Historic Beer Birthday: William S. Gossett

June 13, 2026 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of William Sealy Gosset (June 13, 1876–October 16, 1937). He “was an English statistician. He published under the pen name Student, and developed the Student’s t-distribution.” He also worked his entire career for Guinness Brewing, and was trained as a chemist, but it was his pioneering work in statistics, in which he was self-taught, that he is best remembered for today.

Here’s his biography, from Wikipedia:

Born in Canterbury, England to Agnes Sealy Vidal and Colonel Frederic Gosset, Gosset attended Winchester College before studying chemistry and mathematics at New College, Oxford. Upon graduating in 1899, he joined the brewery of Arthur Guinness & Son in Dublin, Ireland.
As an employee of Guinness, a progressive agro-chemical business, Gosset applied his statistical knowledge – both in the brewery and on the farm – to the selection of the best yielding varieties of barley. Gosset acquired that knowledge by study, by trial and error, and by spending two terms in 1906–1907 in the biometrical laboratory of Karl Pearson. Gosset and Pearson had a good relationship. Pearson helped Gosset with the mathematics of his papers, including the 1908 papers, but had little appreciation of their importance. The papers addressed the brewer’s concern with small samples; biometricians like Pearson, on the other hand, typically had hundreds of observations and saw no urgency in developing small-sample methods.
Another researcher at Guinness had previously published a paper containing trade secrets of the Guinness brewery. To prevent further disclosure of confidential information, Guinness prohibited its employees from publishing any papers regardless of the contained information. However, after pleading with the brewery and explaining that his mathematical and philosophical conclusions were of no possible practical use to competing brewers, he was allowed to publish them, but under a pseudonym (“Student”), to avoid difficulties with the rest of the staff. Thus his most noteworthy achievement is now called Student’s, rather than Gosset’s, t-distribution.
Gosset had almost all his papers including The probable error of a mean published in Pearson’s journal Biometrika under the pseudonym Student. It was, however, not Pearson but Ronald A. Fisher who appreciated the importance of Gosset’s small-sample work, after Gosset had written to him to say I am sending you a copy of Student’s Tables as you are the only man that’s ever likely to use them!. Fisher believed that Gosset had effected a “logical revolution”. Fisher introduced a new form of Student’s statistic, denoted t, in terms of which Gosset’s statistic was {\displaystyle z={\frac {t}{\sqrt {n-1}}}} z=\frac{t}{\sqrt{n-1}}. The t-form was adopted because it fit in with Fisher’s theory of degrees of freedom. Fisher was also responsible for applications of the t-distribution to regression analysis.
Although introduced by others, Studentized residuals are named in Student’s honour because, like the problem that led to Student’s t-distribution, the idea of adjusting for estimated standard deviations is central to that concept.
Gosset’s interest in the cultivation of barley led him to speculate that the design of experiments should aim not only at improving the average yield but also at breeding varieties whose yield was insensitive to variation in soil and climate, i.e. robust. This principle only appeared in the later thought of Ronald Fisher, and then in the work of Genichi Taguchi during the 1950s.
In 1935, Gosset left Dublin to take up the position of Head Brewer, in charge of the scientific side of production, at a new Guinness brewery at Park Royal in northwestern London. He died two years later in Beaconsfield, England, of a heart attack.
Gosset was a friend of both Pearson and Fisher, a noteworthy achievement, for each had a massive ego and a loathing for the other. He was a modest man who once cut short an admirer with the comment that “Fisher would have discovered it all anyway.”

And this biography is from the MacTutor History of Mathematics archive:

William Sealey Gosset was born on June 13, 1876 in Canterbury, England where he was the oldest of five children. He died at the age of 61 in Beaconsfield, England on October 16, 1937. He attended the Royal Military Academy in Woolwich to b ecome an engineer before he was rejected because of poor eyesight. William Gosset was never employed as a statistician. In a world of quarrelsome statistics, but he got along with everyone. He was a very helpful, quiet, patient and loyal person.
He went to school at Winchester and was well educated before entering the New College in Oxford. Here he won a first degree in chemistry in 1899. After getting his degree as a chemist, he got a job at Guinness brewery in Dublin in 1899, where he did important work on statistics, but her was never hired at a statistician. It was his environment at Guinness’ that made him a statistician. The brewery was interested in how they could make the best beer.
In 1900, the Guinness Research Laboratory was opened, which was head by the most distinguished brewing chemist, Horace Brown. Horace Brown along with the other brews were wondering how to get the raw materials for brewing beer at the cheapest but getting the best. There were many factors that they had to take into account such as varieties of barley and hops, what conditions of dying, cultivation and maturing factors.
After a few years of research, given that they were given a free hand to explore the conditions of brewing. This gave Gosset a chance to work as a statistician. He was able to take the data from the different examples of brewing to help find out which way was the best. As the young brewers work together, it seemed natural for them to take the data to Gosset to solve the numerical problems.
Gosset, in 1903, could calculate standard errors. In 1904 he wrote on the brewing of beer. This report lead to Karl Pearson consulting Gosset. Gosset met Pearson in July of 1905 when they had long talk together. Pearson, in an hour and a half, m ade Gosset understand the theory of standard errors. Gosset went back to the brewery and practiced those method for the next year. The meeting was also successful in which Pearson got Gosset to take up the study of the law of error.
Gosset wrote paper in his spare time under the name “Student.” His paper were on the probability of error of the mean and of the correlation coefficient for publication. Gosset even managed to run cooperative experiments with Hunter a nd Bennett at Ballinacurra, Buffin at Cambridge, and Beaven at Warminster in the testing of seeds against other seeds. Gosset also work with R.A. Fisher. The funny part is that Fisher did not get along Pearson, but Gosset studied under Pearson and also got along with Fisher.
To quickly recap William Gosset, he was born in 1876 and died in 1937. He did mathematical research for beer brewing, but had the problem working with only a small sample size. He work on the concept of probable errror of a mean. He also analysi sed an extended and broad range of problems such as the counting with a haemacytometer, probable error of a correlation coefficient, cereals, agronomy and the Lanarkshire milk experiment.
A very personal friend, McMullen, said this about Gosset, “he was a very kindly and tolerant and absolutely devoid malice. He rarely spoke about personal matters but when his opinion was well worth listening to and not in the least superficia l.”

