Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #2667: When He Strikes Town He Wants His —

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Sunday’s ad is for the Indianapolis Brewing Co.’s Hoosier Beer, from maybe the 1890s. The ad shows a provocative scene that appears to be a man and woman in bed with the caption “When He Strikes Town He Wants His —” But all is not as it seems. This is a card that when you open it, it reveals a far more innocent scene in which the man is sitting at a table in a restaurant or tavern and the woman is serving him a bottle of beer. The remainder of the caption is also revealed, and all he wanted was his “Hoosier Beer.”

The unopened card:

Hoosier-Beer-0

The opened card:

Hoosier-Beer

Beer In Ads #2666: You’ll Like The Taste Of Old Style Lager

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Saturday’s ad is for Heileman’s Old Style Lager, from the 1950s. The ad shows a female bowler (look for it, you’ll see it) smiling and holding up a bottle of beer with a list of interesting reasons why “You’ll like the taste of Old Style Lager.” But I especially like the tagline at the bottom: “We don’t aim to make the most beer; only the best.” You don’t often see semicolons in ad copy, so that’s a bonus.

Old-Style-Lager-1950s

Beer In Ads #2665: Everybody’s Saying … Hi Neighbor

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Friday’s ad is for Narragansett Lager Beer, from 1948. The ad shows a waiter in a green jacket — with an awesome mustache — and a button with the number “5” on it carrying three full glasses of beer along with three unopened bottles of Narragansett Lager Beer with the tagline “Everybody’s Saying … Hi Neighbor have a ‘Gansett.”

Narragansett-1948-singing

Beer In Ads #2664: Take Some Home … It’s Sugar-Free*

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Thursday’s ad is for Old Reading Beer, from the 1940s, I think. The ad is by famed pinup artist Alberto Vargas and shows a woman in a skintight skimpy outfit (to today’s eyes it looks like a modest one-piece bathing suit) with a belt. She’s also holding a hat. The tagline starts with “From the heart of the Pennsylvania Dutch Country.” Reading Beer was my hometown brewery growing up, although it closed when I was a junior in high school. The most interesting part though is their other claim. “Take Some Home … It’s Sugar-Free*. I’m sure that asterisk is important, but I’m not sure what it refers to. That part of the ad is missing and I can’t find many other examples. So far all of the similar ads include the asterisk but no additional information as you’d expect. Maybe at the bottom in a very tiny font, it says “just kidding.”

reading-beer-cardboard-sugar-free

1877 U.S. Brewers Association Convention

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usba
This is an interesting photo I came across in 100 Years of Brewing, which was originally published in 1903. This two-page double truck is a photo of all the attendees of the Seventeenth annual convention of the United States Brewers Association, which was held in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The photo was taken on June 6, 1877.

There are 133 people in the photo, although not all of them are identified. Quite a few of the people in the photo are, or rather were, pretty big deals in the brewing industry at that time, which makes sense. This was, after all, the biggest trade convention for brewing. But when you read the names, it’s a veritable who’s who of the brewing industry.

USBA-1877

Luckily, they included a numbered key to identify the people in the picture.

USBA-1877-key-1

USBA-1877-key-2

Interestingly, even though the photo was taken in 1877, by the time it was published in “100 Years of Brewing,” 26 years later, 55 of the 133 people in the photo had died, or over 40%.

Here are slightly larger images of the two pages, first the left page, followed by the right.

USBA-1877-left

USBA-1877-right

Beer In Ads #2662: Beer Hunting Season

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Tuesday’s ad is for Schmidt, from the 1980s. The ad shows two proud men who’ve just bagged a big one on their hunting trip. Tied up on top of their wood-paneled Jeep is their quarry: a ginormous can of Schmidt Beer. As a kid, those collectible Schmidt beer cans with pheasants and other game birds were everywhere. I had a friend whose father traveled for work and brought home beer cans from where he went. Their basement rec room was literally covered in floor-to-ceiling custom shelves built to hold beer cans, and there were a lot of Schmidt cans among them. I don’t know why more breweries didn’t do likewise, or don’t do so today. Anyway, this is obviously a promotional poster, but it’s the best kind of advertising: the kind that doesn’t hit you over the head and is cool enough that you’d want to hang it up in your hunting lodge or basement bar.

schmidt-1980s-beer-hunting-season

Beer In Ads #2661: I Like It. What Is It?

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Monday’s ad is for Schlitz Malt Liquor, from 1965. The ad shows a woman staring into her glass of Malt Liquor. This ad was two years after introducing their malt liquor, so they were still trying to educate their potential customers, and it’s quite interesting how they characterize it. “Bolder than beer. More character than ale. Less filling than both.”

Schlitz-Malt-Liquor-1965-what-is-it

Beer In Ads #2660: Some Things Can’t Be Hurried

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Sunday’s ad is for Ruppert Beer, from 1947. The ad shows a farmer taking a nap while his horse looks on disapprovingly. But the tagline, “Some Things Can’t Be Hurried” isn’t about growing crops, but about brewing beer, which Ruppert apparently does not just slowly, but s-l-o-w-l-y. I may not be an expert in the philosophy of time, but I don’t think you can age something slowly. Time is linear, at least in practical terms, and moves at a fixed pace. It may sometimes seem to go slower or faster, but that’s just our perception of it.

Ruppert-1947-hurried

Beer In Ads #2659: Break For Canadian Wild Life

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Saturday’s ad is for Molson, from 1994. The ad shows a great cartoon of — what is that? — a Canadian Goose wearing shades and leaning up against a giant bottle of Molson on the beach. He also has a fairly large bottle on his hand. He actually looks more like a duck, but Canadian Goose makes more sense in context. Whatever bird, he certainly looks satisfied.

Molson-1994-duck