Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #627: Party Time … Anytime!

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Tuesday’s ad is for the Canadian beer O’Keefe’s and specifically their Old Vienna. I’m not sure when it’s from, though the 1950s seems a safe bet. The tagline, “reach for an Old Vienna” is being acted out as an unseen hand passes a case of beer over the head of the woman of the house as her husband reaches out to take possession. Her expression is priceless, her lips purse in alarm perhaps worrying that the case will be dropped on her head or ruin the salad she’s holding in her hands. Now that’s “party time … anytime!” Oh, and does that kitchen background look fake? Look closely at the window.

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Beer In Ads #626: Bring On The Falstaff

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Monday’s ad is for Falstaff. I’m not sure of its age, but I’m guessing the 1950s, when apparently people dressed up not just around the house but also when casually visiting friends. Because “When Company Comes … Bring on the Falstaff.” And I just love this. “It’s good to see old friends enjoying themselves with the friendliest refreshment that ever bid a guest welcome … tall, cold bottles of beer.” See, again beer is referred to as “friendly.” I really want to see that return. Beer is friendly, but we never say so anymore.

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Beer In Ads #624: Friendly, Fresh’ning, Happily Dry

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Thursday’s ad is for Rheingold, from 1961. The ad features Miss Rheingold for 1961, Janet Mick, at a bowling alley. Maybe it’s just me, but it sure looks like this date is not going well. The smile on her face looks so forced to me, like she’s pretending to have a good time. Or maybe he’s just an incredible douchebag. I just love the propensity for brewers in the fifties and early sixties to refer to their beer as being “friendly” and other similar adjectives. In this one, Rheingold is characterized as being “Friendly, fresh’ning, happily dry.” Nice.

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Beer In Ads #623: Budweiser’s 6,000 Men

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Wednesday’s ad is also for Budweiser, from 1908. In the first two decades of the last century — the run up to prohibition — there was a lot going on in the beer world. It was period of vast consolidation. Increasingly, breweries finally started worrying that prohibition could really become a reality and began doing pro-beer ads. This one is partly hit-you-over-the-head obvious, and also somewhat subtle. Obviously, the main thrust of the ad copy is that Anheuser-Busch in 1908 employed 6,000 at just one “plant.” That sure sounds like a lot for a single brewery. They go on to say there are 750,000 people employed by all of America’s breweries and not less than 4 million “women and children” who are “directly dependent upon their pay envelopes,” with an additional 400,000 employed on farms that produce the crops necessary to make beer. Perhaps more importantly, all of those employees who work in the beer industry “love their homes,” plus “they are good, honest citizens, temperate, patriotic and true.”

On the more subtle side, the ad is designed to look like it’s burting out of a regular page in the newspaper, in this case the Washington Post. BUt look closer at the headlines. Here are a few of them: “Beer on the Mayflower,” “The Drink of the Great,” “World’s Decisive Battles Won By Beer Drinkers,” “The Grain of the Gods,” “Food Value of Malt Brews,” and “The Temperance Value of Beer.” Great stuff.

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Beer In Ads #622: Budweiser Ski Threesome

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Tuesday’s ad is for Budweiser, from 1949. This one is part of their long-running “there’s nothing like it …” series. But the story that the illustration tells is a bit ambiguous. A couple is relaxing by the fire, their eyes fixed on another woman, just coming in from the ski slopes. But look closely. There are exactly three, not two, full glasses of beer. She was expected. Is this a seduction scene? Or is it merely my overactive imagination? Personally, I think the answer is all in the eyes. What do you read into their expressions?

Budweiser-1949-skiing

Secrets Of Nature: Brewster’s Magic

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Here’s an interesting old video from 1933. It’s from the British Pathe Archives, from the “Secrets of Nature” series entitled Brewster’s Magic. It was a British Instructional Film, photographed by F. Percy Smith, with Editing and Commentary by Mary Field and “Musical setting” by W. Hodgson.

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The 8-minute black and white film shows time lapse photography of hops and barley growing plus microscopic images, as well. Here’s how they describe the film:

Hand pump being pulled in a pub. Hop root. The eyes are pointed out with a pencil. Time lapse photography of a hop shoot growing. C/U of the claws on the stem of the plant. Plant grows. The claws help the hop plant to twist its way around a smooth surface. Hop flowers growing on a male hop plant. Female hop plant produces flowers. We see them grow through time lapse. Comment on the voiceover about flowers being disappointed spinsters as they will not be fertilised. The flowers continue to grow. C/U of the sticky substance that grows on the petals. Lupelin (sp?) highly magnified. This is the substance that gives flavour and aroma to beer.

Hop garden. Barley ripening in the fields. C/U of barley submerged in water. Time lapse of the barley absorbing water. Barley puts out shoots in time lapse. The maltster turns them upside down to stop them from growing too quickly. Water supply is cut off and the barley withers. Graphic representation of the barley shoot. Animation. Maltster kills the barley grain when it has produced digestive fluid but not had time to use it. Grains are mashed up in hot water to make malt. Men roll barrels along in courtyard of brewery. C/U of yeast cells under a microscope beside a human hair. Moving yeast cells. Cells separate. Fermentation. Diagram of a molecule of sugar. Animated letters. Solution under the microscope. Bubbles are formed.

A pint of beer is pulled in a pub. Shot of man in flat cap drinking beer from a pewter tankard.

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It’s a cool time capsule and definitely worth checking out.

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My only quibble is that despite it being almost 80 years old, Pathe still asserts copyright on it. Which is fine, in and of itself, even if I generally disagree with how long copyrights now tend to run. But for some reason, they think it’s reasonable to charge you a whopping £50 ($77) to buy the 8-minute video, and that’s just for a download of it — no DVD or case or artwork, though they graciously will allow you to burn it to your own DVD. How thoughtful. Anyway, as a result, it can’t be embedded and viewed here. Fortunately, you can at least watch it at the Pathe website. Enjoy.

Also, there appear to be a wealth additional historic videos on both beer and hops that look like you could lose an entire day exploring.

Beer In Ads #620: The Brew’s On View

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Friday’s ad is for British Columbia’s O’Keefe’s Brewery, from 1960, when they apparently opened their new “plant.” I know it shouldn’t, but I’m always suspect of any company that refers to its brewery as a “plant.” To me, it suggests a lack of passion for the beer itself, instead placing more emphasis on the business aspects of the endeavor. I do, however, love the shiny illustration of the new brewery and the sign for their Old Vienna Lager Beer.

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