Pricenomics has a good overview of Gossett’s contributions to mathematics and statistics, entitled The Guinness Brewer Who Revolutionized Statistics.

Historic Beer Birthday: Carl von Linde

June 11, 2026 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Carl Paul Gottfried Linde (June 11, 1842–November 16, 1934). He “was a German scientist, engineer, and businessman. He discovered a refrigeration cycle and invented the first industrial-scale air separation and gas liquefaction processes. These breakthroughs laid the backbone for the 1913 Nobel Prize in Physics. Linde was a member of scientific and engineering associations, including being on the board of trustees of the Physikalisch-Technische Reichsanstalt and the Bavarian Academy of Sciences and Humanities. Linde was also the founder of what is now known as The Linde Group, the world’s largest industrial gases company, and ushered the creation of the supply chain of industrial gases as a profitable line of businesses. He was knighted in 1897 as Ritter von Linde.”

His importance to brewing, especially yo lager beers, is undeniable. His first refrigerating machines were built for breweries. This is situation prior to his inventions, from the University of Chicago:

Before the development of mechanical refrigeration technologies, brewers were reliant on ice harvested from lakes and ponds and stored in ice-houses. The invention of mechanical refrigeration machines provided commercial brewers with the technology necessary to keep beer for longer periods of time. Refrigeration technology was also used in special railroad boxcars, permitting brewers to ship their product over longer distances. One of the most successful early designs for a mechanical refrigeration system was invented by Carl von Linde (a professor at Munich Polytechnic School) and was an ammonia-based vapor-compression system.

eCopy, Inc. — One of the drawing from his first patent, in 1873.

This history of the development of Linde’s refrigeration machines is from a brochure prepared by his the company he founded, The Linde Group.

Initial contacts with breweries

After von Linde had published his ideas in 1870 and 1871 in the Polytechnic Association’s “Bavarian Industry and Trade Journal,” which he also edited, a development was set in motion that would determine the direction of the entire rest of his life. His articles on refrigeration technology had aroused the interest of brewers who had been looking for a reliable year-round method of refrigeration for the fermentation and storage of their beer. In the summer of 1871 an agreement was made between von Linde, Austrian brewer August Deiglmayr (Dreher Brewery) and Munich brewer Gabriel Sedlmayr to build a test machine according to Linde’s design at the Spaten Brewery. With their help, Linde’s ideas would be put into practice, so that a refrigeration unit could then be installed at the Dreher Brewery, the largest brewery in Austria, in the hot, humid city of Trieste (now part of Italy).

Building the first Linde ice machine

The construction plans were finally completed in January 1873 and the patent applied for. The Bavarian patent required, however, that the machine be in operation within one year. Therefore von Linde and Sedlmayr placed an order with Maschinenfabrik Augsburg that same month to build it. And with some effort they succeeded in starting operation by the important patent deadline in January 1874. Of course, the first machine did have its difficulties.

The main problem was that von Linde’s mercury seal did not work properly so that the methyl ether used as the refrigerant leaked out of the compressor. In Linde’s words, “This design was not a suitable solution for the requirements of practical use. So it seemed imperative to build a second machine.”

In order to finance it, von Linde assigned part of the patent rights to Sedlmayr, to locomotive builder Georg Krauss and to the director of Maschinenfabrik Augsburg, Heinrich von Buz. In return, they provided the funds needed for the development, building and testing of a new refrigeration machine.

linde-refrigeration-machine — Building the second refrigeration machine

With his student and assistant Friedrich Schipper, von Linde designed a new compressor, which had a significantly simpler and more effective seal. The sealing material used in the newly designed gland construction was glycerin and the more efficient ammonia was used as the refrigerant. The new machine weighed and cost only half as much as its predecessor.

In the spring of 1875 Linde ordered the new compressor from Maschinenfabrik Augsburg and submitted it for a Bavarian patent, which was awarded on March 25, 1876 for ten years. He received the German Reichspatent in August 1877.

“The very first trials with this second compressor yielded fully satisfactory results,” said von Linde, not without pride. The machine was sold to the Dreher Brewery in September 1876, erected under Schipper’s supervision and started up in spring 1877. It ran until 1908, providing refrigeration and dehumidification

Technical breakthrough

But despite this success, Linde created a third design immediately after the second machine was installed at Dreher, turning his attention to gas pumps, which were already widely used. This third, horizontal design proved to be the best cold vapor machine on the market in terms of its price/performance ratio and became the standard type of Linde compressor for decades to come. During the more than six-year development and experimentation phase, a reliable solution also had to be found for distributing the generated cold. After long trials, in executing an order for the Heineken Brewery in Rotterdam, von Linde developed a method of circulating cold saltwater brine in a pipe cooling system (natural convection cooling), which was installed on the ceiling of the refrigeration rooms.

horizontal-twostage-ammonia-compressor — And this inset is about the company’s “First customers and partners: brewers.”

In 1840, many continental European breweries switched to bottom fermented lager production (in contrast to the “English” top-fermented brown beers or ales) because the beer remained fresh longer and customers preferred the taste. The ice machine described by von Linde seemed ideal for achieving the required lower temperatures and to ensure precise cooling control. So it is no wonder that some major brewers showed great interest in this invention.
Gabriel Sedlmayr of the Munich Spaten Brewerey was willing to let von Linde experiment with an early refrigeration machine in his brewery in the early 1870s. The first unit functioned passably well, but was too large and had numerous flaws. The drawings submitted for the patent showed that Sedlmayr himself had a hand in the second version, which was significantly smaller in size and worked well. This unit was sold to the Trieste Dreher Brewery for air cooling.
With Sedlmayr as an intermediary, the Rotterdam Heineken Brewery under its director Feldmann ordered an ice machine in 1877 for ice production. In his collaboration with the Heineken Brewery, Linde developed “natural convection cooling” with a system of cooling pipes under the ceiling of the cellar. Feldmann in turn put von Linde in contact with J. C. Jacobsen, head of the Carlsberg Brewery in Copenhagen, who ordered a large refrigeration unit in 1878.
Karl Lang, technical adviser and supervisory board member of several Rhineland breweries, also played a significant role during the founding period of the “Gesellschaft für Linde’s Eismaschinen.” He introduced Linde to brewery director Gustav Jung, who not only ordered a refrigeration unit but also became, with Lang and banker Moritz von Hirsch, a shareholder and Supervisory Board member of the Linde Company.
The connection between the Linde Company and brewery directors was maintained to some extent over several generations. After the death of Karl Lang in 1894 his position as chairman of the Supervisory Board was taken over by Gustav Jung, followed by his son Adolf Jung in 1886. Carl Sedlmayr took over for his father Gabriel on the Supervisory Board and in 1915, the third generation of this family followed with Anton Sedlmayr. The Jung and Sedlmayr families held their Supervisory Board seats until after the Second World War.

