Wednesday’s ad is a Christmas ad — because today is Old Christmas Day, when “on the 12th day after Christmas, Christians celebrate the visit of the Magi, the first Gentile recognition of Christ.” It’s also known as Epiphany, Three Kings Day and Twelfth Day. If I had to guess, I’d say this ad was from the mid-to-late fifties. The tagline “What’ll You Have?” was used by Pabst for a number of years and it appears it a number of their ads from that time period. Happy Christmas.
For my first Top 10 list of 2010, I’ve decided on a decidedly unreal topic, Fictional Beers. By fictional, I mean beers that were created in literature, film, television or other similar media. I drive my wife nuts whenever we watch a TV show or film, trying to identify the beer on the screen to see if it’s a real brand or one the filmmaker’s made up. At least initially, all of the brands here were conceived and created only in the mind of a writer. You’ve seen them in the hands of your favorite characters on the screen or read about them in the pages of comics or novels. Some proved so popular that they made the jump to real products. So for my 21st Top 10 List, I present my favorite fictional beer brands. Let me know your faves. Here’s List #21:
Top 10 Fictional Beer Brands
| Spud Beer from Saturday Night Live While SNL spoofed many beers over its long television run, being a potato fanatic makes this one my personal favorite. Most people seem to like Schmitts Gay Beer or ColdCock Malt Liquor, but I prefer “the beer that made Boise famous.”  | |
| Olde Frothingslosh from the Pittsburgh radio show “Cordic & Company,” with host Rege Cordic Olde Frothingslosh Pale Stale Ale might have stayed a footnote in radio history, had it not been for Iron City Brewery (then Pittsburgh Brewing) making up actual cans of this beer (with just regular Iron City inside) for collectors. The beer started out out as just another joke on Cordic’s radio show in the 1950s with the beer’s taglines “A whale of an ale for the pale stale male” and “Hi dittom dottom, the foam is on the bottom.” The first cans were done in 1955, but they were revived again in the 1970s, this time featuring plus size go-go dancer Fatima Yechberg (real name: Marsha Phillips) on the label and the popularity of the cans soared even more than in the fifties.  | |
| Dharma Beer from the TV show “Lost” This might be higher if I was still a fan of Lost, but I stopped following the show somewhere in the muddled season three. Still, like Repo Man before it, I love it when everything looks the same, as if it was all made by one entity.  | |
| Heisler Beer from the ISS, featured on countless programs. Heisler Beer is the most famous beer you’ve never heard of. It was created by Independent Studio Services as a prop to be used in television and films. A partial list of TV and films it’s been used in includes American Pie Presents: Band Camp, Beerfest, Bionic Woman, Bones, Burn Notice, CSI: Crime Scene Investigation, CSI: Miami, Desperate Housewives, Dollhouse, Everybody Hates Chris, How I Met Your Mother, The Hulk, Malcom in the Middle, My Name Is Earl, The Pretender, Prison Break, The Rainmaker, Star Trek: Enterprise, Stealing Harvard, Superbad, The Shield, Terminator: The Sarah Connor Chronicles, Training Day, Two and a Half Men, Veronica Mars and Weeds. See Wikipedia for a more complete list.  | |
| Olde Fortran Malt Liquor from “Futurama” Also created by Matt Groening, Futurama had several fake beer brands on the animated series, such as Benderbrau Cold-Fusion Steam Beer, Löbrau Beer, Pabst Blue Robot and St. Pauli Exclusion Principle Girl Beer. But Olde Fortran is the one I recall seeing most often, so that’s why it’s number six.  | |
| Buzz Beer from the “Drew Carey Show” Years before the FDA stuck their nose into caffeine and beer, Drew Carey was working on Buzz Beer in his garage.  | |
| Samuel Jackson from “Chappelle’s Show” I loved Dave Chappelle’s show, and while he had many more poignant and funny moments, as far as beer spoofs go, this one was freaking hilarious.  | |
| Shotz Beer from the TV show “Laverne & Shirley” This one may be lost on the young folks, as this Happy Days spin-off has been off the air since 1983, having run for eight seasons beginning in 1976. But all the leads worked at a brewery, Shotz in Milwaukee, so it sticks with me in my memory, at least, and perhaps those who are old curmudgeons like me, too. In retrospect, it’s surprising no brewery stepped up and made a Shotz Beer.  | |
