Beer In Ads #2181: Heineken Refreshes Steel Girders

February 8, 2017 By Jay Brooks

Wednesday’s ad is for Heineken, from 1977. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a two-panel format, a man is carrying a large steel girder, balanced on his head, while carrying a full mug of beer. It’s obviously a poke at Guinness advertising, which had a similar ad with a man carrying a girder. The girder is bent in a curve, essentially drooping in the front and back, as if he was carrying something limp. But in the second panel, after he’s drank some of his beer, the girder has stiffened up and is straight as an arrow. Plus the man has gone from frowning to wearing a smile, but I’m sure that’s just a coincidence.

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Beer In Ads #2174: Heineken Refreshes Medieval Tapestries

February 1, 2017 By Jay Brooks

Wednesday’s ad is for Heineken, from the 1970s. In the later 1970s, Heineken embarked on a series of ads with the tagline “Heineken Refreshes the Parts Other Beers Cannot Reach.” Many of the ads were in a sequential panel, or comic strip, format and they were intended to be humorous.

In this ad, a three-panel format, it resembles a medieval tapestry. In the first panel, and arrow’s heading straight for our ancient soldier’s head. But in the second, he has a mug of beer, which by the third panel has turned the arrow into a rubber-tipped suction cup arrow, saving his ass and causing him to smile.

Heineken-1970s-tapestry

Baby Beer Names

January 22, 2017 By Jay Brooks

A few years ago I wrote an article for the Brewer’s Association I called Papa’s Got A Brand New Beer that was for Father’s Day. It featured a number of names that beer people have given their kids, celebrating their love of beer. My old friend, Adam Lambert — who I’ve known since he was in college and working part-time for SLO Brewing — recently tweeted “I think we need a blog for beer related kid names.” While setting up an entire new blog on that topic seemed too much, at least for me, I figured a page of People’s Beer Names could work.

I can only assume there are more that I haven’t run across. If you know of any to add to this list, please let me know by commenting here. I’m especially interested in names that parents have already given, so if you know a name that’s already been bestowed on a child, please let me know who (I don’t need exact name, just something like “employee at x brewery/bar/distributor/etc.”) so I can refer to without naming names.

Here are the names I already either know of, or seem possible.

Boy’s Names

Brett: confirmed — Brett Porter is head brewer at Goose Island/ABI, and formerly with Deschutes
Brewer: theoretical — appears in baby name books
Bud: fictionally confirmed — Bud Bundy, character on Married… with Children, named after Al Bundy’s favorite beer
Cooper: confirmed — son of a man with 20 years in the draft dispensing business
E.S.B. initials: unconfirmed — rumored story told to Jay R. Brooks for a name like “Ethan Sebastian Brown”
Flanders: possible — for the Belgian beer style, Flanders Red
Porter: confirmed — son of Jay R. Brooks, and also the son of Chris Graham, COO of MoreBeer
Stout: confirmed — A Facebook friend knows one

Girl’s Names

Abbey: possible — for Abbey-type breweries
Amber: confirmed — daughter of Geno Acevedo, El Toro Brewing, and middle name of the daughter of Colorado beer write Dan Rabin
Burton: possible — for the beer-brewing city in England
Cascade: possible — for the hop variety*
Crystal: possible — for the malt variety
Genny: possible — for Genesee Cream Ale, nicknamed “Genny”
Heather: possible — for the shrub used in brewing
India: confirmed — A Facebook friends knows a couple whose daughter got her name at least in part because they love IPAs and homebrew
Iris: possible — for Cantillon Iris
Kate: possible — for Portsmouth Kate the Great
Mara: confirmed — daughter of British beer writer Martyn Cornell, Hebrew for bitter
Matilda: possible — for Goose Island Matilda
Sierra: confirmed — daughter of Ken Grossman, Sierra Nevada Brewing
Sofie: possible — for Goose Island Sofie
Vienna: confirmed — daughter Jennifer Talley, Auburn Alehouse

NOTE: * – I’ve seen many suggestions for different hop variety names, but most seem somewhat forced. Understanding that a name could conceivably be anything, I only want to list names that seem reasonable or have actually been given to a kid by his or her parents. For another example, I’ve seen several mentions suggesting “Bock” or “Lambic” as names, but unless someone’s actually named their kid those, they don’t really seem that likely to me. Unfortunately, there’s a lot of suggestions like that out there on the internet. really more bad suggestions than good ones.