Here’s Linde’s entry from the Oxford Companion to Beer, written by Horst Dornbush.

Linde, Carl von
was a 19th-century German engineer and one of the world’s major inventors of refrigeration technology. See refrigeration. Starting in the middle of the 18th century, many people before Linde had tinkered with artificial refrigeration contraptions, but Linde was the first to develop a practical refrigeration system that was specifically designed for keeping fermenting and maturing beer cool—in Linde’s case, Bavarian lagers—during the hot summer months. Linde was born in the village of Berndorf, in Franconia, in 1842, at a time when warm-weather brewing was strictly forbidden in his native Bavaria; no one was allowed to brew beer between Saint George’s Day (April 23) and Michael’s Day (September 29). This was to avoid warm fermentations, which provided ideal habitats for noxious airborne bacteria to proliferate and caused yeasts to produce undesirable fermentation flavors. Both made summer beers often unpalatable. Summer brewing prohibition had been in force since 1553 and was only lifted in 1850, by which time Bavarian brewers had learned to pack their fermentation cellars with ice they had laboriously harvested in the winter from frozen ponds and lakes. There had to be a better way to keep beer cold…and that was just the challenge for a budding mechanical engineering professor like Linde, who had joined Munich’s Technical University in 1868. See weihenstephan. The basic principle of refrigeration had been understood for centuries. Because cold is merely the absence of heat, to make things cold, one must withdraw heat. Compressing a medium generates heat; subsequently decompressing or evaporating it quickly absorbs heat from its environment. Devices based on this principle are now generally known as vapor-compression refrigeration systems; apply this to a fermenting or lagering vessel, and it becomes a beer-cooling system. For Linde, the next question was the choice of refrigerant. Initially he experimented with dimethyl ether but eventually settled on ammonia because of its rapid expansion (and thus cooling) properties. He called his invention an “ammonia cold machine.” Linde had received much of the funding for this development from the Spaten Brewery in Munich, which was also the first customer to install the new device—then still driven by dimethyl ether—in 1873. By 1879, Linde had quit his professorship and formed his own “Ice Machine Company,” which is still in operation today as Linde AG, headquartered in Wiesbaden, Germany. By 1890, Linde had sold 747 refrigeration units machines to various breweries and cold storage facilities. He continued to innovate and invented new devices most of his life, including equipment for liquefying air, and for the production of pure oxygen, nitrogen, and hydrogen. In 1897 he was knighted, and from then on could append the honorific “von” to his surname. He died a prosperous industrialist in Munich in 1934, at the age of 92, and today Linde AG is a leading gases and engineering company with almost 48,000 employees working in more than 100 countries worldwide. For all his many accomplishments, Linde’s pioneering work in artificial beer cooling technology is perhaps his most enduring legacy.

Beer Saints: St. Medard of Noyon

June 8, 2026 By Jay Brooks

Today is the feast day of St. Medard of Noyon, who was also known as St. Medardus (c. 456–545). “He was the Bishop of Noyon. He moved the seat of the diocese from Vermand to Noviomagus Veromanduorum (modern Noyon) in northern France. Medardus was one of the most honored bishops of his time, often depicted laughing, with his mouth wide open, and therefore he was invoked against toothache.” He is also the patron of brewers, as well as vineyards and good harvests. “He is sometimes depicted with a giant eagle hovering over his head to shelter him from rain, while others around him got wet (reputedly this occurred while he was a child.) This led to his association with control over the weather.”

This account is from CatholicSaints.Info:

Born c.470 in Salency, Picardy, France; died c.558. Born of a Frankish noble father and a Gallo-Roman mother, Saint Medard was educated at Saint-Quentin. He is also the brother of Saint Gildard, archbishop of Rouen. At 33, he was ordained to the priesthood and became so successful as a missioner that he was chosen to succeed Bishop Alomer in 530 in the see of Vermandois. Medard may have been consecrated by Saint Remigius of Rheims.
According to an unreliable tradition, Medard moved his see from Saint-Quentin to Noyon after a raid by the Huns, then united it with the diocese of Tournai. Allegedly Noyon and Tournai remained under one bishop for 500 years.
Medard is known to have given the veil to Queen Saint Radegund. He is credited with the institution of the old local custom of Rosiere. Each year where his feast is celebrated, the young girl who has been judged the most exemplary in the district is escorted by 12 boys and 12 girls to the church, where she is crowned with roses and given a gift of money (Benedictines, White).
In art, an eagle shelters Saint Medard from the rain, a reference to the legend that this happened when he was a child (Roeder). This may explain the origins of the superstition that if it rains on his feast day, the next 40 days will be wet; if the weather is good, the next 40 will be fine as well (White). He might also be portrayed with two horses at his feet, leaving footprints on stone, or holding a citadel (Roeder). In Medieval art, Medard may be laughing with his mouth wide open (le ris de Saint Medard), and for this reason he is invoked against toothache (White).
Saint Medard is the patron of brewers, peasants, prisoners (Roeder), corn harvests, and vintage (White). He is invoked on behalf of idiots and lunatics, as well as for fruitfulness, both in child-bearing and in the fields, for rains and vineyards, and against bad weather and toothache (Roeder).

