Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

  • Home
  • About
  • Editorial
  • Birthdays
  • Art & Beer

Socialize

  • Dribbble
  • Email
  • Facebook
  • Flickr
  • GitHub
  • Instagram
  • LinkedIn
  • Pinterest
  • RSS
  • Twitter
  • YouTube

Powered by Genesis

Beer In Ads #1408: Yuletide Pabst

December 18, 2014 By Jay Brooks


Thursday’s holiday ad is for Pabst Blue Ribbon, from 1935. According to the ad, during the Yuletide season “It’s time for Pabst.” Happy Holidays!

Pabst-1935-yuletide

Filed Under: Art & Beer, Beers Tagged With: Advertising, Christmas, History, Holidays, Pabst

Beer In Ads #1407: Hammering The Rheingold Wreath

December 17, 2014 By Jay Brooks


Wednesday’s ad is for Rheingold Beer, from 1943, and features Miss Rheingold from that year, Sonia Gover. Holding a hammer in her hand, she’s presumably just hung the wreath. Nice job. Was “The Season’s Greetings” already painted on the wall?

rheingold-xmas-1943

Filed Under: Art & Beer, Beers Tagged With: Advertising, Christmas, History, Holidays

Beer In Ads #1406: 62 Individual Reasons To Drink

December 16, 2014 By Jay Brooks


Tuesday’s ad is for the Coopers 62, from 2011. Although it’s a newer ad, given that I post my own reasons to drink for any given day, this ad certainly spoke to me, despite most of the reasons being fairly pedestrian. But in a sense, that was the point, that any reason was good enough to drink this Australian beer. Whether that’s true, I couldn’t tell you. I like their sparkling ale, but they don’t strike me as a pilsner brewery.

Coopers62

Filed Under: Art & Beer, Beers Tagged With: Advertising, Australia, History

Big Brands Continue To Slide

December 16, 2014 By Jay Brooks

sales-chart-down
For the last several years, sales of some of the major beer brands have been slipping, and not just the sub-premiums or secondary packages but even once mighty flagships. 24/7 Wall Street has a new list of some of these brands, characterized as Beers Americans No Longer Drink. Using data from Beer Marketer’s Insights, here are seven brands that have lost significant sales, at least 20%, between 2013 and 2008. The negative number following the name is how much sales are down in that six-year period.

  • Miller High Life -21.2%
  • Budweiser -27.6%
  • Milwaukee’s Best Light -40.6%
  • Milwaukee’s Best -57.0%
  • Miller Genuine Draft -58.3%
  • Budweiser Select -61.1%

Some additional analysis and reasons for the decline, according to 24/7 Wall St:

Another key factor in the weakening sales has been price dynamics. “Beer prices were increased more aggressively over the last five years than wine and spirits,” Shepard said. Many people in the industry believe that, as a result, some customers replaced buying beer with the now relatively less expensive wines and spirits, he explained.

Several other products were also gaining at the expense of big brand-name beers, Shepard noted. While some customers have been moving to wine and spirits, others were switching to imported beer, particularly Mexican imports. Indeed, in the five years through 2013, shipments of Mexican brands Dos Equis and Modelo Especial more-than doubled. Similarly, he added, “Some [drinkers] are moving to craft [beer]. Clearly, there’s been a trade-up in the industry.”

Craft beers have largely bucked the overall downtrend in beer sales. From 2008 to 2013, shipments of craft beer rose by 80.1% to a total of more than 16 million barrels, or 7.6% of the U.S. beer market. While the craft beer category now outsells Budweiser, it remains a relatively niche market. For comparison, the nation’s top-selling brand, Bud Light, shipped 38 million barrels in 2013, accounting for 18% of all beer shipped.

big-brands

Filed Under: Beers, Breweries, Just For Fun, News Tagged With: Big Brewers, Business, Statistics

Beer In Ads #1405: Hay, Good Wholesome Beer

December 15, 2014 By Jay Brooks


Monday’s ad is for the Brewers’ Society, from 1956. Similar to the ads in America by the United States Brewers Foundation that ran around the same time, the British ads used taglines like “Good Wholesome BEER” and “The best long drink in the world!” After working in the fields all day, making giant hay bales, who wouldn’t be dreaming of a pint of beery goodness? But I love the way they put it. “Beer refreshes you all right — but it does much more than that. It’s an invigorating drink. Beer bucks you up as well as cools you down.”

