Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #1382: Beer Keeps One Well

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Saturday’s ad is also for Schlitz, from 1904. The ad is part of a series from that time highlighting different aspects of the beer’s process, its healthfulness and other factors. In this one, the headline is “Beer Keeps One Well,” and in the text they note that brewer tend to be healthier than the general population. That was certainly true in the time of Cholera, but they go on to make some hilarious claims. Among brewers, according to the ad, you’ll find no “dyspeptics, nervous wrecks” or even any “wasted, fatless men.”

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Beer In Ads #1381: The After-Effects

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Friday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1906. The ad is part of a series from that time highlighting different aspects of the beer’s process, its healthfulness and other factors. In this one, the headline is “The After-Effects,” and in the text they talk about spending “more than half the cost of our brewing is spent to insure purity.” Anything, apparently, to avoid biliousness, the scourge of beer drinking.

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A Beer Bestiary

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A Bestiary is an old-fashioned idea, from the Middles Ages, where various animals and other creatures, often fanciful, mythical and fictitious, were illustrated, and then there was a detailed description of each beast, usually accompanied by an allegorical story with a moral or religious teaching. You can see examples of many of these imaginary creatures at the Medieval Bestiary. A Los Angeles illustrator and graphic designer, Ian O’Phelan, has created a modern version, which he calls a “Beer Bestiary.” With just four mythical creatures in his bestiary, his fantastic four you’ll likely recognize, if not individually, at least for what they can become as a superhero team, your next beer.

Barley Beast
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Virginal Hops
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Water Bear
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Cockatrice d’Yeast
OPhelan-yeast

Beer In Ads #1380: We Spend More

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Thursday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1907. The ad is part of a series from that time highlighting different aspects of the beer’s process, its healthfulness and other factors. In this one, the headline is “We Spend More,” and in the text they talk about the “extremes” they go to, like washing “every bottle four times by machinery.” After going through a list of these, the ad finishes with a question. “Don’t you want it.”

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Beer In Ads #1379: Reputation

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Wednesday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1905. The ad is part of a series from that time highlighting different aspects of the beer’s process, its healthfulness and other factors. In this one, the headline is “Reputation,” and according to the headline, Schlitz “spend[s] fortunes every year — go to the utmost extremes — to maintain it.” Too bad they forgot about that when the bean counters took over in the Sixties.

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Beer in Ads #1378: Beer Is Healthful

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Tuesday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1902. The ad is part of a series from that time highlighting different aspects of the beer’s process, its healthfulness and other factors. In this one, the headline is “Beer is Healthful,” but makes the distinction that “green beer” (defined here as “insufficiently aged, half-fermented”) is not, but that you have to keep your beer and packaging clean. Hard to argue with that.

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Mickey Mouse Drinking A Beer

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Today is the day when Steamboat Willie debuted in 1928, the first Mickey Mouse cartoon, the one that made the Disney company the entertainment powerhouse that it is today. But even though Steamboat Willie is the famous one, it actually wasn’t the first Mickey Mouse cartoon created. Plane Crazy was actually the first one made, and The Gallopin’ Gaucho was the second, but both were shelved to work on Steamboat Willie, and specifically to add a synchronized soundtrack, which is what helped make Mickey Mouse so famous.

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But the Gallopin’ Gaucho was notable for one other important reason. In the March 1929 cartoon, four years before the repeal of Prohibition, Mickey Mouse can be seen drinking a mug of beer. And not just drinking it, but really putting one away. But as he as south of the border, at the bar and restaurant called “Cantina Argentina,” he probably wasn’t breaking any laws.

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The original, of course, was in black and white.

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Below is the entire cartoon, though the best version I could find was colorized.

Skunked Beer: Hide Your Shame

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Wired magazine had a short article today giving a basic overview about how beer gets lightstruck, entitled What’s Up With That: My Beer Tastes Like a Skunk’s Bathwater.

lightstruck-chemistry

It’s a fairly basic explanation of the process of a beer becoming lightstruck — often called skunky — written after interviewing Roger Barth, author of the textbook, the Chemistry of Beer. The author even takes a little thinly-veiled swipe at Corona. “This could explain why certain clear-bottled brands suggest you squeeze a lime into their beer to mask the skunk before taking a swig.” But it was the final sentence that had me in stitches. “But if you must, for reasons I will never understand, drink a Heineken, I suggest you get it on tap and hide your shame in a dark corner of the bar.”

skunked

Beer In Ads #1377: The Yeast

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Monday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1906. The ad is part of a series from that time highlighting different aspects of the beer’s process, its healthfulness and other factors. In this one, it’s about “the secret yeast,” which was “always developed from the same mother cells.”

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Craft Beer By State

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The Brewers Association released in an interactive infographic of sorts, showing State Craft Beer Sales & Production Statistics for 2013. Below is California, but there’s a similar chart for each state, with their respective numbers and rankings in a variety of categories. You can also follow links to find breweries within each state, along with specific state laws regarding beer and alcohol.

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