Why exactly he’s a patron of brewers or vineyards or good harvests is not very clear, and I can find no satisfactory answer. The only logical assumption may have to do with association with rain, but that’s admittedly a bit of a stretch.

Central part of a triptych from St. Catherine Chapel by unknown artist (circa 16th century)

There’s also a Brasserie Saint Médard in France that was founded in 2015 that uses the saint in their logo and on their beer bottles.

Historic Beer Birthday: John Gilroy

May 30, 2026 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of John Gilroy (May 30, 1898-April 11, 1985). While not a brewer or even brewery owner, he was nonetheless at least partially responsible for the success of Guinness with his iconic advertising that he created for them beginning in 1928.

Here’s his entry from Wikipedia.

“Born in Whitley Bay, Northumberland, England, Gilroy attended Durham University until his studies were interrupted by World War I, during which he served with the Royal Field Artillery. He resumed studying at the Royal College of Art in London, where he remained as a teacher. He taught at Camberwell College of Arts.

In 1925, he gained employment at S.H. Benson’s advertising agency, where he created the iconic advertisement art for Guinness featuring the Zoo Keeper and animals enjoying Guinness. He worked with Dorothy L. Sayers. He was also an accomplished portrait painter, numbering Royalty, Politicians, Actors and many others amongst his sitters. He worked in his large studio at 10 Holland Park, London, the former home and studio of Sir Bernard Partridge. He was a long-standing and much loved member of the Garrick Club, where he was created a Life Member and Chairman of the Works of Art Committee 1970-1975. He was awarded and Honorary MA by Newcastle University in 1975, and was made a Freeman of the City of London in 1981.”

The Guinness Collectors Club has a more thorough biography:

John Gilroy (1898-1985) was a superb natural draughtsman and a versatile illustrator and artist who produced advertsising material, portraits, landscapes, murals and greeting cards.
Born on the 30th of May 1898 at Whitley Bay, Newcastle upon Tyne, he was one of a family of eight (five boys and three girls), born to John William Gilroy and his wife Elizabeth. William Gilroy was a marine landscape painter and technical draughtsman and it was obvious from an early age that John junior was going to follow in his footsteps. The young John practised copying cartoons from Punch and took on all kinds of work to pay for drawing materials. From the age of fifteen he was a cartoonist for the Evening Chronicle, Newcastle, commissioned to produce cartoons of well-known entertainers who played the Newcastle theatres.
John attended Sandyford School followed, in 1909, by Heaton Park Road Upper School. At this date his family was living at 25 Kingsley Place. In June 1912, he left Heaton Park and, having attained his drawing certificate, won a scholarship to Armstrong College Art School, Durham University to study under Professor K.G. Hatten.
The First World War interrupted Gilroy’s studies and he served with the Royal Field Artillery in France, Italy and Palestine. In September 1919 he resumed his studies taking a place at the Royal College of Art, London (RCA). During his time there he produced illustrations for the college student magazine and occasionally played in goal for the college football team. In 1920 he attained his Board of Education certificate and the RCA diploma in decorative painting. His work was also rewarded through scholarships and prizes, winning, in 1919, the North Lordbourne prize for composition and, in 1921, the college drawing prize and the British Institute Scholarship for decorative painting. In 1922 Gilroy won an RCA travelling scholarship in mural painting having missed the Prix de Rome by only one vote.
Gilroy graduated from the RCA in July 1923 but stayed on there until 1925 as a teacher. From 1924 to 1926 he also taught drawing from the figure in the evenings at the Camberwell School of Art. In 1924 he married Gwendoline Peri-Short who had been a fellow pupil at the RCA and three years later they had a son, John.
In 1925 Gilroy embarked on his long association with the advertising agency S H Benson Ltd (Benson’s). Although Benson’s was the first advertising agency for whom Gilroy worked as an in-house artist, he had already proven himself in the commercial art sphere. His earliest known piece of commercial art, dating from 1920 when he was still a student, was for a promotional leaflet for the Mangnall-Irving Thrust-Borer commissioned by the Hydraulic Engineering Co.
Gilroy’s early work at Benson’s is reputed to have been on campaigns for Skipper Sardines and Virol. During his time there he also worked on campaigns for Bovril, Macleans and Monk & Glass Custard. His first significant assignment was the Mustard Club campaign for Coleman’s of Norwich, on which he worked with fellow artist William Brearley and copywriters Oswald Greene and Dorothy L Sayers. Between 1926 and 1933 the pens of Gilroy and Brearley brought eccentric characters like Baron de Beef, Signor Spaghetti and Miss Di Gester to life on bill boards and in magazines everywhere.
In 1928 Benson’s won the Guinness advertising account and Gilroy became involved with the product with which his work is most closely associated. Gilroy’s first known Guinness poster was produced in 1930. Working with copywriters like Ronald Barton and Robert Bevan, Gilroy produced more than 100 press advertisements and nearly 50 poster designs for Guinness over 35 years. He is perhaps best remembered for his posters featuring the girder carrier and the wood cutter from the Guinness for Strength campaigns of the early 1930s and for the Guinness animals. The animals, including a lion, toucan, gnu and kangaroo, appeared, with their long-suffering zookeeper, on posters, press advertisements, show cards and waiter trays from the 1930s to the 1960s.
Gilroy continued to produce Guinness advertisements well into the 1960s even though he left Benson’s employment as an in-house artist in the 1940s to continue freelance work.
During the 1920s and succeeding decades commercial art was not Gilroy’s sole occupation; he began to build his reputation as a painterboth of portraits and landscapes. One of his earliest portrait commissions was to paint the future Edward V111 for the Royal Mid-Surrey Golf Club, of which Gilroy was a member and the Prince was patron.
In 1930, while the family was living at The Cottage, Hyde Park Road, Kew Gardens, Gilroy has his first painting, Gwen. exhibited at the Royal Academy. Throughout the 1930s Gilroy’s work continued to be exhibited at the Royal Academy and to appear on advertising boardings, in newspapers and even in the Radio Times. In 1941, with the onset of the blitz, the artist moved to Rasehill, Chorleywood Road, Rickmansworth. His wife and son moved to Cheltenham where, in the same year, he held a one-man exhibition of his work, which then travelled to Sunderland Public Art Gallery.
Throughout the war years, Gilroy’s work continued to be exhibited at the Royal Academy while his commercial art talents were employed by the Ministry of Information in campaigns such as Make-do-and-mend, Keep it under your hat and We want your kitchen waste. He also improved morale by painting murals at various Royal Air Force bases and produced a series of drawings-in-one-line of contemporary political and military figures, called Headlines, which appered in The Star.
By 1945, when his painting Diamond Setting was exhibited at the Royal Academy, the artist’s address was given as 6 Avenue Studios, Sydney Close, SW3. A year laterhe prodced another mural, this time in the bar of the Mrritt Arms Hotel near Greta Bridge on the estate of his close friend Major Morritt. The work at the Morritt Arms began on the 1st February 1946 and was completed within10 days. When Gilroy and his assistant proudly displayed the walls of the bar decorated with Dickensian figures, closer inspection revealed them to be caricatures of local people and staff from the hotel.
In 1949 Esme Jeudwine, a former pupil and portrait subject, introduced Gilroy to the Royle family and another long and successful association began. Gilroy produced five greeting card designs for Royle Publications Ltd (Royles) in that year with another 464 published designs over the next 35 year. In 1966, Gilroy was acting Art Director for Royles.
In 1950 Gilroy married Elizabeth Margaret Bramley (nee Outram Thwaite). The couple lived at 17 Queen’s Gate, Kensington, but moved a year later to 10 Holland Park Road, W14, the former home and studio of Sir Bernard Partridge, whose cartoons Gilroy had copied from Punch as a child. The magnificent studio at Holland Park Road saw the creation of advertising work for T.F. Carrington Van PostingLtd. where Gilroy was Head of the Art Department, and was regularly visited by members of the Royal Family, politicians, actors and many others who came to have theit portraits painted.
In 1957 Gilroy held another one-man exhibition this time at Leighton House Gallery and two years later produced a series of landscapes of McGill University, Montreal, to illustrate a book McGill, The Story of a University, edited by Hugh MacLennan. In 1970 Gilroy held a retrospective exhibition at Upper Grosvenor Galleries and three years later an exhibition of his humorous designs for Royles was held at the London headquarters of Austin Reed Ltd.
In his later years ‘Jack’ Gilroy was a longstanding and much loved member of the Garrick Club where he was Chairman of the Works of Art Committee and where a number of his portraits now hang. In 1975 Gilroy was awarded an honorary MA by Newcastle University and in 1981, now living at 6 Ryecroft Street, Fulham, he was appointed a Freeman of the City of London.
John Gilroy died at Guildford on the 11th April 1985, aged 86, and is buried at Ampney St Peter in Gloucestershire near the home of his son and three grandchildren.

