottles and cans carried the slogan “Say CBWing Beer”