Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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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.

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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.”

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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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Beer In Ads #1376: Perfection In Smoothness

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Sunday’s ad is yet another one for Schlitz, this one from 1943. An ice skater glides effortlessly across a frozen pond in the central illustration. Yeah, it’s that smooth. I like that in the ad copy they suggest that Schlitz has “that famous flavor found in no other beer.” Because different beers at that time tasted so differently. Wow, that seems like a tough sell.

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Beer In Ads #1374: Pioneering Since 1849

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Friday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1949. The ad is 100 years from something, though it’s unclear what. In addition to the gold rush in California, I guess there was a lot of “pioneering” still going on 100 years before this ad ran, but Schlitz itself didn’t start brewing for another 25 years, in 1874. Still, this Oregon Trail-like painting is pretty cool, even if it has little to do with the beer.

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Beer In Ads #1373: Getting Outside A Guinness With R.L.S.

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Thursday’s ad is for Guinness, from 1955. The ad features Scottish writer Robert Louis Stevenson, who was born today in 1850. R.L.S. — as he’s referred to in the tagline — was the author of “Treasure Island,” the “Strange Case of Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde,” and many others. According to the ad, which ran in the Illustrated London News, Stevenson was aboard a cruise ship in the South Pacific in 1893, when he wrote a letter to a person named Colvin, a portion of which was also part of the ad copy:

Fanny ate a whole fowl for breakfast, to say nothing of a tower of hot cakes. Belle and I floored another hen betwixt the pair of us, and I shall no sooner be done with the present amanuensing racket than I shall put myself outside a pint of Guinness. If you think this looks like dying of consumption in Apia, I can only say I differ from you.

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Where Do You Fit In The Next Session?

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For our 94th Session, our host for the second time is Adrian Dingle, better known online simply as Ding through his Ding’s Beer Blog. For his topic, he’s asking folks to ponder their place in the world. Not the wider world, the whole ball of wax, but our little self-staked piece of it, the collective known as the beer community, or “Your role in the beer ‘scene’. What it is?”

[W]here do you see yourself? Are you simply a cog in the commercial machine if you work for a brewery, store or distributor? Are you nothing more than an interested consumer? Are you JUST a consumer? Are you a beer evangelist? Are you a wannabe, beer ‘professional’? Are you a beer writer? All of the above? Some of the above? None of the above? Where do you fit, and how do you see your own role in the beer landscape?

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So time for a little self-examination — rubber gloves not included. To participate in December’s Session, simply try to figure out your very existence and post your answer on Ding’s comments section to his announcement or otherwise send Ding your link to your contribution by December 5th.

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Which one are you?

Brewing: Love & Talent With Peter Bouckaert

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You’re probably familiar with Ted Talks, but there’s also independently organized Ted events, known as TEDx. Recently Peter Bouckaert, the brewmaster at New Belgium Brewing gave one at TEDxCSU, the Fort Collins extension of the talks. In the talk, “[h]e explains his personal journey of challenging limitations to “brew” together a life of creativity,” and the YouTube page describes Peter as having “made a career through utilizing innovation and working outside the box.”

A Belgian native, he is a Biochemistry engineer, with a specialization in Brewing and Fermentation technology from the University of Ghent, Belgium. Before joining New Belgium in 1996, and moving to the US, he worked in the Belgian brewery world in breweries with difficult to pronounce names like Zulte and the world renowned Rodenbach. He was the 2013 winner of the Russell Schehrer award for innovation in Brewing.

It’s only a little longer than fifteen minutes. I only wish it was longer. Enjoy.