Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #2184: Heineken Refreshes Loaves Of Bread

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Saturday’s ad is for Heineken, from 1981. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a single-panel format, a man is riding his bicycle down a tree-lined road with three packages of Heineken tied down to the back. I can’t tell if they’re giant oil-can size cans of beer or some sort of six-pack or other size of bottles. Also on the back of the bike, though, is a ginormously long loaf of bread that stretches the width of the road and then some. Hopefully, he won’t have to travel on any narrow roads to get where he’s going, otherwise he’s screwed.

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Beer Birthday: Chris Rice

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Today is also the 45th birthday of Chris Rice, who led a group that not too long ago bought All About Beer magazine. Chris had worked at the magazine for many a moon, and in fact I got to know him much better during a press junket to Belgium a few years ago when I learned, among other things, that he’s a shark card player. He’s also a former brewery owner, having co-founded the Carolina Brewery in 1995, shortly after graduating from UNC. Having gone back to school for an MBA, he joined the staff of All About Beer and a couple of years took over as president and publisher. Join me wishing Chris a very happy birthday.

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Pete Reid, me and Chris at Delirium Tremens in Brussels during a press junket to Belgium a couple of years ago.

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Chris being interviewed by Belgium television.

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Guillaume Vandooren from Lindemans, Chris, Craig Hartinger from Merchant Du Vin, Derek Buono from Beer: The Magazine, and me at our final dinner in Brussels.

Bistro Double IPA Winners 2017

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Today the 17th annual Double IPA Festival was held at the Bistro in Hayward, California. I missed judging last year, but happily was able to be there again this year. We judged 68 Double IPAs and 37 Triple IPAs, and awarded three medals in each category, plus an honorable mention for each, as well.

Double IPAs

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Our judging table in the basement of the Bistro.

Triple IPAs

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The second judging table.

Peoples Choice Awards

Congratulations to all the winners.

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It was a beautiful day at the Bistro for tasting 105 Double and Triple IPAs.

Beer In Ads #2183: Heineken Refreshes The Concorde

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Friday’s ad is for Heineken, from 1976. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a two-panel format, a Concorde jet is looking a little tired and suffering drooping nose. But after a fill-up from the Heineken fuel truck, the plane’s nose is no longer dropping, but is raring to go. The plane, somehow, is now smiling, too. I wonder why it never caught on to refer to beer as “jet fuel?”

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Beer In Ads #2182: Heineken Refreshes Mustaches

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Thursday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a three-panel vertical format, the first panel shows a chubby, bespectacled man with a droopy mustache. After sipping some Heineken, his ‘stache is standing tall. Stiff as a board and ready for action. That must be why he’s smiling.

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Bock To Basics

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For our 121st Session, our host will be Jon Abernathy, who writes The Brew Site. For his topic, he’s chosen Bock!, which again sounds simple enough, but I’ll just let Jon explain what he means:

The month of March heralds the start of spring, and March 20 is even National Bock Beer Day. So Bockbiers seemed like a natural fit for the month!

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Don’t feel constrained to simply write a review of a Bock beer, though I’m certainly interested to read any reviews that come it. Some other ideas to consider:

  • Dig into into the history of the style—their ties to Einbeck, the differences in the development of Bocks and Doppelbocks, and so on.
  • Do any of your local breweries brew a Bock-styled beer? Seek it out and write about it.
  • Alternatively, interview your local brewer who brewed that beer; get their take on the style and why/how they brewed it the way they did.
  • Have you ever attended Bockfest in Cincinnati, Ohio? It just so happens to take place the first weekend of March—write a review for The Session!
  • There are already the styles of traditional Bock, Doppelbock, Maibock, Eisbock, Weizenbock (and Helles Bock and Dunkles Bock in the BJCP) guidelines. Just for fun, invent a new style of Bock and describe it.
  • Have you homebrewed a Bock or similar style? Tell us about it, and anything you learned brewing this lager style at home.
  • Bock puns!

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In mid-2015, I was Thinking About Beer Color, so it could be fun to restrict that to just one family of color, the browns. There certainly are a lot of beers that fit into that range. What’s your take on the narrow band on the beer color rainbow.

To participate in the March Session, on or before Friday, March 3, 2017, post your thoughts on Bock beer. Either comment on the original announcement or via Twitter or Facebook. Jon’s Twitter handle is @brewsite.

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Beer In Ads #2181: Heineken Refreshes Steel Girders

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Wednesday’s ad is for Heineken, from 1977. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a two-panel format, a man is carrying a large steel girder, balanced on his head, while carrying a full mug of beer. It’s obviously a poke at Guinness advertising, which had a similar ad with a man carrying a girder. The girder is bent in a curve, essentially drooping in the front and back, as if he was carrying something limp. But in the second panel, after he’s drank some of his beer, the girder has stiffened up and is straight as an arrow. Plus the man has gone from frowning to wearing a smile, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

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New Beer Words: Snotter

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Here’s yet another new word that should be added to the beer lexicon. Well, it’s not exactly a new word, but has been around at least since 1824, and most likely earlier. It showed up today in my twitter feed, from Merriam-Webster, as part of their Words at Play series. The word is snotter and has several meanings, the most common being nautical — A fitting that holds the heel of a sprit close to the mast — and others along the lines of “to snivel; to cry or sob.” And more recently snotter is used as another word for snot.

But Merriam-Webster today highlighted an older, less-common meaning of the word in their Words at Play piece entitled “‘Snotter’, ‘Groak’, and 6 More Words Associated with Bad Habits.”

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Michael Jackson nosing a beer, during GABF judging in 2002.

Here’s the definition that should be folded into our beer lexicon:

Snotter

Definition: to breathe noisily

Snotter is a dialectal British word, and, as is so often the case with dialect words, carries a certain trenchant charm. It also has a variety of closely-related meanings, as it may be used to refer to snoring, sniveling, sniffing, snorting, or simply as another way to say snot.

If you’ve ever been a beer judge, or even were in a room watching other people judge beer, then you’ve most likely encountered a snotter. There’s a whole lot of noisy breathing going on during beer judging, whether it’s one long draw or a series of short, quick sniffs. Frankly, if you’re not a snotter, you’re probably not doing it correctly.

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Beer In Ads #2180: Heineken Refreshes Humpty Dumpty

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Tuesday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a two-panel vertical format, the Mother Goose character Humpty Dumpty has already had his great fall, and is sitting on the grass beneath the wall he’s just fallen from with cracked noggin. He looks like he’s in pretty bad shape. And while “[a]ll the king’s horses and all the king’s men, couldn’t put Humpty together again,” one sip from a mug of Heineken and he’s good as gold, right as rain and fit as a fiddle. He’s even back on his wall, with a smile on the face of his now intact body, with a blue sky at his back. That’s some damn powerful beer.

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Beer In Ads #2179: Heineken Refreshes Shakin’ Stevens

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Monday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a three-panel format, the British rock ‘n’ roll singer Shakin’ Stevens — “the UK’s biggest-selling singles artist of the 1980s” — can’t stop shaking. His real name is Michael Barratt, with his stage name adopted when his band changed its name to Shakin’ Stevens and the Sunsets. Somehow in the second panel he manages to hold a mug of Heineken to his lips and take a sip, which promptly cures him of shaking.

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