| Elsinore Beer from the film “Strange Brew” Given that Strange Brew is the greatest beer movie ever made (though I still hesitate to actually call it a “good” movie), it’s only natural that Elsinore Beer — no longer with rats or drugs in each bottle — should be one of the top fake beers, too.  | |
| Duff Beer from the TV show “The Simpsons” How could it be otherwise? No brand so thoroughly explored all that’s repugnant in big beer advertising and marketing as Duff Beer has done for twenty years.  |
It was, as always, really difficult to keep the list to ten, and to put together this list I also compiled a more complete list of Fictional Beer Brands, listing as many as I could remember or research. Take a look and see if there’s any you can think of that I missed. Here’s a few more that nearly made the list:
Butterbeer, from the Harry Potter series, Flager Lager, from “Magnum P.I.,” Newton & Ridley from England’s “Coronation Street” (I have friends who are fanatical about the show), Pawtucket Patriot Ale, from “Family Guy,” Rocketfuel Malt Liquor, from “News Radio,” Romulan Ale, from “Star Trek,” Tenku Beer, from “Kill Bill,” and last, but not least, the generic Beer (like every other product in) the film “Repo Man.”
Let me know your favorites, and if you see any that you think should have made the list, please post a comment.
Also, if you have any ideas for future Top 10 lists you’d like to see, drop me a line.
Tuesday’s ad is another oldie, based on the label, at least. I don’t know much about it either, but I love the association Bass is trying to make. While it’s obvious that they’re trying to evoke emotions of pride, it still comes off a little colonial and warlike. Of course, that may be because I live in a former colony. But with the tag line, “The Drink of the Empire,” I think I’m safe in saying the ad is somewhat imperial in its tone.
Here is quiz number three. This one is like the first, using the first letter of a beer brand name or the brewery. Your job is simply to figure out which beer or brewery it’s from. Good luck. Let me know how you did.
If you missed any previous quizzes, they can all be found on the beer quiz page.
Monday’s ad is one I have a reproduction of hanging in my office, a gift from my friend Steve Altimari, who is the brewmaster at Valley Brewing in Stockton, Calif. Valley Brewing sells the posters and uses the image in some of the promotional materials, but it’s 50s advertisement from the old El Dorado Brewery, a brewery that had been in Stockton from 1855 until it closed for good in 1955. You gotta love old cheesecake.
Today’s works of art is by a young Thai artist named Kitti Narod. He was commissioned by Chang Beer, the best-selling beer in Thailand, to paint an “interpretation” of their label. He came up with Rivers of Amber.
Here’s a description of the work:
In Bangkok artist Kitti Narod’s commissioned interpretation of the Thai favourite Chang Beer bottle and logo, an exuberant fountain of golden beer escapes the confines of its glass bottle and Narod’s painted encircling frame to flood the canvas with waves of vital refreshment. Four mystically illuminated corner elephants echo the prized white Thai elephants of the brand logo. Within the painted sphere, the forest, river, rainbow and starry sky exude energy to match the eddies of the amber torrent.
I love the look of this piece, especially having just watched the color-saturated Sita Sings the Blues. A lot of art from this region of the world uses dense, colorful designs where every square inch of the canvas is used.
Narod is appranetly a self-taught artist who “creates unique paintings of wildlife with brilliant dots of color.” According to a biography on Absolute Arts:
Kitti Narod’s acrylic dot paintings are inspired by Australian Aboriginal techniques. As a graduate artist working on collage paintings, Kitti came upon the dots on dots Australian Aboriginal art and found that this spoke to him personally as an artist. In Narod’s work, themes from nature, flowers, fruits, leaves, waves, trees, the sea and sea creatures are interwoven in colour schemes drawn from the blue of the sky and the warm palette inspired by Kitti’s tropical sun. This exceptionally versatile artist also produces dynamic Urban Abstracts, collages on a Chinese theme and, in collaboration with his “mom”, cutting edge textile compositions.
