Beer In Ads #1811: Gouveneur Morris — “Father of the Penny”

February 4, 2016 By Jay Brooks

Thursday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1915, No. 4 in a series they did in 1914-15 called “Framers of the Constitution of the U.S.A.” The fourth one features Gouveneur Morris (though it’s usually spelled Gouverneur Morris), and tells the story of Morris being a part of creating the Constitution, referring to him as both the “father of the American decimal system” and the “originator of the copper cent.” In reality, he was “widely credited as the author of the document’s preamble, and has been called the ‘Penman of the Constitution.'” But I guess that doesn’t sound quite as good as the “Father of the Penny.” Although there’s also this to add to his legacy. “He loved society, and his hospitality was famous. All his life he drank the creative brews of malt and hops.”

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Patent No. 3425839A: Continuous Beer Making Process Wherein The Wort And Yeast Are Separated By A Porous Partition

February 4, 2016 By Jay Brooks

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Today in 1969, US Patent 3425839 A was issued, an invention of Michael Alan Pinnegar, assigned to Brewing Patents Ltd., for his “Continuous Beer Making Process Wherein the Wort and Yeast Are Separated by a Porous Partition.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:

A potable beer is produced by circulating a body of yeast-containing liquor on one side of a partition and maintaining a moving body of wort on the opposite side of the partition. The partition is porous and has a pore size small enough to effectively bar the passage of yeast cells, but allows the passage of the soluble constituents of the wort and the soluble products resulting from the fermentation of the wort by the yeast.
The present invention relates to the production of potable beer by the fermentation of brewers wort by yeast in a continuous fermentation process. The term continuous fermentation process is used herein to refer to a fermentation process, in which brewers Wort is introduced in a stream into a fermentation zone. The stream of wort can be introduced at either constant or varying rates and may be continuous or discontinuous in the sense of being interrupted at constant or varying intervals. However in the generally preferred procedure brewers wort is introduced into the fermentation zone at a substantially constant rate over a substantial period of time e.g. not less than five days.

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Alice Cooper And Chicken And Beer, Oh My!

February 4, 2016 By Jay Brooks

Today is the birthday of American rock singer and songwriter Alice Cooper (born Vincent Damon Furnier; February 4, 1948- ). Apparently early in Alice Cooper’s career, there was an incident at a 1969 show in Toronto that helped to create his bad boy persona and get him noticed in the world of rock and roll. That became known as the Chicken Incident, and there are different versions of it that have been told, with this one coming from Wikipedia.

Alice Cooper’s “shock rock” reputation apparently developed almost by accident at first. An unrehearsed stage routine involving Cooper, a feather pillow, and a live chicken garnered attention from the press; the band decided to capitalize on the tabloid sensationalism, creating in the process a new subgenre, shock rock. Cooper claims that the infamous “Chicken Incident” at the Toronto Rock and Roll Revival concert in September 1969 was an accident. A chicken somehow made its way onto the stage into the feathers of a feather pillow they would open during Cooper’s performance, and not having any experience around farm animals, Cooper presumed that, because the chicken had wings, it would be able to fly. He picked it up and threw it out over the crowd, expecting it to fly away. The chicken instead plummeted into the first few rows occupied by wheelchair users, who reportedly proceeded to tear the bird to pieces. The next day the incident made the front page of national newspapers, and Zappa phoned Cooper and asked if the story, which reported that he had bitten off the chicken’s head and drunk its blood on stage, was true. Cooper denied the rumor, whereupon Zappa told him, “Well, whatever you do, don’t tell anyone you didn’t do it.”

Blueiskewl also has another account, with some additional context. Stemming from the infamous chicken incident, at some time in the 1970s, Cooper managed to be in the same room as Colonel Sanders — Harland David Sanders — the founder and face of Kentucky Fried Chicken, a connection not lost on Cooper.

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A perplexed Colonel Sanders posing with Alice Cooper, who’s holding a beer, sometime in the 1970s.

During an interview which was taped for a showing of the film Super Duper Alice Cooper in 2014, Cooper answered a question about his meeting Colonel Sanders in the 1970s.

