Thursday’s ad is for Ballantine’s Ale, and is from the 1950s. It features the slogan “How American it is … to want something better!” It features a then-new train engine — one I’m sure my son Porter could identify by name if he wasn’t asleep — as a symbol of progress. It’s slightly curious only the bottle itself is in color while the rest is in black and white, which I imagine was design decision to make the bottle pop.
I’m an unabashed lover of animation, which is why I always bristle when the neo-prohibitionists invariably complain when a cartoon is used to sell beer. They always argue that cartoons appeal only to children, and seem to forget that adults love them, too. Many of the most famous cartoons we love were originally made for adults, to be shown before feature films at the theater in the days before television. It wasn’t until the advent of TV, I’d argue, that the split began between cartoons for kids and for adults.
Anyway, I recently was looking for and found a bootleg DVD of old Quisp & Quake commercials, which were created by Jay Ward, famous for Rocky & Bullwinkle, among much else. And, yes, I am that much of an animation geek. Anyway, I also discovered at the same website, something I hadn’t previously known about: a Hanna-Barbera made Flintstones cartoon done in 1967 for an Anheuser-Busch distributor meeting or convention. I promptly ordered that as well.
It’s a little over 19 minutes, shows some upcoming television and radio spots for Busch Bavarian Beer, but also includes a mini-Flinstones story, too, that begins when Fred and Barney lose their jobs and go to a bar to drink Busch beer. It appears aimed at distributors, and possibly retailers, to show what advertising will be used in 1967 to support the brand and help it continue to be successful. There’s some great old adspeak in the video, where the narrator talks about “advertising that moves the consumer to Busch” with what they call — and they say in hushed tones implying it’s a new term — “Target Advertising.” But here’s my favorite. “We used words that beer drinkers understood.” That had me laughing out loud. What exactly are the words that beer drinkers understand? Are they small ones? Simple ones? Ones without too many syllables?
After a few minutes of a Flintstones story, going to the bar, then back home, the boys return again to the bar. The bar’s name is actually “Tavern-Type Inn Bar Grill Lounge Pub Saloon.” They agree to take over for the bartender and serve some Busch beer, then watch a video within the video that’s aimed at the distributors and talks about advertising plans for 1967. Apparently last year’s slogan was “you can’t say beer better than Busch” and the new one will be “when you’re due for a beer, Busch does it!.”
I think my favorite part of the video is when the beer wagon comes out of the A-B gate, pulled by Clydes-dinos. After the video, the 5:00 whistle sounds and Fred and Barney have to go back to work serving Busch to the after work rush. When they’re done, they talk about what hard work it was, and they throw out this bon mot, which must have delighted the crowd. “It takes know how to work in the beer business,” to which Fred replies “yeah, and we got no know how, no how.” Eventually, their boss from the gravel pit, Mr. Slate, comes in the bar and they get their jobs back, of course, wrapping up the story arc from the beginning.
It’s a fun cartoon, especially for the beer geek, and I can’t imagine how expensive it must have been to get Hanna-Barbera, one of the premiere animation studios at that time, to do an industrial film for them. Happily, you don’t have to go out and buy a copy of it like I did, but can watch it right here, because I found it on YouTube, separated into two parts. Enjoy.
Part 1: 9:22
Part 2: 9:59
Wednesday’s ad is for Falls City Brewing, a mostly obscure brewery from Louisville, Kentucky that operated from 1905 to 1978. They’re probably most well-known nationally for Billy Beer, created with Billy Carter, President Jimmy Carter’s less-successful brother. Looking at the record-player and the records in the ad — dude, get your hands off that vinyl, don’t you know how to hold a record? — I’m guessing it’s late 50s, and on closer inspection it’s copyrighted 1956. Parts of the ad copy are hilarious. “real cool … with plenty of cold.” But this is my favorite: “It’s pasteurized to guard its Magic Flavor.”
Join me for a five-course beer dinner at the Anchor Brewery in San Francisco celebrating Sierra Nevada Brewing‘s 30h anniversary and the release of their first collaboration of the year, Fritz & Ken’s Ale, which is a stout.
There are only five seats left for the beer dinner, which will take place on April 1 (no fooling). Here are the particulars.
Join two of the original craft-brewing pioneers for an intimate one-night-only celebration of beer and food at the historic Anchor Brewery in San Francisco. Anchor Brewing’s Fritz Maytag, and Sierra Nevada’s Ken Grossman will be celebrating the release of their collaboration beer, Fritz and Ken’s Ale, in honor of Sierra Nevada’s 30th anniversary. Come and join us for a 5-course dinner packed with unique rare and vintage beers, seated amongst the kettles in the legendary Anchor brewhouse.
Reception starts at 6:00 PM on April 1st, 2010 at Anchor Brewing Company, 1705 Mariposa Street
San Francisco, CA 94107Five-Course meal, 11 interesting beers, and souvenir glassware.
$100 tickets, limited to 60 seats, no tickets available at the door.
Tickets must be purchased online, they won’t be available at the door. You can get them at ClicknPrint Tickets. I’ll see you there.
Ken Grossman and Fritz Maytag in the Anchor brewhouse, where the dinner will be held next Thursday.
