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Hamm’s In San Francisco

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Hamms
A friend and regular reader sent me this old photograph of the Hamm’s brewery sign at night, taken in San Francisco around 1954, the year the Hamm’s Brewery opened. It’s a nighttime shot of the iconic Hamm’s sign on the roof of the brewery that was located at 1550 Bryant Street. When it was built, “it was the largest commercial sign on the West Coast.” The brewery closed in 1972, and sign taken down three years later, in 1975. According to Wikipedia, it was a “20-by-80 foot sign, with a 3-dimensional 13-foot beer chalice on top, [and] appeared in the first Dirty Harry film. In the early 1980s, the beer vats were first squatted and then rented out to punk rock bands. Known as “The Vats,” the brewery was a center of San Francisco punk rock culture with about 200 bands using individual vats as music studios. The building was renovated in the mid 1980s and converted into offices and showroom space.” In 2012, the Chronicle did a piece about the sign’s fate, What happened to the Hamm’s Brewery sign?, that included additional photos taken during the day, but the sign looks most impressive at night, and it was even animated, with neon rings of beer turning on and off in sequence, so the glass of beer looked like it was emptying and then filling up again.

Hamms-SF

Spencer Trappist Brewery Is Bizarre?

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spencer-trappist
By now you’ve probably seen the news that the Spencer Trappist Brewery, America’s first Trappist brewery is selling beer, their Spencer Trappist Ale. I didn’t feel the need to write much about it since the news is just about everywhere, from the Boston Globe to L.A. Weekly, from NPR to CBS News.

But here’s one I don’t quite get. When ABC News, specifically the affiliate station out of Fresno, California, KFSN Channel 30, covered the story, they ran the headline US monks move into Trappist beer brewing business, but used essentially the same AP Story that most news outlets are using for this story. But ABC News also tagged the story with “Massachusetts,” which makes sense, and “bizarre,” which does not. Could somebody please explain to me what’s “bizarre” about this story? Other headlines in ABC’s bizarre topics include stories about devil babies, atomic wedgies and anal probes. But monks brewing beer, something they’ve been doing since the middle ages, possibly as early as the 6th century, is lumped in with what you’d normally only find in the pages of the Weekly World News when you’re checking out at the grocery store.

Maybe I’m overly sensitive, but that seems like beer getting a slap in the face to me. It was probably just some ignorant intern who didn’t know what to do with the story and didn’t want to have to think about it very much, and so just threw it in the catch-all category. But surely this story should have been characterized differently. Is that really too much to ask?

spencer-trappist
You can also see additional photos at their Facebook page. And below is a video of the Spencer Trappist monks from St. Joseph’s Abbey.

A day in the life of a monk at St. Joseph’s Abbey from Spencer Brewery on Vimeo.

Beer In Ads #1073: The World’s Largest Selling Beer In Small Bottles

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Thursday’s ad is for Goebel Beer, from 1948. Billing themselves as the “World’s largest selling beer in small bottles,” which they refer to as a “bantam” size bottle, of “Goebel Bantam.” Bantam is a small variety of chicken, and in fact the name comes from a town in Indonesia where they originated. But it still seems like a strange name for a beer bottle size.

Goebel-1948

Beer In Ads #1072: The Land Of Something Better

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Wednesday’s ad is for Ballantine Ale, from 1942. Showing a man studying, presumably in the evening, to better himself and perhaps get a degree or start a new career. Among the “better things” he’s working for is a better beer, in this case Ballantine Ale. It seems a bit of a stretch to link the two ideas, but what the hell, it was war time.

Ballantine-1942

Number Of Breweries In America Reaches 2700

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ba
The Brewers Association released preliminary numbers for how many operating breweries there were in the United States as of the end of last year. That number, the highest since America’s peak in the 1870s, was 2,722. That’s nearly 400 more than at the end of 2012. Those are broken down as follows.

  • Regional breweries: 120
  • Microbreweries: 1376
  • Brewpubs: 1202
  • Large breweries: 24
  • Total: 2,722

From the press release:

98% of these breweries were small and independent craft breweries. It is interesting to note that 2013 marks the first year since 1987 that microbreweries outnumbered brewpubs in the country.

The total of 2,722 brewing facilities is the highest count since the US in around 140 years, more than when the country celebrated her centennial birthday. In 1876, the Register of United States Breweries lists 2,685 breweries. It is not however, the highest number of all-time, as the Register lists 3,286 in 1870.

In addition to the 2,722 brewing facilities, there were an additional 1,744 breweries in planning at the end of December, the highest year-end number in the BA database.

cbatus-breweries

Beer In Ads #1071: Take A Glass, Any Glass

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Tuesday’s ad is for Narragansett Lager Beer, from 1959. Showing eight different glasses, all but one filled with beer, they’re promoting “Gansett by saying you should use a glass, any glass. The “moral” of the story? “Glasses are for putting “Gansett in. ‘Gansett is for putting thirsts out. Works every time.” I especially the schmeer of a reflection made by the beer in the glasses.

gansettLIFE1959