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Beer In Art #151: Pieter van Anraadt’s Still Life With Earthenware Jug

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art-beer
This week’s work of art is by the Golden Age Dutch artist Pieter van Anraadt. He’s mostly known for painting historical subjects and portraits, but he has done some still lifes, such as this one: Still Life with Earthenware Jug, painted around 1658.

Anraadt-still-life

One description of the painting is the following:

Beer drinking has often been associated with smoking, as many still lifes and genre scenes of the seventeenth century reveal. This still life by Pieter van Anraadt, who was better known as a portrait painter in Deventer, is a good example of a painting which unites these two pleasures. It shows a jug and a glass of beer on a table; nearby are several clay pipes and some tobacco on a tray, and a brazier. The simplicity of the scene and the perfectly balanced triangular-shaped composition is offset by the jumble of pipes forming a mesh of crossed lines.

You can read van Anraadt’s biography at Wikipedia or at the Mauritshuis, the museum where the painting hangs. There are also a few links to other works, such as ArtCyclopedia, and ArtNet.

North Carolina Rebuffs Sierra Nevada

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sierra-nevada
Sierra Nevada Brewing sells its beer in all fifty states, and has sold increasingly more over the last few years. Not surprisingly, there have been rumors circulating for some time about them building a brewery farther east, in such places as Tennessee and Virginia. It seems they had also identified a site in Black Mountain, North Carolina, which is near Asheville. Sierra Nevada had been considering building there “a beer facility and retail outlet that would employ as many as 140 people.” According to ABC Channel 13 in Western North Carolina, “[t]he company requested an interchange at Blue Ridge Road and Interstate 40. The Black Mountain town board asked the state to build it in hopes of luring the business but, it was not approved by the North Carolina Department of Transportation.” No word as to why the state would turn down the request.

Illinois Beer

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illinois
Today in 1818, Illinois became the 21st state.

Illinois
State_Illinois

Illinois Breweries

Illinois Brewery Guides

Guild: Illinois Craft Brewers Guild

State Agency: Illinois Liquor Control Commission

maps-il

  • Capital: Springfield
  • Largest Cities: Chicago, Rockford, Aurora, Naperville, Peoria
  • Population: 12,419,293; 5th
  • Area: 57918 sq. mi., 25th
  • Nickname: Prairie State
  • Statehood: 21st, December 3, 1818

m-illinois

  • Alcohol Legalized: December 5, 1933
  • Number of Breweries: 52
  • Rank: 10th
  • Beer Production: 8,999,624
  • Production Rank: 5th
  • Beer Per Capita: 21.6 Gallons

illinois

Package Mix:

  • Bottles: 44.6%
  • Cans: 45.4%
  • Kegs: 9.7%

Beer Taxes:

  • Per Gallon: $0.23
  • Per Case: $0.51
  • Tax Per Barrel (24/12 Case): $6.98
  • Draught Tax Per Barrel (in Kegs): $6.98
  • $0.12/gallon in Chicago & beer sold in clubs plus additional 10% retail tax for all beer sold in clubs

Economic Impact (2010):

  • From Brewing: $748,215,023
  • Direct Impact: $2,730,875,319
  • Supplier Impact: $2,317,033,213
  • Induced Economic Impact: $3,238,802,131
  • Total Impact: $8,286,710,664

Legal Restrictions:

  • Control State: No
  • Sale Hours: On Premises: Depending on local government; 24-hour bars are permitted in Cicero; a handful of 21-22 hour bars exist in Cook County, and the Metro East.
    Off Premises:
  • Grocery Store Sales: Yes
  • Notes: Opening/closing hours are up to the decision of counties or towns.

illinois-map

Data complied, in part, from the Beer Institute’s Brewer’s Almanac 2010, Beer Serves America, the Brewers Association, Wikipedia and my World Factbook. If you see I’m missing a brewery link, please be so kind as to drop me a note or simply comment on this post. Thanks.

For the remaining states, see Brewing Links: United States.