“Here comes this nice old man in a white suit,” said Cooper. “Suddenly I realize that this is the Hannibal Lecter of chickens. I have the death of exactly one chicken on my hands, and this guy has a score of 10 billion. Yet everyone loves this guy, and hates me for being a chicken killer! The irony of the two of us being in the same room at the same time was not lost on either me or the Colonel.”

And in yet another one by Interviewly, he talks about tying the two together.

What can you tell us about meeting Col. Sanders? Did he bring chicken?
There was an INCREDIBLE thing that happened in the early 70’s! Somebody threw a chicken onstage, I threw the chicken in the audience, the audience tore it to pieces, and then in the newspaper the next day the headline read “Alice Cooper tears chicken to pieces.” It’s the most notorious story about Alice Cooper that’s been going on forever. And I thought “it just one chicken and I didn’t even kill it, the audience killed it, so I thought why not take a picture with the mass murderer of chickens Colonel Sanders?” so to me it had a sense of humor to it. I mean, one chicken for me, seven BILLION chickens for Colonel Sanders. And yet I’m the villain. I would say if you interviewed the chickens they would be more terrified of him than me.

Unfortunately, I can find no specifics about exactly when or where this meeting took place. It looks like it was in someone’s house, or maybe a hotel, but no one seems to know for sure. Perhaps it’s better to leave it mysterious and enigmatic. If it weren’t for the photos, we may not believe it every actually happened.

Anyone want to hazard a guess as to what beer it was? 19702 and with a foil neck and probably label. It’s not Michelob and it doesn’t strike me as a Lowenbrau. It might be something more local or regional, but given that we don’t know the location that’s not much help. It doesn’t look like the Colonel joined Cooper for a beer.

Patent No. 878136A: Brew-House Equipment

February 4, 2016 By Jay Brooks

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Today in 1908, US Patent 878136 A was issued, an invention of Max Henius, for his “Brew-House Equipment.” There’s no Abstract, although in the description it includes this summary:

The gist of my invention lies in centering about a single point on the brew-house floor, on which the entire apparatus employed in producing the wort is located, all the controlling means for governing and inspecting the operation of the different parts, whereby all such means are rendered conveniently accessible to the manipulation and view of a single operator whose position of duty is at such centering point.

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Beer In Ads #1810: Alexander Hamilton — “Father Of American Credit”

February 3, 2016 By Jay Brooks

Wednesday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1915, No. 3 in a series they did in 1914-15 called “Framers of the Constitution of the U.S.A.” The third one features Alexander Hamilton, and tells the story of Hamilton creating the Constitution, and his contributions to creating credit. And apparently he was also a fan of beer. “During Hamilton’s lifetime he used his great influence to encourage and protect the brewing industry. Among all the Fathers of the Republic none knew better than he that honestly-brewed barley-malt beers make for true temperance.”

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Norman Rockwell’s Beer

February 3, 2016 By Jay Brooks

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Today is the birthday of American illustrator and painter Norman Rockwell (February 3, 1894-November 8, 1978) one of the 20th centuries most famous artists. Known for his wholesome depictions of everyday American life, his paintings appeared on the covers of the Saturday Evening Post for almost fifty years, and he frequently did work involving the Boy Scouts, Boys’ Life and such patriotic subjects as “The Four Freedoms.” For a long time, I had assumed his conspicuous absence from the “Beer Belongs” series of ads that the brewing industry did from the 1940s through the 1960s employing some of the best known illustrators of the day, was because he wanted to maintain his wholesome image. But I later found out that he had done quite a bit of advertising work, including for at least one beer company, the Jacob Schmidt Brewing Co.

There’s also “Man with Sandwich and Glass of Beer,” which I believe was painted for an unspecified beer ad, between 1947 and 1950. I far as I can tell, it was never used, as I’ve been unable to turn up the illustration in any actual advertisement. If someone as famous as Rockwell had done the ad, it would be highly collectible and would turn up somewhere.

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But several years earlier, in 1930, he did do an illustration for the Jacob Schmidt Brewing Co., and specifically for their brand, Schmidt’s City Club Beer, which they started brewing in the 1920s as a non-alcoholic beer, though after 1933 it became a golden lager.

