Saturday’s ad is for Rheingold Beer, from 1956, and features Miss Rheingold from that year, Hillie Merritt. Wearing a lovely pink ensemble, she’s tending quite the colorful garden of yellow tulips and other spring flowers. After filling her basket with freshly cut flowers, I hope at least she’ll be going to get a beer now.
Today’s beer video is a talk given by Sam Caligione of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery for the Brewmasters at Google series. Sam gave this hour-long talk in July of 2012.
The annual Gasparilla Pirate Festival in Tampa, Florida also includes a parade as part of the festivities. The parade takes place this afternoon, and usually features the Budweiser Clydesdales. But this year, instead they had local artist Terry Klaaren create a float using nothing by recycled beer cans. Klaaren called his work “re-cycle-dales” and it’s a sculpture of two life-size Clydesdale head figures that took him about six weeks and 3,000 beer cans to construct. According to a local news story:
“Every beer can was hand flattened with a wooden mallet,” Klaaren said. “We punched a couple of holes in it and then sewed it onto the mesh with stainless steel wire. I found beer cans to be a great sculpture medium.”
Gieseking said the vision for the float was Clydesdales emerging from a wave of water collecting recyclables in the wake.
“Just a nice image of taking the garbage out of the water,” Klaaren said.
Unfortunately, this is the only photo of it I can find. Perhaps there will be more views after the parade takes place later today.
Friday’s ad is for Whitbread, from 1965. It seems to be a play on “what the butler saw, ” instead it’s “What the Duchess Saw,” through the keyhole, which is in fact the butler pouring himself a bottle of the Duke’s Whitbread beer. He sure looks happy, doesn’t he? Hopefully he’s off the clock.
I suspect I’m not the only man in the world whose wife loves Jane Austen. And I further would not be surprised to learn that I’m not alone in not feeling quite the same level of joy at every new film or television adaptation of one of her works. (Is that enough “nots” in one sentence?) Oh, I’ve enjoyed a few of the costume dramas, I confess. I thought “Clueless” was quite enjoyable. So I don’t want you to think I’m an irredeemable boor. I’ve suffered through — ahem, I mean seen — most of them, and it’s not been as horrible as, say, “Dallas” or “Knot’s Landing” or any of a number of similar dreck.
But my interest in Jane Austen just shot up 99%, thanks to an article posted by BBC Magazine yesterday, Beer: The Women Taking Over the World of Brewing. It’s a great article all on it’s own, one of the few to treat the subject of women in beer with a decent amount of respect, for a change. But what caught my attention was a sidebar about Jane Austen by alcohol historian Jane Peyton.
It is a truth that should be universally acknowledged — Jane Austen not only drank beer but brewed it too.
As a teenager she would have learned how to make beer by helping her mother in the Hampshire vicarage where she grew up.
Brewing was part of household duties and even the women of genteel 18th Century families such as the Austens would know how to do it, even if the chores were sometimes delegated to domestic staff.
In a letter to her sister Cassandra, Jane wrote “and I that have the great cask, for we are brewing spruce beer again….”
As in most houses small beer (low alcohol) was served at the Austen dining table as a safe source of drinking water for all members of the family — children too — so Jane would certainly have tasted the results of her labour.
It certainly makes sense, though I’d never really stopped to think about it before. Austen apparently mentioned her brewing efforts in letters to her sister Cassandra. In one of them she mentions small beer while in two others she talks about her spruce beer.
Austen also mentions spruce beer in her 1815 novel, “Emma.”
“But one morning — I forget exactly the day — but perhaps it was the Tuesday or Wednesday before that evening, he wanted to make a memorandum in his pocket-book: it was about spruce-beer. Mr. Knightley had been telling him something about brewing spruce-beer, and he wanted to put it down….”
And according to “Cooking with Jane Austen,” when the Austen family lived at Stoneleigh, her mother wrote about the “mansions ‘strong beer’ and ‘small beer’ cellars.” And Mrs. Austen also “brewed beer at Steventon in the last years of the eighteenth century and at Chawton cottage many years later.”
It almost makes me want to read her again … nah. Still, she’s now a bit more interesting.
Today’s beer video is a wonderful song created for Melbourne’s beer week, Good Beer Week. It was written and performed by Dave Elbow and Ernie Skin of the duo ElbowSkin. I’m sure some people will find something to be offended by in the song, but it’s pretty damn funny. It’s also very catchy with some great quotes like “unleash the beast” and “it’s like drinking god’s tears.”
Beer Song by ElbowSkin from The Post Project on Vimeo.
Everytime someone creates a list of the top anything, there’s always a bit of a backlash over the choices, or methodology, or something. It’s hard — strike, that — impossible to please everybody in these sort of things. People love lists (I know I do) but picking the “best” is a fool’s errand. So I appreciate that Serious Eats didn’t even try. Instead, when they chose one beer from each state, they didn’t declare them to be the top, or the best or even the most popular. For their 50 States, 50 Beers We Love, they just chose ones that they … well, loved. They may not all have even been their favorites, though I think we can infer that some of them may be a favorite. It’s a list you can’t argue with, because there’s no aggrandizing or sweeping pronouncements. It’s just what they like, pure and simple. As such, I think it has a great chance of provoking discussion, because if you love a different beer you’re not saying I disagree, you’re saying I also love this beer, too.
Take my home state of California. They chose Russian River’s Pliny the Elder. And it’s hard to argue with that. I love that beer, too. Is it the best beer in California? Who cares? It’s a great beer among probably hundreds of other California beers that I also love and could easily have made the list.
So check out their choices. Or as they put it. “This map celebrates beers we love in every state—a beer we’d be certain to pick up at every stop on that road trip of our dreams. Some are cultworthy favorites that require camping out at the release party, while others are really well made porch sippers that you can pick up at your local store. Some evoke happy memories, while others are showstoppers that grab your whole attention.”
And start working on your list of beers you love. That’s a list I can get behind. Plus, I love this flag that Robyn Lee created for the article. This is a flag I’d run up the flagpole and although I probably wouldn’t salute it, I would drink a toast to it.
Thursday’s ad is for Schlitz, from 1967. I can’t be the only one who finds clowns creepy, and in fact I had a roommate in the late 1980s who was completely terrified of them. So I have to wonder about the logic of using them to sell beer. I guess some people actually like them, don’t they? But I especially like this confusing statement. “The beer that takes 1,174 careful steps.” I can’t wait to see their brewing manual. It must be a phone book. How on earth could they have that many specific procedures?
Today’s beer video is a great little isometric motion graphic animated film of the SABMiller Brewing Process, told in about three and a half minutes.
Wednesday’s ad is also for Budweiser, this one from 1967. I understand the logic to their game of checkers, but the way I see it, everybody loses.