He created the zoo animals and other popular characters for Guinness from either 1928 or the early 1930s (accounts differ), but the first one he did appears to be the Guinness for Strength ad featuring a steel girder in 1934. According to some accounts, it was so popular that people even started ordering a ‘girder’ in the pub.

The following year, the Toucan debuted, and quickly became one of the most recognizable of the Guinness animals, used in marketing and advertising by Guinness for over 45 years. Here’s the story of its design from History House:

The idea of using a toucan was born in the advertising agency of S.H.Benson in London. Staff included the talented artist John Gilroy was newly employed as the poster artist, and among the copywriting team was Dorothy L Sayers, now famous as a writer, poet and playwright, and best known for her amateur detective stories featuring Lord Peter Wimsey. She had started at the agency in 1922 and worked there while writing books in her spare time.
This team produced some memorable posters for Guinness including several posters in the whimsical “Zoo” series. These included a zoo keeper with a Guinness, a sea lion balancing drink on his nose, an ostrich with the shape of a swallowed glass halfway down its neck, a tortoise with a glass of stout on its back, and a toucan with two Guinness bottles balanced on its beak accompanied by the words.
If he can say as you can
“Guinness is good for you”
How grand to be a Toucan
Just think what Toucan do.
Gilroy remained with the advertising agency until 1960 during which time he designed many other Guinness posters. As to how animals came to be used in an advertising campaign was recalled later by Gilroy. “The Guinness family did not want an advertising campaign that equated with beer. They thought it would be vulgar. They also wanted to stress the brew’s strength and goodness. Somehow it led to animals.”
The toucan returned on several occasions on all types of advertising media and on memorabilia. In 1982 Guinness changed advertising agencies and it was decided that the toucan was no longer an effective advertising motif and it was dropped.

The text from that ad was actually written by Dorothy L. Sayers, who worked for the same advertising agency as Gilroy before she became a famous mystery writer, well-known for such characters as Lord Peter Wimsey, and others.

And here’s a sample of some more of his work for Guinness.

And finally, by no means complete, these are other Guinness ads I’ve collected in a Flickr gallery, many of which are by John Gilroy. And here’s some more accompanying an article entitled John Gilroy for Guinness: Four Corners and Some Vision.

Historic Beer Birthday: Eduard Buchner

May 20, 2026 By Jay Brooks

nobel-prize
Today is the birthday of Eduard Buchner (May 20, 1860-August 13, 1917). Buchner was a German chemist and zymologist, and was awarded with Nobel Prize in Chemistry in 1907 for his work on fermentation.

This is a short biography from The Famous People:

Born into an educationally distinguished family, Buchner lost his father when he was barely eleven years old. His elder brother, Hans Buchner, helped him to get good education. However, financial crisis forced Eduard to give up his studies for a temporary phase and he spent this period working in preserving and canning factory. Later, he resumed his education under well-known scientists and very soon received his doctorate degree. He then began working on chemical fermentation. However, his experience at the canning factory did not really go waste. Many years later while working with his brother at the Hygiene Institute at Munich he remembered how juices were preserved by adding sugar to it and so to preserve the protein extract from the yeast cells, he added a concentrated doze of sucrose to it. What followed is history. Sugar in the presence of enzymes in the yeast broke into carbon dioxide and alcohol. Later he identified the enzyme as zymase. This chance discovery not only brought him Nobel Prize in Chemistry, but also brought about a revolution in the field of biochemistry.