The Chang beer label, owned by ThaiBev. In Thai, the word “Chang” means elephant. Chang also has an interesting looking Thai Good Food Guide online.
You can see much more of her colorful artwork at Easy Art, the Magic Art Gallery and Thai Fine Art Online. You can purchase prints of his work at several online shops, including the X-Ray Mag Store or Easy Art.
I had a special treat today that was completely unexpected. One of the beers that my friend Phil Lowry — who owns Beer Merchants — brought along to the surprise birthday party for Rodger Davis (Triple Rock brewer) was BrewDog’s Tactical Nuclear Penguin. I’ll have more about Rodger’s party on Tuesday, his actual birthday. For now, I’ll concentrate on the BrewDog beer. I had been very keen to try it ever since I’d read about it.
Tactical Nuclear Penguin, on the left, in its paper bag wrapper. In addition to the brown paper, it was also bound around the neck with a simple string, tied.
Removing the wrapper, we poured it into small glasses for sharing. It was nearly black in color with very little carbonation or head. It was not thick or viscous at all like an imperial stout, unsurprisingly, and also appeared thin and wasn’t opaque by a long shot. Swirling the beer produced nice lacing inside the glass. I’d read the nose was smokey, but it seemed more peaty to me, on the order of an Islay whisky. That was the overriding aroma, though underlying that was more subtle soy, a surprising sweetness and chocolate and toffee malt. And there was a bit of heat; hot alcohol, though not as much as I expected.
The peat character continues into the flavor profile, with plenty more going on, too, happily. Most surprising is that the alcohol heat doesn’t seem out of place (which it definitely did in the Paradox — Penguin’s base beer — I had at The Rake earlier this year) but works with the other flavors. Caramel and chocolate notes along with a treacly sweetness, licorice and a meaty saltiness, which combined for a very different, but thoroughly enjoyable, beer. It all came together well.
Though the two are very different, it’s hard to not compare it with Samuel Adams Utopias, since both made their reputations, at least in part, because of their extreme strength. I think the Utopias is more complex and a little more smooth, but not by much. The Penguin had much stronger flavors that lingered not only long afterward but even after I’d had other beers. Driving home, the peatiness was still with me. I say that as a plus. The beer really stays with you.
My overall reaction is that the beer did live up to its hype. I can’t say much about the price, admittedly high, but given its scarcity and what it took to create it, I can’t say it’s unreasonable. But as for the taste, it truly is extraordinary, like nothing else I’ve ever had in a beer.
There’s a great post today by Pete Brown concerning more nonsense from Great Britain’s neo-prohibitionist-leaning government flacks. Yet again confirming, at least to me, his status as a kindred spirit regarding this issue, Pete begins with this understandably anger-fueled assessment of the situation. This story comes at the beginning of the year, when people are stopping to take stock of their lives, but instead “the neo-prohibitionists go completely fucking apeshit, pouncing on the moment when many moderate drinkers prove they don’t have a drink problem by taking a few weeks off the sauce, and use it to ram fear and alarm down the nations throats as never before.”
Effectively, the tortured math from the UK’s National Health Service suggests that one-and-a-half pints of lager constitutes “hazardous behavior,” even if that amount is consumed over a week’s time! Congratulations to England, they’ve finally beaten us in being completely ridiculous about drinking guidelines. Read Pete’s post, it’s brilliant stuff.
Need a giant promotional balloon for your business? How about a 15-foot mug of beer? If you’re in Florida, you can rent one from Giant Balloon Rental. They also have a giant Coors beer can, too. That one is 23-feet tall. I’m guessing if one balloon rental company has it, they all probably do. I want one for my next party, much better than a jumpie house.
The humor website Freaking News, whose tagline is “News Photoshop Contests,” apparently has held several contests involving beer, challenging people to create funny pictures using Photoshop. In some cases they offer an image to start with and manipulate and in others they just suggest a theme. Below are some of my favorites from the Cold Draft Beer contest.
Boom!
Beer Lake.
Drunk Bouguereau. The original is La Petite Mendiante (The Little Beggar) painted by William-Adolphe Bouguereau in 1880.
You can see many more beer-altered photos in these contest galleries. Warning: it’s a time suck.