Beer In Ads #2137: Brewed In The Canadian Tradition

December 26, 2016 By Jay Brooks

Monday’s ad is for Carling’s Red Cap Ale, from the 1960s or 70s. It was created by well-known cartoonist Jack Davis, who co-founded Mad Magazine. I’m not quite sure what “Canadian tradition” he’s talking about, but it may involve everyone, even inanimate objects and animals.

Red-Cap-Ale-Canadian-Tradition-Beer-Poster-By-JACK-DAVIS

Gävlebocken

November 30, 2016 By Jay Brooks

How did I not know about this before? Although it’s not about beer, it is about goats, which is close enough for me. Apparently for the last fifty years Sweden has had their own version of a burning man (sort of), although for them it’s a Gävlebocken, or “Gävle goat.” It’s essentially “a traditional Christmas display erected annually at Slottstorget in central Gävle, Sweden. It is a giant version of a traditional Swedish Yule Goat figure made of straw. It is erected each year at the beginning of Advent over a period of two days by local community groups.”

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Here’s the basic history, from Wikipedia:

The Gävle Goat is erected every year on the first day of Advent, which according to Western Christian tradition is in late November or early December, depending on the calendar year. In 1966, an advertising consultant, Stig Gavlén, came up with the idea of making a giant version of the traditional Swedish Yule Goat and placing it in the square. The design of the first goat was assigned to the then chief of the Gävle fire department, Gavlén’s brother Jörgen Gavlén. The construction of the goat was carried out by the fire department, and they erected the goat each year from 1966 to 1970 and from 1986 to 2002. The first goat was financed by Harry Ström. On 1 December 1966, a 13-metre (43 ft) tall, 7-metre (23 ft) long, 3-tonne goat was erected in the square. On New Year’s Eve, the goat was burnt down, and the perpetrator was found and convicted of vandalism. The goat was insured, and Ström got all of his money back.

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And vandalism of the goat has also become part and parcel of the legend each year. Even the Wikipedia page includes a chart of how long the goat lasted each year. Some years, like 2014, it lasted throughout the holiday season and into January. But even then, there were three attempts by arsonists. It’s actually only made it all the way to January intact a dozen times, and one of those years with some damage. This year, it only made it one day, and was burned down on November 27.

Gavle-goat-2016
This was this year’s Gävle goat.

A tourist website for the town of Gävle, VisitGävle, with facts about “the world’s largest straw goat.”

The peculiar story about the Gävle Goat started in 1966. A man named Stig Gavlén came up with the idea to design a giant version of the traditional Swedish Christmas straw goat. The objective was to attract customers to the shops and restaurants in the southern part of the city. On the first Sunday of Advent 1966, the huge goat was placed at the Castle Square. Since then, the Gävle Goat has been a Christmas symbol placed in the same spot every year. Today it’s world famous. The goat is the world’s largest straw goat and made it to the Guinness Book of Records for the first time in 1985.
Worth knowing about the Gavle Goat
The Gävle Goat is 13 metres (42.6 feet) high, seven metres long and weighs 3.6 tonnes.
It takes a whole truck full of straw from the local village of Mackmyra to create the goat.
1600 meters of rope is used.
12,000 knots are tied.
56 five metre straw mats form the straw coat.
1200 metres of Swedish pine create the wooden skeleton.
1000 man-hours of work are needed to build the Gävle Goat.
The Gävle Goat is inaugurated on the first Sunday of Advent every year, in conjunction with the “skyltsöndagen”.
The Gävle Goat has friends in more than 120 countries around the world that follow it in social media.
In 2015, 420 000 people visited the Gävle Goat, dressed in a flower coat, when it was on tour in the Chinese twin town of Zhuhai.
The Gavle Goat has been hit by a cruising car and been subjected to fire and sabotage over the years.
Staged hacker attacks and kidnappings have also been planned.

You can also read more about it at Atlas Obscura and the BBC

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Visit Gävle adds. “You can follow the Gävle Goat from the first Sunday of Advent until after New Year or until the sad day that it meets its notorious fate.” For that purpose, they’ve set up a webcam where anyone can keep an eye on the goat, although this year it’s already too late. On the plus side, that’s how they were able to capture it burning on film.

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