Eduard Buchner is best remembered for his discovery of zymase, an enzyme mixture that promotes cell free fermentation. However, it was a chance discovery. He was then working in his brother’s laboratory in Munich trying to produce yeast cell free extracts, which the latter wanted to use in an application for immunology.

To preserve the protein in the yeast cells, Eduard Buchner added concentrated sucrose to it. Bubbles began to form soon enough. He realized that presence of enzymes in the yeast has broken down sugar into alcohol and carbon dioxide. Later, he identified this enzyme as zymase and showed that it can be extracted from yeast cells. This single discovery laid the foundation of modern biochemistry.

One of the most important aspects of his discovery proving that extracts from yeast cells could elicit fermentation is that it “contradicted a claim by Louis Pasteur that fermentation was an ‘expression of life’ and could occur only in living cells. Pasteur’s claim had put a decades-long brake on progress in fermentation research, according to an introductory speech at Buchner’s Nobel presentation. With Buchner’s results, “hitherto inaccessible territories have now been brought into the field of chemical research, and vast new prospects have been opened up to chemical science.”

In his studies, Buchner gathered liquid from crushed yeast cells. Then he demonstrated that components of the liquid, which he referred to as “zymases,” could independently produce alcohol in the presence of sugar. “Careful investigations have shown that the formation of carbon dioxide is accompanied by that of alcohol, and indeed in just the same proportions as in fermentation with live yeast,” Buchner noted in his Nobel speech.

E._Buchner_WS_1911-12

This is a fuller biography from the Nobel Prize organization:

Eduard Buchner was born in Munich on May 20, 1860, the son of Dr. Ernst Buchner, Professor Extraordinary of Forensic Medicine and physician at the University, and Friederike née Martin.
He was originally destined for a commercial career but, after the early death of his father in 1872, his older brother Hans, ten years his senior, made it possible for him to take a more general education. He matriculated at the Grammar School in his birth-place and after a short period of study at the Munich Polytechnic in the chemical laboratory of E. Erlenmeyer senior, he started work in a preserve and canning factory, with which he later moved to Mombach on Mainz.
The problems of chemistry had greatly attracted him at the Polytechnic and in 1884 he turned afresh to new studies in pure science, mainly in chemistry with Adolf von Baeyer and in botany with Professor C. von Naegeli at the Botanic Institute, Munich.
It was at the latter, where he studied under the special supervision of his brother Hans (who later became well-known as a bacteriologist), that his first publication, Der Einfluss des Sauerstoffs auf Gärungen (The influence of oxygen on fermentations) saw the light in 1885. In the course of his research in organic chemistry he received special assistance and stimulation from T. Curtius and H. von Pechmann, who were assistants in the laboratory in those days.
The Lamont Scholarship awarded by the Philosophical Faculty for three years made it possible for him to continue his studies.
After one term in Erlangen in the laboratory of Otto Fischer, where meanwhile Curtius had been appointed director of the analytical department, he took his doctor’s degree in the University of Munich in 1888. The following year saw his appointment as Assistant Lecturer in the organic laboratory of A. von Baeyer, and in 1891 Lecturer at the University.
By means of a special monetary grant from von Baeyer, it was possible for Buchner to establish a small laboratory for the chemistry of fermentation and to give lectures and perform experiments on chemical fermentations. In 1893 the first experiments were made on the rupture of yeast cells; but because the Board of the Laboratory was of the opinion that “nothing will be achieved by this” – the grinding of the yeast cells had already been described during the past 40 years, which latter statement was confirmed by accurate study of the literature – the studies on the contents of yeast cells were set aside for three years.
In the autumn of 1893 Buchner took over the supervision of the analytical department in T. Curtius’ laboratory in the University of Kiel and established himself there, being granted the title of Professor in 1895.
In 1896 he was called as Professor Extraordinary for Analytical and Pharmaceutical Chemistry in the chemical laboratory of H. von Pechmann at the University of Tübingen.
During the autumn vacation in the same year his researches into the contents of the yeast cell were successfully recommenced in the Hygienic Institute in Munich, where his brother was on the Board of Directors. He was now able to work on a larger scale as the necessary facilities and funds were available.
On January 9, 1897, it was possible to send his first paper, Über alkoholische Gärung ohne Hefezellen (On alcoholic fermentation without yeast cells), to the editors of the Berichte der Deutschen Chemischen Gesellschaft.
In October, 1898, he was appointed to the Chair of General Chemistry in the Agricultural College in Berlin and he also held lectureships on agricultural chemistry and agricultural chemical experiments as well as on the fermentation questions of the sugar industry. In order to obtain adequate assistance for scientific research, and to be able to fully train his assistants himself, he became habilitated at the University of Berlin in 1900.
In 1909 he was transferred to the University of Breslau and from there, in 1911, to Würzburg. The results of Buchner’s discoveries on the alcoholic fermentation of sugar were set forth in the book Die Zymasegärung (Zymosis), 1903, in collaboration with his brother Professor Hans Buchner and Martin Hahn. He was awarded the Nobel Prize in 1907 for his biochemical investigations and his discovery of non-cellular fermentation.
Buchner married Lotte Stahl in 1900. When serving as a major in a field hospital at Folkschani in Roumania, he was wounded on August 3, 1917. Of these wounds received in action at the front, he died on the 13th of the same month.

Chemistry-1907-Buchner

Beer Birthday: Homer Simpson

May 12, 2026 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Homer J. Simpson (May 12, 1956- ). At least that’s the agreed upon date, which comes from episode 16 in Season 4, entitled “Duffless,” which originally aired February 18, 1993. In the episode, Homer loses his driver’s license when he gets a DUI and there’s a scene where his license is voided by a judge. Eagle-eyed fans were able to freeze the frame and see that his date of birth listed on the identification card was May 12, 1956.