Beer In Ads #489: For Pure Drink Get Rainier Beer

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Thursday’s ad is another ad for healthy beer, somewhat similar to yesterday’s Budweiser ad. This one is just a few years later, from 1907, and was sent to me by fellow blogger Lisa Grimm from WeirdBeerGirl (thanks Lisa). The ad is for Rainier Pale Beer, from Seattle Brewing & Malting Co., and shows a group of children using a giant beer bottle as a Maypole. Mother can be seen in the background, arriving on the scene with a tray full of beer bottles and glasses. Again, can you just imagine that ad today? The copy is equally interesting.

Pure Air, Pure Food, Pure Drink are essential to healthy growth … for Pure Drink get Rainier Pale Beer

Another beautiful sentiment.

Rainier-1907

Beer In Ads #488: The Ladies Home Journal Endorses Beer As Opposed To Patent Medicines

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Wednesday’s ad is a Ladies Home Journal (LHJ) ad from 1904 for Budweiser. It’s an interesting ad. First of all, check out the cage and cork on a Bud bottle. That’s not something you see every day. And the endorsement by LHJ is priceless. Can you imagine this today?

Mr. Edward Bok, editor of the Ladies’ Home Journal, in a page article in the May issue gives a list of 36 medicines, with official analysis, asserting them to contain 12 to 47 per cent. of Alcohol!

The ad goes to suggest the reader think of beer, with a mere 2 to 5 percent, is nothing compared to many of the medicines that mothers might give their child, some of which are “stronger than whisky.” At this point, Budweiser suggests that their beer is much healthier even than water with its low alcohol content.

Budweiser contains only 3-89/100 per cent. of alcohol. It is better than pure water because of the nourishing qualities of malt and the tonic properties of hops.

Budweiser is pre-eminently a family beverage; its use promotes the cause of true temperance—it guards the safety of health and home.

Now that’s a beautiful sentiment.

1904Budweiser

Beer In Ads #486: Geo. Winter Bock Beer

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Monday’s ad is a 19th century ad for a New York brewery, the Geo. Winter Brewing Co. According to the ad itself, the brewery was located on 55th Street, between 2nd and 3rd Avenues. It’s from around 1900, plus or minus. The ad shows “Columbia raising a glass of beer, posed with a keg and a billy goat, the symbol of bock beer.”

Geo-Winters-Bock-1890s

Sumerian Beer: The Origins of Brewing Technology in Ancient Mesopotamia

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sumerian-tablet
Peter Damerow, from the Max Planck Institute for the History of Science, in Berlin, has published online a lengthy paper about the origins of Sumerian brewing. Entitled Sumerian Beer: The Origins of Brewing Technology in Ancient Mesopotamia, it’s part of The Cuneiform Digital Library Initiative (CDLI). The opening sentence gives a flavor of its purpose. “The following paper is concerned with the technology of brewing beer in the Sumerian culture of ancient Mesopotamia, which we know about from cuneiform texts of the 3rd millennium BC. and from reminiscences in later scribal traditions which preserved the Sumerian language and literature.”

It’s broken down in to seven sections:

  1. Introduction
  2. Overview of the sources
  3. Beer types and ingredients in proto-cuneiform documents
  4. Beer types and ingredients in the Old Sumerian period
  5. Beer types and ingredients in the neo-Sumerian period
  6. The brewing of beer
  7. What kind of beer did the Sumerians brew?

Sumerian-beer
Fig. 1: Impression of a Sumerian cylinder seal from the Early Dynastic IIIa period (ca. 2600 BC; see Woolley 1934, pl. 200, no. 102 [BM 121545]). Persons drinking beer are depicted in the upper row. The habit of drinking beer together from a large vessel using long stalks went out of fashion after the decline of Sumerian culture in the 2nd millennium BC.

I confess I haven’t read the whole thing yet, but I did download the pdf of it so I can put it on my iPad. Still, just from skimming it appears fairly interesting, and a worthy piece to read over the holidays.