Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #93: Budweiser’s Hammer Time

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Thursday’s ad during strange glances week also a 1958 ad, this time for Budweiser, under their campaign “Where there’s life .. there’s Bud.” Mr fix-it watches intently as his wife pours his beer from a can into a pilsner glass. What I can’t quite understand is how use fix a telephone with a hammer. There’s also an odd bit of text there, right next to the hammer.

THE KING’S CREDENTIALS: The King of Beers prints its ingredients right on the label. Know of any other beer that does?

Was that really such a bold claim in 1958? I think I was under the impression that most, if not all, beer labels contain at least the primary ingredients on them, but perhaps that’s a more recent development. Since there are only four, I wouldn’t think that would be a point of differentiation. But maybe then most people didn’t know what the ingredients were, or that they were virtually identical from beer to beer.

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Beer In Ads #92: Snappa Cappa Red Cap

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Wednesday’s ad keeps the week’s accidental theme of strange glances going. It’s a 1958 ad for Carling’s Red Cap beer, “the true Canadian ale” — at least according to the ad. The primary sidewards glance in this ad is looking up at someone looking to have their not-yet-empty glass filled. That’s odd enough, but notice the full glass just to his left (our right). Above that glass is another strange sight. Just what exactly is that out-of-focus man holding on to, and looking up at? A light saber? No, it was nearly twenty years before Star Wars debuted. A RC remote? A red fishing rod? At any rate, that makes two odd looks in one ad, two for the price of one.

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Beer In Ads #91: Schlitz Best Round All Day

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Tuesday’s ad continues the week’s accidental theme of strange glances. It’s a Schlitz ad from the 1950s and features a clubhouse scene presumably just after the golf tournament ended. While the WASPy members of Bushwood Country Club look on, the “winner” pours a bottle of Schlitz into his “Club Champion” trophy. But it’s his smug, smirking sidewards glance at us that makes me shudder. The slogan, “Best round I’ve had all day,” also seems a bit to punny, and I love a great pun.

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Beer In Art #73: Charles Spencelayh’s The Steward

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Today’s work of art is something of a find. I wrote about it when I highlighted another work by the same artist early in my Beer In Art series. In fact, it was the sixth work back in 2008, Charles Spencelayh’s Good Health. After sharing his biography from Wikipedia, I also discovered the following.

Supposedly, he may have done a painting commissioned by the Bass Brewery for them to use in advertising entitled The Steward, depicting a steward opening a bottle of Bass. But so far I’ve been unable to find anything more about it or see what it looks like.

Happily, Diane Hadley, a pub owner in the UK, wrote me to tell me she had one of either 6 or 10 copies Bass gave out hanging in her pub. It was given to her by a Bass representative “some 22 years ago.” And more importantly, she was kind enough to take a few photos of it and send them my way, so I can share it with the world. So here is The Steward, by Charles Spencelayh. Thanks Diane.

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The bottom of the print includes the following text:

‘THE STEWARD’
by Charles Spencelayh H.R.B.S.A., R.M.S., V.P.B.W.S.
The subject of this finely executed work is thought to have been the Steward at the old Bass Club in High Street, Burton upon Trent. Spencelayh, however, kept very poor records of his work which he frequently did not sign or date. He is known to have produced a number of other outstanding paintings of well known commercial products in his early life.

Here’s a closer view.
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And here’s a close-up of the Bass Ale bottles sitting on a tray.
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Five of his paintings are at the Tate in London and a few more are shown at the online Art Renewal Center and Bridgeman has quite a few. There are also some links at the ArtCyclopedia.

Beer In Ads #89: Labatt 50’s Spirit

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Friday’s ad is for a Canadian beer from Labatt’s. Labatt’s 50 Ale debuted in 1950 “to commemorate 50 years of partnership” and until 1979 was their best-selling beer. According to Labatt’s website:

John and Hugh Labatt, grandsons of founder John K. Labatt, launched Labatt 50 in 1950 to commemorate 50 years of partnership. The first light-tasting ale introduced in Canada, Labatt 50 was Canada’s best-selling beer until 1979 when, with the increasing popularity of lagers, it was surpassed by Labatt Blue. Labatt 50 is fermented using a special ale yeast, in use at Labatt since 1933. Specially-selected North American hops and a good balance of dryness, complemented by a fruity taste, provide Labatt 50 with all the distinguishing features of a true ale.

According to the ad copy, it was “Canada’s fastest growing ale because it has Spirit!” I’m not even sure what that means. The artwork looks typical of North American beer ads from the 1950s and so I suspect the ad is from that decade.

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Beer In Ads #88: Budvar’s Ten Commandments

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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.
Budvar 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.

Beer In Ads #87: Heineken’s For A Fresher World

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Wednesday’s ads are not particularly old, but they are pretty clever. They’re actually ads for one of my least favorite beers — Heineken — but that doesn’t mean I can’t appreciate the artistry and creativity of them. I chose a Heineken ad today because on this day in 1933, Heineken began importing their beer to the U.S. once more, since Prohibition had just ended. The slogan that ties the ads together is “For a Fresher World,” ironic given Heineken’s proclivity to becoming lightstruck (a.k.a. skunked) due, at least in part, to using green glass bottles and most grocery stores employing fluorescent lighting. In each ad, they’ve used Heineken’s various packages (bottles, cans, kegs, 12-packs, etc.) to create cityscapes of famous places. I’m sure it was done with computers, similar, I suspect, to Lego’s Design by Me software that my son Porter and I have been playing around with lately to create virtual Lego worlds. But instead of Lego pieces as building blocks, Heineken packages. The green-tinted cities are are a wonder to behold, what the Emerald City of Oz might have looked like if all the Munchkins drank beer.

Because I used to live in New York, it’s the most impressive one to me, especially in the higher resolution version (click on the image to see it larger, then click on “all sizes”). Check out the corkscrew as lady liberty, the Statue of Liberty. “Give me your thirsty, your parched, your beerless masses yearning to drink free.”

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In addition to New York, there’s also one of Rio de Janiero.
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And also Paris.
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Beer In Ads #86: Bud Dry’s Carwash

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Tuesday’s ad is a bit of a horror show. The ad is for Bud Dry, since it was on this day in 1989 that Anheuser-Busch debuted the line extension to test markets, rolling it out nationally the following year. I’m no fashion historian, but those look like every bad fashion look from the late 1980s. Who do you think the target demographic was with this ad? The car is a 1957 Corvette. And maybe it’s just me, but apart from the obvious titillation and appeal to prurient interests, why advertise something called “dry” with such a “wet” scene?

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