This Friday is also the three-year anniversary of The Sessions, a.k.a. Beer Blogging Friday. When I created the logo for the Session, I used this Gangloff beer ad from 1930. I chose it for its simplicity and clean lines. I think it’s worked well, and so it made the obvious choice for today’s ad.
As far as I can tell, Brasserie Gangloff was an Alsatian brewery that closed in 1970. The only photo I could find of it was after it was bombed on July 16, 1943 during World War II.
Our 36th Session marks the three-year anniversary of our little project, spanning over 1,000 posts covering 36 topics, including today’s, which is cask-conditioned beer. Our host, Tom Cizauskas, from Yours For Good Fermentables, wants everybody to write from almost any angle so long as it’s about cask-conditioned beer. He gave a litany of ideas, which I earlier summarized as follows:
“Make it a sad story. Make it a love story. But … make it!” But ending with this entreaty to participate. “Above all, let’s have perspective folks, perspective! Cask-conditioned ale is not a matter of life and death; it’s much more.”
I’ve been so swamped with SF Beer Week that I’ll have to keep this month’s Session post short, no small feat for me. So I figure I’ll go for “lifestyle essay” and tell the tale of how I lost my “cask-conditioned ale virginity.” It was my first trip to the UK, with my first wife (didn’t know that, yeah, I forget sometimes, too, it was so long ago) and we rented a flat near Clapham Junction. But we arrived one day before the flat was ready for us, so we had to find a hotel for one night. For no better reason than I loved the old Ealing Comedy Passport To Pimlico, I picked a small hotel in Pimlico, a small area in central London, officially part of the City of Westminster.
After checking in, we went for a walk and ended up at the Orange Brewery on Pimlico Road. I didn’t realize it at the time, but it had only opened that same year, in 1983. It was a brewpub, with the brewery in the basement. I remember that because I had a peek at it. After flying all night from the East Coast and lugging our bags on the Tube and to the hotel on a humid August day, I was pretty hot, tired and thirsty. So when I saw this corner bar, we immediately ducked inside.
Over 25 years later, I can barely remember what I ordered. What I do remember is how much I immediately took to it, loved it in fact. Up until that point I’d pretty much taken for granted that all beer was served cold. To have one at cellar temperature was a revelation. It tasted so good. So I had another. And another. I was immediately hooked, though it would be years before I could indulge such passions on a regular basis. It’s really only been in the last decade or so that cask-conditioned ales have become more commonplace on this side of the Atlantic. While hardly ubiquitous, you can find them pretty easily, at least in the Bay Area where I live. We have our own local firkin festival that’s been going for about 6 or 7 years. There’s definitely a growing awareness and appreciation for them. We may never get to the point where the UK is — trying to save their real ale — but I think it’s safe to say that cask is here to stay and should continue to grow for the foreseeable future. I, for one, am very happy about that development.
It only seems like yesterday that BrewDog’s 32% a.b.v. Tactical Nuclear Penguin captured the title of world’s strongest beer, besting German brewer Schorschbrau’s 31% beer. But now the German brewery has retaken the title with a whopping 40% monster of a beer. Schorschbrau describes the beer as follows:
The currently Strongest Beer in the World: 40% Alcohol
Available in 0.33 liter ceramic bottles, personally signed and hand-numbered by the Braumeister himself. Each bottle is sealed with wax by hand and comes in a wooden case with a transparent window on one side.
August Beer Examiner Lonnie Best has the full story as Germany wins another victory in the extreme beer wars.
Oakland’s newest beer store is set to open today. Beer Revolution, located at 464 3rd Street in Oakland, just off Broadway. Co-owners Rebecca and Fraggle plan to open the doors today at Noon. Stop by and check it out. Better yet, pick up a few bottles to let them know you support better beer stores.
Thursday’s ad is for Baltimore’s National Bohemian. There’s not much info about the ad, though I’m guessing based on the indistinct background that it’s more late-50s to early 60s. I love the cartoony bartender (The Natty Boh mascot Mr. Boh, from the 1950s to the present) with the clean, empty bar showing the slide down to the unseen patron at the end of the bar.
I don’t recall who originally Tweeted this, but I believe it was one of the Alströms, either Todd or Jason, so thanks to whichever one of you passed along these interesting Super Bowl statistics. The statistics I’m talking about came from the NielsenWire, the same folks that tally who watches which TV shows. While it’s believed by most people that the Super Bowl is a huge revenue generator for alcohol, especially beer, and snack foods, it would appear that’s not actually the case. In fact, the Super Bowl weekend actually ranks seventh. According to Nielsen’s research, 9 in 10 Will Watch Super Bowl at Home; Most will Spend the Same or Less on Food and Beverages. According to the data, 90% of everyone who watches the Saints and Colts vie for the Lombardi trophy this Sunday will be either at home or a friend/relative’s house. Of those, 95% are planning on buying less beer and food. That’s welcome news for grocery stores but not so good for bars, brewpubs and restaurants.
Here’s the breakdown of where people will watch the Super Bowl.
Here’s a chart of football watching spending. Sadly, crackers outsell my beloved potato chips.
In case you’ve been living under a rock, SF Beer Week starts tomorrow. It feels like we’ve been working around the clock — and in the case of a few that’s literally true — to get this party started. I can hardly believe it myself. We’re past 200 events at this point, and all of them are great-looking, not a dog in the bunch. That’s roughly a one-third increase in events. I’ll be doing my best to get to two or three events each day. If see me out and about, please say hello.
Wednesday’s ad is for Carling Black Label and it from 1960. Is it the glass that’s making the beer look somewhat odd, or something else? The tagline is interesting, “People try it … and they like it.” Isn’t that a bit too close to Alka-Seltzer’s famous “Try It, You’ll Like It” slogan that ran beginning in 1971?
Today is another anniversary, this time for beer in Hawaii. The first recorded brewing of beer in Hawaii took place on February 2, 1812. So Tuesday’s ad is for Primo Beer, one from 1958, the year before Hawaii became a state.
You can see more about Hawaii Brewing at the online Hawaiian Beverage Museum. Below, while not exactly an ad, is a cool poster showing the evolution of Primo Beer labels and packages from 1943 to the present.
Click through the image to see the poster larger.
I stopped by Russian River Brewing today, because my friend Pete Slosberg told me last week that he would be there for the first bottling of Consecration in the new proprietary 375ml bottles. Pete was there with a few volunteers, including Peter Estaniel, from A Better Beer Blog.
The new bottle was developed for exclusive use by Russian River Brewing, along with North Coast Brewing and the Lost Abbey. So for now, those will be the only breweries you”ll see using this new bottle.
This is the third beer to be bottled by Russian River in the new bottles. The first two were Supplication and Temptation.
In other exciting Russian River news, the brewery is about to go off the grid, and go completely solar. One-half of the production brewery’s roof has solar panels already installed and the second half has the frames laid down, waiting for the panels. It may go live as early as this weekend and should power all of the brewery’s electricity needs.
Below is a short video of Consecration moving through the bottling line.
Below are some photos from today’s visit to the brewery.
Here is a slideshow of the Consecration bottling. 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.