Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #460: In A Hurrying, Scurrying World There’s Serenity In Beer & Ale

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Friday’s ad is a brewery industry PSA from 1941, brought to you by the United States Brewers Foundation. After Prohibition, the beer industry was sensitive to the fact that prohibitionists sentiments did not magically melt away with the passage of the 21st Amendment and produced a number of ads portraying beer as “America’s Beverage of Moderation” and other positive associations. You’ve got to love ad copy that begins “In a hurrying, scurrying world there’s serenity in beer and ale.” Now that’s a picnic I want to go on!

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Craft Beer: A True Underdog Story

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Here’s a fun video about craft beer’s struggles to get to market. With a hat tip to Brian Stechschulte at Bay Area Craft Beer, it’s a student film by a Michael Jolly, done for his “Motion Graphics class. It’s an animated info graphic concerning American Craft Beer. I created all artwork, narration, and animation myself. Hope you enjoy it…And drink craft beer!” He’s titled it: Craft Beer: A True Underdog Story.

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Beer In Ads #459: Ballantine Bowling

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Thursday’s ad is for Ballantine Ale and is — I’m guessing here — from the late 1940s-50s given that that was the time when bowling was king. The ad shows a cutaway of a bowling alley, with the bar at the right, and seemingly every person there having either a ball or a beer in their hand. You have to love a sport where drinking is not only allowed, but encouraged. And how about that lovely poem?

A cheery chatter at the Alleys tonight;
     The pins are flying left and right.

The “Beer frame” next … everyone agrees,
     Ballantine, waiter, over here, please!

We’ve learned long since this beer will hold
     Its flavor even when when ice cold!

A-a-h! that deep-brewed flavor chill can’t kill—
     Another round? Of course we will!

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Beer In Ads #458: Knickerbocker, Less Filling … More Delicious

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Wednesday’s ad is for New York City’s Knickerbocker Beer, from 1955. Showing a towering Knickerbocker above the skyscrapers, wearing colonial garb, and handing a pilsner glass of beer. I’d be afraid not to take it. And how about that slogan, “less filling … more delicious, too!” That sounds awfully similar to another slogan for a lighter beer, doesn’t it?

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Beer In Ads#457: If You Like Beer You’ll Love Schlitz Again

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Tuesday’s ad is a third Schlitz ad from 1954, and it’s very similar to the last two Schlitz ads. It also uses the slogan “If you like beer you’ll love Schlitz,” though this time a really, really happy-looking man with a huge smile — most likely a grocery clerk — is holding a six-pack of Schlitz cans as if to hand them off to a waiting customer. He looks a little bit like a very young, though slightly less skinny, Frank Sinatra.

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Beer In Art #144: William Frederick Witherington’s The Hop Garland

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This week’s work of art is by the English artist William Frederick Witherington, who was known for his landscapes and depictions of small incidents of everyday family life. One of these was The Hop Garland, painted in 1834 and today hanging at the Victoria & Albert Museum in London.

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Described on the V&A’s website simply as “[a]n oil painting depicting a girl in a hop garden placing a garland of hop blossoms on the head of a younger girl as a boy looks on,” but an art journal from 1851 adds additional details about the painting.

At the proper season, men, women, and children are employed in picking the hops, and preparing them for the market. Mr Witherington has selected for his picture a little episode in the day’s work, when the younger labourers are resting awhile from their tasks: a girl, who, from her superior style of dress, we should rather suppose to be a visitor to the garden than a ‘picker’, is decorating a younger child with a chaplet of the golden flowers. The idea is excellent; so also is the manner in which it has been carried out. The faces of the group are highly expressive, especially that of the little girl, so full of self-complacency at the honours bestowed upon her … this group, in all its parts, is admirably painted, and finished with great care; it is brilliantly coloured, yet with perfect harmony of tones … the picture is unquestionably one of the best ever painted by Mr Witherington …

And a contemporary newspaper account had this to say:

The Hop Garden presents an incident true to nature, in a little girl standing full of pride and delight, while an older one is decking her head with a crown of hops, and a lad sits in his basket laughing at the sport. The expression of the child’s face is not quite so pretty or rustically joyous as we could have wished, but it is arch and good. The boy and his drapery are perfect, both in the painting and character; the back-ground is well managed and the whole rich in harmony of colour and truth of effect.

The sitter for one of the girls was identified some years ago by a descendant as her great-grandmother, either Mrs Sarah Ancketill or Lady Selina Ker.

Witherington apparently liked the subject, because he painted it a second time, though ever so slightly differently. That Hop Garland is in the Tate Museum.

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In addition, it was apparently a popular painting. An engraving based on Witherington’s painting was done for sale to a mass audience entitled the Youthful Queen of the Hop Garden by a James Posselwhite.

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You can read more about Witherington at his Wikipedia page and there are some links to more of his works at ArtCyclopedia.

Guinness Ad #89: Chuckle, Chuckle, Through The Night

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Our 89th Guinness shows the opposite of last week’s sun beating down on a smiling pint of Guinness. In this case, it’s a full moon. The tagline is the usual “Guinness is good for you,” but the real gem is the poem:

Chuckle, chuckle, through the night,
You are such a cheerful sight
Up above the world so high,
Like a Guinness in the sky.

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Beer In Ads #455: If You Like Beer You’ll Love Schlitz

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Friday’s ad is from 1954, and is for Schlitz. With a slogan of “If you like beer you’ll love Schlitz,” the woman in the ad is dressed to the nines in a green cocktail dress. Behind her there appears to be a party going on. Two odd comments, though. First, aren’t those flowers in the right foreground lilies? And aren’t lilies for funerals? Second, what the hell is on that food tray on the table. It looks like a giant cheeseball with olives and cocktail weenies sticking out of it.

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Beer In Ads #454: The Light Ale Millions Prefer

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Thursday’s ad is from 1954, and is for Ballantine Ale. Three men, dressed in colors that would seem more at home in the 1970s than the 50s, share a beer on a veranda with a coastal view. Apparently one of them says to the other. “Is this something special?” To which the reply is. “It certainly is … that’s Ballantine Ale … the light ale millions prefer.”

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