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The City Club Beer label in 1933.

It looks like they continued to use the image, and who can blame them, for years afterwards, both in other ads and merchandising. For example, they used the artwork as the back of a deck of promotional playing cards for the brewery in 1954.

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I’d seen the ad before, and searched in vain for a decent size image of it, finding only small ones. But then over the summer, “thrifting” (which is what my son calls going to yard sales and thrift shops), I found a coffee table book of Norman Rockwell’s advertising work published in 1985. And lo and behold, there was the beer ad. So I picked up the book, scanned the ad, and here it is below in all of its glory. One of the few beer ads by one of the best known illustrators in America. It includes all his trademark folksy charm, and it still relatively subtle for an advertisement, which the wooden case of beer being the most prominent sign of the brand. The bottles have the City Club labels on them, but they’re hard to see sitting on the table. A very cool ad and definitely one of my favorites.

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Click here to see the artwork full size.

U. Penn Students Win Prize For 9 Times Faster Brewing Process

February 3, 2016 By Jay Brooks

I tend to be skeptical of anyone who claims to be able to shorten the brewing process, especially by up to nine times, since brewing is a pretty time-honored process, improved little by little over the centuries. And generally speaking, speeding up fermentation has rarely resulted in better beer. Of course, there was that flourish of decades beginning with the industrial revolution that speeded up that process considerably, but since then things have slowed down to a more manageable pace. But that’s exactly what got the winners of this year’s Y-Prize, from the University of Pennsylvania, the grand prize $10,000, “for developing a process that speeds up the fermentation process in beer production by up to nine times — while maintaining alcohol quality and composition.”

The three winners, Alexander David, Shashwata Narain and Siddharth Shah, are students in the Wharton School and the School of Engineering and Applied Science. They’ll received “$10,000 and the rights to commercialize the technology through their company,” which they’ve named “Fermento.”

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The Fermento Team: Alexander David, Shashwata Narain and Siddharth Shah

From UPenn:

The Fermento team selected microfluidic fabrication technology developed by Assistant Professor of Bioengineering David Issadore as the basis of their application.
The alcohol in beer is the product of yeast, which metabolically converts sugar found in barley and other grains into ethanol. This fermentation process typically occur in large batch reactors, where a concoction of boiled and strained grain liquid, known as wort, is left mixed with a carefully controlled amount of yeast.
This stage is one of the major bottlenecks of beer production. It can take up to three weeks, as maintaining the correct amount of yeast is a delicate balance.
“There is only a certain amount of yeast cells one can directly add to a batch reactor,” Narain says, “because overpopulation causes physiological stress on the yeast cells, which in turn reduces reaction rate. It takes time for yeast cells to grow and reach a critical mass to produce enough beer. Moreover, the concentration of sugar available to yeast cells is limited because in a large batch solutions, yeast cells don’t consistently interact with sugar molecules.”
Capable of delivering precisely controlled amounts of liquids to exact locations in a conveyer-belt fashion, microfluidics present a possible solution to both of these challenges. Yeast and wort can be introduced to one another in microdroplets, providing the optimal ratio for fermentation each time.
“Microdroplets to speed up fermentation have been tried in labs, but none of the technologies so far are scalable,” Narain says. “This patented technology actually makes the process industrially scalable for the first time, and in a financially feasible manner.”

So who knows. According to another report, “[t]heir advisors include executives from some of the biggest brewers in the world: MillerCoors, Anheuser-Busch InBev, Biocon India and Heineken. And say what you will about them, but those beer companies employ brewers who know how to make beer. So there may be something to it. It will be interesting to see what becomes of the idea.

Beer In Ads #1809: James Madison — “Father of the Constitution”

February 2, 2016 By Jay Brooks

Tuesday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1915, No. 2 in a series they did in 1914-15 called “Framers of the Constitution of the U.S.A.” The second one features James Madison, and tells the story of Madison creating the Constitution, and being a moderate beer drinker. “Many a foaming glass of good barley-malt beer he drank with his bosom friend Thomas Jefferson.”

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