Here’s one biography of Homer, this one from the IMDb:

Homer (b.May 12, 1956) was raised on a farm by his parents, Mona and Abraham Simpson. In the mid-1960s, while Homer was between nine and twelve years old, Mona went into hiding following a run-in with the law. Homer attended Springfield High School and fell in love with Marge Bouvier in 1974. Marge became pregnant with Bart in 1979, while Homer was working at a miniature golf course. The two were wed in a small wedding chapel across the state line, From there they spent their wedding reception alone at a truck stop, and the remainder of their wedding night at Marge’s parents’ house. After failing to get a job at the Springfield Nuclear Power Plant, Homer left Marge to find a job by which he could support his family. He briefly worked at a taco restaurant called the Gulp n’ Blow, until Marge found him and convinced him to return. As a result, Homer confronted Mr. Burns and secured a job at the Plant. Marge became pregnant with Lisa in 1981, shortly before the new couple bought their first house. In 1985 and 1986, Homer saw brief success as the lead singer and songwriter for the barbershop quartet the Be Sharps, even winning a Grammy. During his time with the group, Homer was frequently absent from home, which put stress on his marriage. After the group broke up due to creative differences, Homer went back to Springfield to continue his old life. Sometime in the late 1980s, Homer and Marge carefully budgeted so Homer could have his dream job as a pin monkey in a bowling alley. Unfortunately for Homer, Marge became pregnant with Maggie shortly after he started his new job, and not being able to support his family, he went back to the Nuclear Plant. He likes martini.
Homer’s age was initially 34, but as the writers aged, they found that he seemed a bit older too, so they changed his age to 38; this is contradicted by The Homer Book which states Homer is currently 36. Homer reunites with his mother.Homer’s personality is one of frequent stupidity, laziness, and explosive anger. He suffers from a short attention span which complements his short-lived passion for hobbies, enterprises and various causes. Homer is prone to emotional outbursts; he is very envious of his neighbors, the Flanders family, and is easily enraged by Bart and strangles him frequently. He shows no compunction about this, and does not attempt to hide his actions from people outside the family, even showing disregard for his son’s well being in other ways, such as leaving Bart alone at a port. While Homer’s thoughtless antics often upset his family, he has also performed acts that reveal him to be a surprisingly caring father and husband: in “Lisa the Beauty Queen”, selling his cherished ride on the Duff blimp and using the money to enter Lisa in a beauty pageant so she could feel better about herself; in “Rosebud”, giving up his chance at wealth to allow Maggie to keep a cherished teddy bear; in “Radio Bart”, spearheading an attempt to dig Bart out after he had fallen down a well, even though Homer generally hates doing physical labor; and in “A Milhouse Divided”, arranging a surprise second wedding with Marge to make up for their lousy first ceremony, even going so far as to hire one of The Doobie Brothers as part of the wedding band and getting a divorce from Marge, essentially making their second wedding a “real” one.
Homer frequently steals things from his neighbor, Ned Flanders, including TV trays, power tools, air conditioners, and at one point, part of his house. Flanders knows about this, but Homer constantly states that he has “borrowed” the stolen items. He has also stolen golf balls from the local driving range, cable television, office supplies (including computers) from work, and beer mugs from Moe’s Tavern. Also, while ‘working the night shift’ with the rest of the employees at a local discount store (which was just them being locked in at night and forced to stay via electrocution chip) he made off with a number of Plasma Screen TVs on a forklift, while at the same time breaking out of the store.
Homer has a vacuous mind, but he is still able to retain a great amount of knowledge about specific subjects. He shows short bursts of astonishing insight, memory, creativity and fluency with many languages. Homer is also extremely confident; no matter how little skill or knowledge he has about anything he tries to do, he has no doubt that he will be successful. However, his brief periods of intelligence are overshadowed by much longer and more consistent periods of ignorance, forgetfulness and stupidity. Homer has a low IQ due to his hereditary “Simpson Gene,” his alcohol problem, exposure to radioactive waste, repetitive cranial trauma, and a crayon lodged in the frontal lobe of his brain. Homer’s intelligence was said to jump fifty points when he had the crayon removed, bringing him to an IQ of 105, slightly above that of an average person, however he had the crayon reinserted, presumably lowering his IQ back to its original 55. The amount of Homer’s brain which still functions is also questionable. At one point in the series, Homer apparently lost 5% of his brain after a coma.
Homer’s attitudes toward women, romance, and sex are occasionally explored. While Homer’s marriage with Marge is occasionally strained, it seems generally happy and faithful. Despite this, Homer usually shows no qualms with gawking at (and drooling over) attractive women. Homer successfully avoided an affair with Mindy Simmons, but has made the occasional remark denoting his attraction to other women (including the gag about coveting his neighbor’s wife), even in front of Marge.
His relationship with his children is not the best, although he loves his children deeply. His relationship with Bart is often shown as a love-hate relationship or friendship. They sometimes appear to get on very well, however, such as on the numerous occasions they jointly commit various petty crimes or “get-rich-quick”-schemes. Homer’s relationship with Lisa is usually quite good although Lisa often tires of her father’s ignorance. His relationship with Maggie is perhaps the best, due to her infant state. However, even though Maggie has saved his life a number of times, he sometimes forgets she even exists (once telling Marge the dog does not count when she told him they had three kids).

So while Homer doesn’t brew beer, he does certainly drink a lot of it. And without him, the world may not have ever heard of Duff Beer. And even though there are a few real world examples of Duff being brewed, I don’t recommend them, at least not the ones I’ve tried. But do drink a toast to Springfield’s favorite beer drinker, Homer Simpsons. Below are a few of the times Homer’s mentioned beer throughout the show’s twenty-plus year run.

“Beer. Now there’s a temporary solution.”

— Homer Simpson, in “Homer’s Odyssey,” Season 1, Episode 3, 1990

“Ah, good ol’ trustworthy beer. My love for you will never die.”

— Homer Simpson, in “Bart Gets Hit by a Car,” Season 2, Episode 10, 1991

“Mmmm… beer.”

— Homer Simpson, “Lisa’s Pony, Season 3, Episode 8, 1991; “So It’s Come to
This: A Simpsons Clip Show,” Season 4, Episode 18, 1993; and “Whacking
Day, Season 4, Episode 20, 1993”

“I would kill everyone in this room for a drop of sweet beer.”

