Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #1397: The Tables Turned — The Dream

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Sunday’s ad is for MacLachlans’ Castle Ale, from 1928. The beer was brewed in Edinburgh, on Duddingston Road West, and at other times the brewery was also called Tennent’s Brewery, and apparently they also had a brewery in Glasgow, and operated until around 1955. I love the surreal idea that people are chasing a running bottle of beer. I think they’re at a track with an audience of dogs, because normally it would be people drinking beer in the stands watching dogs racing while chasing a rabbit. That’s not a dream, it’s a nightmare.

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Beer In Ads #1396: Clear To The Last Drop

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Saturday’s ad is for Kaka Ale, or Dunedin Ale (which is also on the label), from between 1914-1918, based on the ad copy “drink success to the Allies. The beer was made by the W. Strachin & Co. brewery, also known as The Victoria Brewery. According to the Alexander Turnbull Library, it was founded in Dunedin, New Zealand in 1857 or 1860 by William Strachan and partners and by 1890 was the oldest brewery in Dunedin, and possibly New Zealand. But that tagline — “Clear To The Last Drop” — priceless.

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Beer In Ads #1391: Spring Ills

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Monday’s ad is yet another one for Pabst, again from 1897. The ad shows the Boston Tea Party, with cartons of tea leaves being dumped into the harbor. Another patriotic moment, another reminder how healthful Pabst Malt Extract can be, especially how it can cure so many spring ills. There’s even a list of what it can cure: enervation, fatigue, thin blood, anaemia, exhaustion, lack of vitality, weakness, nervousness, sleeplessness and slow recovery from a winter’s sickness.

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Beer In Ads #1390: The First Inauguration

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Sunday’s ad is still another one for Pabst, also from 1897. The ad shows what is purported to be the “First Inauguration” — it looks like George Washington — yet I’m always amazed that we tend to simply ignore the ten presidents of Congress who preceded Washington under the Articles of Confederation, not to mention the fourteen people who served as president of the continental congress before that. In our collective image of American history, we seemingly just leap from 1776 to Washington’s inauguration thirteen years later, on April 30, 1789, as if that previous decade didn’t even exist. Climbing down off my soapbox, with Pabst Malt Extract, apparently, you won’t have to worry about dyspepsia or indigestion.

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Beer In Ads #1389: Take Up The Slack!

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Saturday’s ad is another one for Pabst, also from 1897. The ad shows Commodore Perry, the other one — the Hero of Lake Erie — standing in a small rowboat at the end of the battle, and I can only assume he said something like “take up the slack.” I’m not quite sure what “Perry’s Victory” has to do with Pabst Malt Extract, but it’s another in a series of patriotic ads using incidents throughout American history to sell Pabst.

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Beer In Ads #1388: The Light Of Liberty

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Friday’s ad is another one for Pabst, again from 1897. The ad shows the Old North Church, in Boston, Massachusetts, the one that had as many as two lamps hanging from its steeple, “one if by land, and two if by sea” depending on where the British were coming from, according to the story of Paul Revere. Apparently Pabst Malt Extract, “the best tonic,” will put anyone to sleep, even with those annoying lights streaming through the curtain windows.

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