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.