Thursday’s ad is for Schlitz, from their “Real Gusto” series of ads that took place in the 1960s. This is at least the fourth one of these I’ve featured, and it’s probably one of the tamest. While other ads included a can, a hat and even the Olympics, this is just a smiling man in a plain white shirt gripping his mug of beer as foam trickles down the side, threatening to drip to the ground any second now.
Wednesday’s ad is for Eisbär-Braü Schneider Brive. And while I don’t know the pilsner ad’s age, it does contain art nouveau elements, especially those beautiful framing elements, which suggests the decades right before and right after the turn of the 18th century into the 19th. The polar bear with the mug of beer on a tray is cool, too, but that doesn’t look like a pilsner, does it?
Today in 1907, Oklahoma became the 46th state.
Oklahoma
Oklahoma Breweries
Oklahoma Brewery Guides
Guild: No Known Brewers Association
State Agency: Oklahoma Alcoholic Beverage Laws Enforcement Commission
Package Mix:
Beer Taxes 3.2:
Beer Taxes Over 3.2:
Economic Impact (2010):
Legal Restrictions:
Data complied, in part, from the Beer Institute’s Brewer’s Almanac 2010, Beer Serves America, the Brewers Association, Wikipedia and my World Factbook. If you see I’m missing a brewery link, please be so kind as to drop me a note or simply comment on this post. Thanks.
For the remaining states, see Brewing Links: United States.
Tuesday’s ad is yet another ad by famed Swiss illustrator Herbert Leupin. Like the last two, I’m not sure what beer this ad is for or when it was created. The ad, of course, is for kühles bier — cold beer — though instead of being like yesterday’s ad showing a “hot” blonde in a swimsuit frolicking in the ocean, this one shows a dashing man about to quench his thirst with a tasty beverage.
Today, 30 years ago, Don Feinberg and Wendy Littlefield launched Vanberg & DeWulf, one of the first companies to specialize in importing Belgian beer to the United States. Originally, they conceived of the company as a way to keep visiting Belgium on a regular basis and see the many friends they’d made when they lived there for three years after college, not realizing they’d be part of a larger movement popularizing Belgian beer in the states. At the time, here’s what they were thinking.
We lived in Belgium for three years right out of college and began importing so that when our companies transferred us to the States we would still have an excuse to return to see our friends and visit the places we loved. What began as a hobby turned into a career, and we have a decades-long wacky, improbable fascination with the culture of the country and its brewers.
As my friend Tom Peters from Monk’s Cafe in Philadelphia put it:
Toast to the pioneers of bringing Belgian beers to the US. Don Feinberg & Wendy Littlefield have been bringing us the likes of Duvel, Boon, Dupont, Scaldis and other top-flight Belgian ales for the past THIRTY YEARS! They were at least a decade ahead of the times. Their portfolio helped me start offering Belgian beer in Philadelphia way back in 1985. Without their efforts Monk’s Café probably would not exist, nor any of the other Belgian beer bars that came along later.
Like many bars and beer establishments, they’re taking part in the Coast-to-Coast Toast tonight, lifting a glass of Belgian beer to Vanberg & DeWulf, and especially to Don and Wendy, for their three-decade efforts.
When I spoke to Wendy last week, she said they expect about 350 places to participate in the toast, and around 200 have even signed-up on the Eventbrite page, where you can see if there’s one going on in your neighborhood. For a full list, by state, of the more than 350 events that were known as of yesterday, check out that list at their C2CT website.
Even if you can’t make it out — I’m staying in and toasting with the missus, for example — toast them in the comfort of your home. It should be easy enough to find one of the great beers they import. Any beer from the following Belgian breweries will fit the bill.
You can also find a list of all 30 of the beers in their portfolio at their C2CT website.
In addition, Don and Wendy have partnered with Untappd, the foursquare of beer. I confess I’ve only been using Untappd for a couple of weeks now, since I finally scrapped my Android for an iPhone 4s. But so far I really like it, in the same way I enjoy checking into Foursquare for absolutely no reason. It’s just fun. Anyway, check in today (and for the next 30 days) with any of the thirty beers in the Vanberg & DeWulf portfolio and you’ll earn a special Belgian beer badge.
In addition to the badge, you’ll also be entered into a contest to win a trip for two to Belgium, courtesy of the Belgian Tourist Office and Delta Airlines.
Here’s an overview of some of their other accomplishments, and Lew Bryson has a nice tribute he did for a local Philly distributor.
Don Feinberg and Wendy Littlefield were the first to import Duvel, Rodenbach, Affligem, Boon lambics, Blanche de Bruges to the USA. They were the first Americans inducted into the Belgian Brewers Guild in its 500-year history. Ever and always they have represented beers from independent family-run breweries. They were the publishers of the first US edition of Michael Jackson’s The Great Beers of Belgium. They founded Brewery Ommegang on a former hops farm in Cooperstown in 1994. Ommegang was the first US brewery dedicated to all bottle conditioned, cork-finished, Belgian-style beers. They introduced the 750 ml format to the US craft beer scene, and built the first farmstead brewery in the US in a century.
