Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Art #89: Baltimore Beer-Drinking Immigrant Family

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art-beer
Most of the details about today’s work of art are unknown to me, but despite that it still was too good not to feature. All I know is that it depicts an immigrant family, originally from the Netherlands, living in Baltimore, Maryland and was painted by the father of the family shown in the painting.

It apparently hangs in the museum of the Maryland Historical Society. Unfortunately, I can find no information about it on their website. They appear to have quite a few paintings online, but not knowing the artist or the title of the painting makes it a bit more difficult to find. I don’t even know when it was painted, but I’m guessing the late 1800s or the very early part of the 20th century.

Most of the adults have a beer in their hand. I count a total of nine glasses of beer. The couple in the center foreground look sickly, almost pale enough to be considered zombies. But it’s still a very compelling painting. If anyone has any actual details about the painting, please do let me know.

Unk_beer-swilling-family

Beer In Ads #172: Biere De Ville Sur Illon

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ad-billboard
Friday’s ad is from an earlier period, just before the golden age of poster, nearer the turn of the century, around 1905. It’s by artist Francisco Tamagno and is advertising Biere De Ville Sur Illon.

Here’s a short biography of the artist.

Francisco Tamagno was among the original movement of France’s fanciful graphic advertisement art tradition so popular around the Turn of the 20th Century, as it is now as vintage art. His signature style is influenced by his Portuguese heritage, infusing his French-themed art with bright, lively colors in highly pictorial settings. Born in Sintra, Portugal in 1851, in his early career, he was a portrait painter. He moved to Paris in the 1880’s to work as the house artist of the printer Camis; preparing theatrical playbills, and later graduating to posters for railroads, bicycle manufacturers and distillers. He died in Paris in 1923.

francisco-tamagno-biere-de-ville-sur-illon

Beer In Ads #167: Bieres de Chartres

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ad-billboard
Friday’s ad is yet another French beer, this one for Bieres de Chartres. While I don’t know very much about it, or who the artist is, it’s from the same period of time — the 1920s — and is cut from the same cloth. It may even be a tad funnier, what with the waiter drinking the beer even as he delivers it.

bieres-de-chatres

No More Gluek Beer

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gluek
Cold Spring Brewing in Minnesota announced yesterday that they will no longer brew the historic Gluek brand. Gluek began brewing in 1857, before Minnesota was even a state.

In 1857 on the bank of the Mississippi River in an area which would someday be known as Minneapolis, German immigrant Gottlieb Gluek started the Mississippi Brewing Company. Soon the name was changed to the Gluek Brewing Company, and by 1964 Gluek became Minneapolis’s oldest continuously-operated business.

In 1858 the company brewed 3,996 barrels of beer, and by 1901 the annual capacity was second only to the two “giants” the Minneapolis Brewing Company (later renamed as the Grain Belt) and the Theo. Hamm Brewery of St. Paul.

But after 1964 it fell on hard times and, like many regional breweries, was bought by G. Heileman. The original brewery was torn down but a new one was later built back in Cold Spring, Minnesota in 1997. A couple of years ago, however, they renamed Gluek Brewing to Cold Spring Brewing as fewer and fewer consumers knew or cared about Gluek’s history in the region.

gluek-dark

As an AP story reports:

By September, Gluek will be phased out. But vice president and general manager Doug DeGeest says Cold Spring Brewing is keeping the Gluek trademark, and it’s possible the beer could come back.

DeGeest says it was a business decision to discontinue the Gluek brand. He says the Cold Spring-based company cannot keep up with production and needed to decide which product in its portfolio of beers to discontinue.

When I was the beer buyer at BevMo, we brought in some of the Gluek beer in cans and they also sold us a beer exclusively (for California, at least) which we sold as a private label beer. That was Fat Cat Lager, which was a decent enough all-malt generic lager. I believe Randy Mosher did the label design.

Fat-Cat-label

Regardless of Gluek’s ultimate place in American brewing history, it’s always sad to see another old brand consigned to the scrap heap of discontinued brands, but then I’m sentimental that way.