UK-Beer-Ad

Filed Under: Art & Beer, Beers Tagged With: Advertising, England, Great Britain, History, UK

Beer In Ads #1404: The Height Of Hospitality

December 14, 2014 By Jay Brooks


Sunday’s ad is for Pabst Blue Ribbon, from 1911. I love the outfit on the server, that must be some posh establishment he works for. I love that Pabst is working so hard to position PBR as the classy beer, and especially this sentiment: “Pabst Blue Ribbon is the ultimate choice of all who have a keen faculty of selection.” Priceless. People who who are good at picking things?

Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer. Judge magazine, June 10, 1911

Filed Under: Art & Beer, Beers Tagged With: Advertising, History, Pabst

Beer In Ads #1403: To Everyone Who’s Slipping Into The Groove …

December 13, 2014 By Jay Brooks


Saturday’s ad is also for Budweiser, another later one from 1984, although it feels more dates than its thirty years. Those are some very happy-looking people spinning records. Records … anybody remember those? I know I”m slipping into the groove just looking at them and remembering the 1980s.

Bud-dj-1984

Filed Under: Art & Beer, Beers Tagged With: Advertising, Budweiser, History

Beer In Ads #1402: Bud Waterfall

December 12, 2014 By Jay Brooks


Friday’s ad is for Budweiser, a later one from 1983. We just had 5-7 inches of rain dumped on us (not that it will help the drought) but this ad of a waterfall of Budweiser flowing from Bud Can Mountain seemed appropriate. They do say shampooing with beer is good for your hair, but taking a shower under a waterfall would be even cooler.

Bud-waterfall-1983

Filed Under: Art & Beer, Beers Tagged With: Advertising, Budweiser, History

Beer In Ads #1401: Every Drop Tells You Why

December 11, 2014 By Jay Brooks


Thursday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1965. It’s gatefold two-pager, with an empty bottle of Bud on its side. Only some residual foam remains in the bottle, slowly dripping out, with the tagline “… Every drop tells you why Budweiser is the largest-selling beer in the world.” But does it? Does it really? I remain unconvinced.

Bud-bottle-ad

Filed Under: Art & Beer, Beers Tagged With: Advertising, Budweiser, History

Where America Got Its Booze

December 11, 2014 By Jay Brooks

popular-science
Here’s a fun article I stumbled upon that appeared in Popular Science. “Where America Gets Its Booze” was a feature story in their May 1930 issue.

PopSci-1930-May-cover

“Where America Gets Its Booze” is an interview with America’s “Prohibition Commissioner,” Dr. James M. Doran, who was a chemist. And boy, doesn’t he look like a fun guy in that photo. According to a Time magazine article from the year before, even his wife was trying to help, as “she marshaled a platoon of reinforcements in the form of recipes for nonalcoholic cocktails. She had prepared a Book of Juices to meet the onslaught of the ‘winter social season just ahead.’ She announced a few of her recipes in advance. Explained Mrs. Doran: ‘Prohibition took something away from the American people, but we can give them something just as good—a cocktail that satisfies but does not inebriate.'” Well, that should do it.

PopSci-1930-May-pg19

PopSci-1930-May-pg20

PopSci-1930-May-pg21

PopSci-1930-May-pg146 PopSci-1930-May-pg147

Filed Under: Beers, Breweries, Just For Fun, Related Pleasures Tagged With: History, Prohibition

« Previous Page
Next Page »

Find Something

Northern California Breweries

Please consider purchasing my latest book, California Breweries North, available from Amazon, or ask for it at your local bookstore.

Recent Comments

  • Bob Paolino on Beer Birthday: Grant Johnston
  • Gambrinus on Historic Beer Birthday: A.J. Houghton
  • Ernie Dewing on Historic Beer Birthday: Charles William Bergner 
  • Steve 'Pudgy' De Rose on Historic Beer Birthday: Jacob Schmidt
  • Jay Brooks on Beer Birthday: Bill Owens

Recent Posts

  • Historic Beer Birthday: George F. Gund April 5, 2026
  • Historic Beer Birthday: John Friedrich Wiessner Jr. April 5, 2026
  • Beer Birthday: Steve Wagner April 5, 2026
  • Beer In Ads #5206: For The Feast Of Easter April 5, 2026
  • Historic Beer Birthday: Hew Ainslie April 5, 2026

BBB Archives

Feedback

Head Quarter
This site is hosted and maintained by H25Q.dev. Any questions or comments for the webmaster can be directed here.