Tuesday’s ad is for Mackeson’s Stout, originally brewed by the Hythe Brewery in Kent, which was founded in 1699. The Mackeson family acquired the brewery in 1801 and introduced their most enduring beer, the milk stout, in 1907, before being taken over by Whitbread in the late 1920s. I love the notion that the milk stout is the product of illicit love between beer and milk, though of course there’s no actual milk in the beer.
On Saturday, the 8th annual Hard Liver Barleywine Fest began at Brouwer’s Cafe in Seattle, Washington. People started queuing in line at 9:00 a.m. for the eleven o’clock opening and the line ran up Phinney almost to 36th Street. There were 50 different barley wines and 12 more different vintages for a total of 62 available beers to sample.
Brouwer’s Cafe on Hard Liver Day.
Like the Toronado Barleywine Festival, people camp out at tables to sample and discuss the barley wines, with many managing to work their way through all of the beers.
I’ve said it before, and I’ll say it again, this has become one of my favorite niche festivals. Brouwer’s is doing a great job with this barley wine festival and it continues to grow each year with more beers and greater attendance. What many people don’t realize is that it’s not just Saturday, but will continue through the entire next week, until all the barley wines run out. So don’t think you missed it, there’s still time to check out most of the barley wines, which are listed below.
Below is a slideshow of the 2010 Hard Liver Barleywine Fest. 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.
The Final Eight Barley Wines
2009 vintage unless otherwise noted
Bold = Winners / Italics = Reached Final Round
The book I contributed to, 1001 Beers You Must Try Before You Die, comes out today in the U.S. The book is the collaborative effort of 42 beers writers from around the world. We each wrote up beers from our areas of expertise, telling the beer’s story and also including tasting notes. There are 1,001 beers from 69 different countries listed, though the United States has more in the book than any other nation. I contributed 35 beers to the project, many of them from the Bay Area or the West Coast, with seven more American beer writers — all friends and colleagues — filling in the rest. Some of the beers were chosen by the editorial staff and the Adrian Tierney-Jones who headed the project, and the rest were suggested by all of the other writers. Some of the other contributors you might be familiar with include Stephen Beaumont, Pete Brown, Melissa Cole, Chuck Cook, Stan Hieronymus, Rick Lyke, Lisa Morrison, Randy Mosher, Chris O’Brien and Don Russell.
It’s a beautiful book, I must say, fully illustrated with nearly every beer’s label or bottle shown in full color. With every beer getting at least a half-page and most a full one, it’s also one seriously heavy book, weighing in at nearly five pounds and with 960 pages! I’m not sure where it will be sold, but it is currently available on Amazon.com, though the American cover is the one above, showing a full pint and bottle of our own Anchor Steam beer. It’s certainly great to see a book about beer from around the world that uses a San Francisco favorite on the cover.
Most pages look like this, which is the first beer reviewed, Odell 5 Barrel Pale Ale (it’s also one of mine.)
Monday’s ad, since it’s the first one I’ve posted since Spring began on Saturday, is all about getting out and working on your lawn and garden … with a beer, of course. A lawnmower beer, perhaps? Though it looks like a pretty old lawnmower. It’s for Burgie, brewed by Burgermeister Brewery of San Francisco, California. It’s about as green an ad as I can imagine. I’m not sure of the date, though it was probably before 1972, when the brewery was bought by Falstaff from Chicago’s Meister Brau (who owned it at that time). Eventually, the brewery closed around 1979.
Congratulations to Charlie Papazian, and his wife Sandra, on the birth of their daughter, Carla Vitoria, born March 19. Charlie, of course, is the founder and president of the Brewers Association, and the author of The Joy of Homebrewing. According to a recent tweet, mother and daughter are doing fine. Join me in wishing Charlie and Sandra warmest wishes and congratulations on their new bundle of joy.
Particulars:
Original Gravity: 9 lbs., 1 oz.
IBUs: 21 3/4 in.
Style: Girl
Release Date: March 19, 2010
Label: Carla Vitoria Papazian
Notes: “Full bodied. Long on enJOYability. Fermentation has commenced.”
Charlie with his new daughter, Carla
Thanks to my friend Rick for sending this my way. In an editorial in the student newspaper for Temple University, the Temple News Online, student commentator Cary Carr writes about sudents getting drunk in a piece she called When Your BAC Exceeds .31 and the Label Reads Natty Ice, Trouble Brews. It’s mostly an anecdotal essay about student drinking and how kids should be more responsible and watch their intake. It’s all well and good, and there’s nothing I take issue with, but there’s just something that leaps out at you in the middle of it.
After all, there does tend to be a hierarchy to drunkenness, ranging from a happy tipsy to an invincible and shameless drunk to the stage we’ve all witnessed or experienced: how-are-you-even-alive drunk.
Of course there are more technical levels of intoxication, which Dr. Jeremy Frank, a psychologist from Tuttleman’s Counseling Services, explained.
“The best way to categorize stages of drunk is with Blood Alcohol Concentration,” Frank said. BAC is the ratio of alcohol to blood in the body. “Drunk is from .11 to .15. Very drunk is usually between .16 and .19. Once you get to .25 to .30 you generally are in a stupor, and from .31 and up would be the beginning of a coma.”
Hmm, according to the field of psychology, drunk is “from .11 to .15,” or above the 0.08% that MADD and other groups rammed down our throats in the early 1980s, when the standard was 0.10%, very much in line with Frank’s definition. Interesting. I wonder how other fields define being drunk?