— Homer Simpson, in “Duffless,” Season 4, Episode 16, 1993

“Ah beer, my one weakness. My Achilles heel if you will.”

— Homer Simpson, in “So It’s Come to This: A Simpsons Clip Show,” Season 4, Episode 18, 1993

“Alright Brain, you don’t like me, and I don’t like you. But lets just get me through this, and I can get back to killing you with beer.”

— Homer Simpson, in “The Front,” Season 4, Episode 19, 1993

“To alcohol! The cause of, and solution to, all of life’s problems.”

— Homer Simpson, in “Homer vs. The Eighteenth Amendment,” Season 8,
Episode 18, 1997

Homer: “Will there be beer?”

Movementarian: “Beer is not allowed.”

Homer: “Homer no function beer well without.”

Movementarian: “Would you rather have beer or complete and utter contentment?”

Homer: “What kind of beer?”

— Homer Simpson, in “The Joy of Sect,” Season 9, Episode 13, 1998

“I’m glad I’m back. Because the moment that sweet, sweet beer hit my tongue, I was born again!”

— Homer Simpson, in “The Joy of Sect,” Season 9, Episode 13, 1998

“Well, this time I’m drunk on love… and beer.”

— Homer Simpson, in “Natural Born Kissers,” Season 9, Episode 25, 1998

“Expand my brain, learning juice!”

— Homer Simpson, about to drink a Duff Beer, in “See Homer Run,” Season
17, Episode 6, 2005

Therapist: “And has there been any improvement in Homer’s drinking?”

Marge: “Well, he’s down to two beers in the shower.”

Homer: “They’re pale ales … please.”

— From “Specs and the City,” Season 25, Episode 11, 2014

Historic Beer Birthday: Al Levy

April 25, 2026 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Al Levy (April 25, 1860-March 24, 1941). He was born in Liverpool, England, but made his mark in Hollywood, California. He was a “notable L.A.-based Restauranteur, owner and operator of Al Levy’s Tavern in Hollywood and Al Levy’s Grill in Downtown L.A. in the 1930s and 40s. [He was also] credited with creating the Oyster Cocktail.”

This is how his carer began, according to the Jewish Museum of the American West:

Levy’s first job was at the Techau Tavern, a famous San Francisco restaurant, where he rose from errand boy, to dishwasher, to chef.
After opening two restaurants with partners who ran off with the money, Al Levy was advised to go to Los Angeles where the tempo was slower, and where there were no quality restaurants.

His first L.A. place was this pushcart, but it did well enough to establish himself and move to a permanent location, The Oyster House.

Eventually, Levy was able to open his Oyster House on Fifth and String Streets, later the site of the Alexandria Hotel.
His second and larger restaurant, located at Third and Main Streets, became a center of fashionable night life in 1906.
It was the finest such institution in Los Angeles. Each table had its own telephone, and the chandeliers were all of the finest crystal.
Al Levy’s restaurant consisted of four stories: the kitchen and main dining room were on the first floor; the second floor had booths for two, three, and four diners; the third floor had banquet rooms for smaller groups; the fourth floor had the large banquet/ballroom, and included the cart from which Al Levy had peddled oysters during his first years in Los Angeles.

But it was his third place, Al Levy’s Tavern, located at 1623 North Vine Street, that was his most famous, was huge during the heyday of old Hollywood.

Lots of famous people and celebrities spent time at Al Levy’s Tavern, it was, after all, “The Fun Center of Hollywood Life!”

The Daily Mirror has a great article about Levy and his legacy entitled Hollywood Heights: Al Levy’s Tavern Toasts 1930s Hollywood, by Mary Mallory.

Historic Beer Birthday: Max Hassel

April 24, 2026 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of Max Hassel (April 24, 1900-April 12, 1933), who was nicknamed the “Beer Baron of Berks County,” which is where I grew up. That alone, get’s him a mention here, since he has quite the interesting, if short, history in the beer world. He was born in Lithuania, and at age 11 emigrated to the U.S. through New York with his family. By 1920, he was living in Reading, Pennsylvania, where he appears to have entered a life of crime, centering around beer and bootlegging. Here’s a short history, from Go Reading Berks, detailing several notorious local figures.

The Pioneer: Max Hassel (Reign: ~1923–1933)
Reading’s journey into organized crime began in earnest with the opportunities of Prohibition, and no one capitalized on it better than Max Hassel. While others, including a young Abe Minker, were small-time bootleggers, Hassel quickly elevated the game. By 1923, he had become a veritable “beer baron,” amassing a fortune by acquiring interests in breweries along the East Coast.
Hassel’s method was more business than brutality. Known as a “master briber” rather than a violent gangster, he used political corruption and well-paid lawyers to protect his vast enterprise. His influence was so profound that upon his murder by New York mobsters in 1933, an estimated ten thousand mourners flooded the streets of Reading for his funeral—a testament to the city’s complicated acceptance of its vice lords. Hassel’s death marked the end of Prohibition’s reign and created a power vacuum in the local underworld.

After he got started, he quickly focused on beer, which made him a millionaire by the time he was 25 years old. He was apparently trying to go legit after the repeal of Prohibition, and was in talks to buy the Harrison Brewery of Harrison, New Jersey. Unfortunately, he was unable to complete the deal when he was murdered, shot to death, just five days after the Cullen-Harrison Act took effect allowing the sale of 3.2 beer, on April 12, 1933. It is believed he was murdered by New York mobsters. According to one account, “his funeral [was] a massive event in Reading, with an estimated ten thousand mourners, indicating the city’s complex attitude toward its vice figures.” Curiously, he’s buried in cemetery in Shillington, the small town where I lived.

Several people and websites have written more extensive accounts of his career as a bootlegger. To read more about his exploits, check out these from the Berks History Center, by Edward A. Taggert, Brewery Aficionado, Hassel’s Find-a-Grave page, written by Tom Raub, and Go Reading Berks. These accounts also indicate he had links to between one and two dozen breweries in the area.

Taggert even wrote a book about Hassel, entitled “Bootlegger: Max Hassel, The Millionaire Newsboy,” published in 2003.

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