I first met Don and Wendy about fifteen years ago when I worked for BevMo. At that time they were not just importers, but had recently founded and built Ommegang in upstate New York, a partnership with Duvel Moortgat and others. I saw and talked to them both for a number of years after that, but then I didn’t see them for a time after Duvel bought them out at Ommegang and they moved to Chicago. Happily, I was reunited with them when the Craft Brewers Conference took place in Chicago two years ago and I attended a Dubuisson (Bush) beer dinner where we had a chance to really catch up, before heading to the Publican for a nightcap or three. I love their passion for what they do, and how much they love and value their relationship with Belgian culture and its brewers. I hope I remain half as passionate for what I do after thirty years. They’re a great example of just how much fun you can have when you really and truly love what you do.
Happy Anniversary Don & Wendy, here’s to thirty more years of great Belgian beer!
On Saturday, the 6th annual West Coast Barrel Aged Beer Fest took place at the Bistro in Hayward. 67 different barrel-aged beers were served to a packed house on a beautiful fall day. Festival goers voting for their favorites chose the following three for the People’s Choice Awards:
Congratulations to all the winners.
Monday’s ad is an another interesting ad by famed Swiss illustrator Herbert Leupin. Like the last one, I’m not sure what beer this ad is for or when it was created, though he worked mainly beginning in the late 1930s and then took up painting around 1970. So we can safely say it was between those dates. The ad, of course, is for kühles bier — cold beer — though showing a “hot” blonde in a swimsuit frolicking in the ocean doesn’t really seem consistent with that. Still, it’s a cool ad all the same.
Our 58th Session should be a fun one. Our host, Phil Hardy from Beersay, is apparently hoping for an old-fashioned Christmas this year, and at the top of his list is Charles Dickens’ immortal classic A Christmas Carol. Hardy is attempting to merge the two, which, as Dickens himself said of the goal of his novella in the preface. “I have endeavoured in this Ghostly little book, to raise the Ghost of an Idea, which shall not put my readers out of humour with themselves, with each other, with the season, or with me. May it haunt their houses pleasantly, and no one wish to lay it.” We should all aspire to such heights. The basic idea, which by now you must have guessed, is to write about the beers of Christmas past, present and future, or as Hardy tells it in his announcement post, A Dickens of a Topic for December 2011:
A Christmas Carol
The idea for me was based loosely around the visits of three ghosts to Ebenezer Scrooge, but relayed in a post about the beers of Christmas past, present and future.
What did you drink during Christmas holidays of old, have you plans for anything exciting this year and is there something you’d really like to do one day, perhaps when the kids have flown the nest?
Do you have your own interpretation, was Scrooge perhaps a beer geek?
Or maybe it’s all one day. What will you drink Christmas morning, Christmas afternoon and what will you top off the holiday with that evening?
Just a few examples there, but the idea was to keep the topic as open as possible to allow you free rein to write about a subject with a seasonal twist in whatever way the title grabs you.
My own favorite interpretation of A Christmas Carol is the Bill Murray film Scrooged, which I watch each year without fail, tearing up at the end … every … single … time. There, now you now; I’m a sentimental old fool.
Acid rain. Drug addiction. International terrorism. Freeway killers. Now more than ever, it is important to remember the true meaning of Christmas. Don’t miss Charles Dickens immortal classic; Scrooge. Your life might just depend on it…
Or maybe not, but just to be sure, why not write your Dickensian blog post anyway, and post it up on Friday, December 2.
This week’s works of art are by the Swedish artist Anders Zorn. The first one was painted in 1890. The title of it is “In the Brewery,” or sometimes “The Great Brewery,” and “in this genre scene depicting the interior of a Stockholm brewery, he shows a group of workers putting labels on beer bottles. The composition is strikingly unexpected and brutal, the row of figures on the right facing an empty space on the left. The play on light and the rapid, confident treatment accentuate this particular effect.” However, other accounts indicate that the brewery in the painting was in Hamburg, Germany.
Although he was estranged from him, Zorn’s father — Leonard Zorn — was a German brewer who moved to Sweden for work. The second painting, also created in 1890, is “The Little Brewery” and is in Sweden’s Nationalmuseum.
You can read Zorn’s biography at Wikipedia, at the 4 2day Artchive and a longer account at Arts Graphica. You can also see more of his works at AndersZorn.com and at Alsing, with links to other galleries at ArtCyclopedia.
Our 93rd Guinness ad shows a very prolific fisherman who’s clearly waaay over the catch limit for the day. But I guess he had to fill the boat with fish before he felt entitled to a Guinness. I confess I work that way, too. I’ll deny myself a beer until I finish an article or even a post to motivate myself to get it done. Somehow it tastes sweeter — or hoppier — that way.
