Thursday’s ads are for Budějovický Budvar — one of two original Budweisers — known in the U.S. as Czechvar for reasons I’m sure you understand. The town of České Budějovice or Budweis inspired Anheuser-Busch to name their beer Budweiser, which essentially means beer from Budweis. It was today in 1895 that Budějovický Budvar was founded, which is why I decided to highlight one of their ad campaigns today.
In 2004, Budvar launched an ad campaign called the Ten Commandments, in which ten ads detailed what they considered good brewing practices, in part to distance themselves from larger European lager breweries that had made ingredient and process decisions that saved money but deviated from traditional brewing. The ads are meant to look intentionally old from the look of the paper, the text and the artwork. Each illustration shows the brewing practice and a possible punishment for breaking it. While I couldn’t find a full translation of them, I guessed as best I could.
Below is Commandment #2: Use Only Whole Hops.
You can see the rest of the Commandments below is a slideshow of Budvar’s Ten Beer Commandments. This Flickr gallery is best viewed in full screen. To view it that way, after clicking on the arrow in the center to start the slideshow, click on the button on the bottom right with the four arrows pointing outward on it, to see the photos in glorious full screen. Once in full screen slideshow mode, click on “Show Info” to identify each photo.
Great stuff. I love these Ten Commandments, and I love the continual banter of which bud was first, and who screwed who.
Last year my daughter smuggled me 2 bottles of Budweiser Budvar when she came back from spending the summer in Czech. Great stuff, nice head, real flavor. The REAL Budweiser!
I first tasted the “real” Bud in 1989 – in Japan! I bought it in the liquor dept of a big store in Yokohama; cost about $3.25 US for 330-350ml. Early 90’s, the short-lived Emeryville Brewpub made an excellent “clone” of it. Same era, I came reasonably close w/a homebrew – using 6# light powdered malt extract, 2 oz Hallertauer hops in the boil, 1 oz Saaz added the last 10 min of the boil, & (I think) Red Star lager yeast. Also may have added Saaz “hop tea” (.5 oz leaf hops in a coffee filter w/a full 12-cup pot of water run through them). NOTE to newbie homebrewers: If you do hop tea my way, bleach & rinse out the filter basket beforehand so the coffee residue is gone! You can get the same effect by steeping the hops in a pint of very hot water (put hops in a mesh bag/tea ball).