Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #1487: Is It Art? No It’s Guinness!

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Saturday’s ad is for Guinness, an ad in the design stages that never was used, but was created in late 1944, sometime after the death of the artist that inspired it, Piet Mondrian , who died February 1, 1944. Mondrian was also born today in 1899, which is why I chose this ad for today. This is one of the “lost Guinness ads” that Martyn Cornell wrote about last year in More great lost Guinness art: new evidence for the genius of Gilroy. The Gilroy he’s referring to is artist John Gilroy, who created most of the iconic characters Guinness used in their advertising, such as the Toucan, the Zookeeper and all of the rest. This one is part of a large stash that mysteriously disappeared in 1971 and then reappeared in America decades later just in time to net whoever absconded with the art millions of dollars. As part of the “lost” unused pieces, Gilroy created a series of ads paying homage to great art masterpieces by Van Gogh, Michelangelo, Picasso, Vermeer and others. This one is a beautifully conceived work that is at once recognizable as being in the style of Mondrian but also cleverly works into the design a pint of stout. It’s shame the series was never finished or green lit.

guinness-mondrian

Beer In Ads #1486: Honored In Its Home Town And Famed The World Over

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Friday’s ad is still another one for Budweiser, again from 1916. This is one is part of a series from the same year, with the two from the previous days being the three I know about. This one has the headline “Honored in Its Home Town and Famed the World Over.” The copy mentions that the “Saazer Hop Flavor” was “exclusive,” which seems very strange. And for that matter, when did we stop calling them “Saazer” and drop the “-er?” Like all of the ads, it ends with “Budweiser Means Moderation.”

Bud-1916-hometown

Beer In Ads #1484: Every Glass A Handful Of Health

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Wednesday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1916. There’s some great copy on this ad, beginning with “Every Glass a Handful of Health.” According to the ad, “Each drop of Budweiser is alive and sparkling with the vital energy of Northern Barley and the tonic vigor of Saazer Hops.” Apparently it’s also the “unchallenged sovereign of bottled beers,” which must have been a precursor to A-B declaring themselves the king of beers.

BUd-1916-handful-of-health

Beer In Ads #1482: When You Make A Great Beer, You Don’t Have To Make A Great Fuss

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Monday’s ad is for Heineken, from, I think, the early 1990s. I confess I don’t remember this ad campaign from Heineken, but I recently discovered that they had a reasonably long-running series of ads with the tagline “When You make a great beer, you don’t have to make a great fuss.” They’re all minimalist in design with witty text and that fussy tagline. I haven’t been able to find a lot of specifics about the campaign, apart from a few suggestions that it may not have run in the United States. But it’s pretty funny in the context of the ABI Super Bowl ad that accused craft beer drinkers of being to fussy about their beer.

heineken-fuss

Beer In Ads #1481: March, The Month For Sowing Barley

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Sunday’s ad is for the British ad campaign “Beer is Best,” from 1938. Part of “A Calendar of British Beer” from that year, March features a wonderful illustration of a farmer sowing his field with barley, and the text explains that this is the month for it, with some statistics of how much of the grain it takes each year to create all of England’s beer. “All the year round. Beer is Best.” Happy March.

British-beer-calendar-1938-03March

Beer In Ads #1480: No Corn Or Corn Preparations

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Saturday’s ad is for Anheuser-Busch, from 1892. Apparently shortly after the competition of a new brewhouse in St. Louis, they celebrated by sponsoring “pen and sunlight sketches of Omaha and environs” with this ad. One curious feature of the otherwise simple image ad, is this line. “No Corn or Corn Preparations are used in the manufacture of Anheuser-Busch beer. It is, therefore, the highest-priced by the most wholesome and really the least expensive for its superior quality.” Funny they didn’t mention rice.

A-B-1892-No-Corn

Beer In Ads #1477: The Health Of The Farmer

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Wednesday’s ad is another one for Anheuser-Busch’s “Malt-Nutrine,” also from 1908. Malt-Nutrine was promoted not as a non-alcoholic beer, but as a “pure malt tonic” and sold by druggists and grocers. “The Health of the Farmer” that the ad is touting comes from Malt-Nutrine containing “the combined juices of germinated barley and selected Saazer Hops.” Is that all? Hell, no. “Every bottle is charged with the strength and glory of the golden grain. Its aroma is the fragrance of the clinging hop vine and its living vigor is the cream of ripened barley. It infuses life into the blood — sustains all the vital powers and to the feeble, aged and run down it is a veritable restorer of recreative and soothing potency.”

A-B-1908-MALT-NUTRINE