Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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Beer In Ads #4833: The Buck Beer King

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This year I decided to concentrate on Bock ads. Bock, of course, originated in Germany, in the town of Einbeck. Because many 19th century American breweries were founded by German immigrants, they offered a bock at certain times of the year, be it Spring, Easter, Lent, Christmas, or what have you. In a sense they were some of the first seasonal beers. “The style was later adopted in Bavaria by Munich brewers in the 17th century. Due to their Bavarian accent, citizens of Munich pronounced ‘Einbeck’ as ‘ein Bock’ (a billy goat), and thus the beer became known as ‘Bock.’ A goat often appears on bottle labels.” And presumably because they were special releases, many breweries went all out promoting them with beautiful artwork on posters and other advertising.

Thursday’s ad shows a goat wearing a king’s robe and is surrounded by four women, one of whom is serving him a beer. There’s also a cat for some reason. The lithograph was created in 1880. The lithographer was W.E. Stephens & Co., who was located in St. Louis, Missouri.

Beer In Ads #4831: Bock Beer Gesundheit

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This year I decided to concentrate on Bock ads. Bock, of course, originated in Germany, in the town of Einbeck. Because many 19th century American breweries were founded by German immigrants, they offered a bock at certain times of the year, be it Spring, Easter, Lent, Christmas, or what have you. In a sense they were some of the first seasonal beers. “The style was later adopted in Bavaria by Munich brewers in the 17th century. Due to their Bavarian accent, citizens of Munich pronounced ‘Einbeck’ as ‘ein Bock’ (a billy goat), and thus the beer became known as ‘Bock.’ A goat often appears on bottle labels.” And presumably because they were special releases, many breweries went all out promoting them with beautiful artwork on posters and other advertising.

Tuesday’s ad is for Bock Beer, and titled “Bock Beer Gesundheit,” though I have no idea why it’s called that. The chromolithograph was created in 1880. I’m not sure who the lithographer was other than he was located in St. Louis, Missouri.

Beer In Ads #3318: Falstaff Easter

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Easter Sunday’s ad is for Falstaff, from around the turn of the 19th century. From the late 1800s until the 1980s, poster art really came into its own, and in Europe a lot of really cool posters, many of them for breweries, were produced. I’ve been posting vintage European posters all last year and will continue to do so in 2020. This one, however, is from the William Lemp Brewery of St. Louis, Missouri, which was founded in 1840. It was renamed the Falstaff Brewery in 1903, after their best-selling beer. I’m not sure who the artist was who created this Easter greeting from the brewery.

Beer In Ads #1519: A Friend You Can Depend On

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Wednesday’s ad is for Griesedieck Bros. Brewery, from 1939. It’s a bit of a dull ad, and that background is a sickly yellow color. Although I do love that the beer is not just mellow, but double-mellow. It’s “made mellow in the brewing, kept mellow by the removal of air in the bottle.” The ad copy just keeps getting better, which at least partly makes up for the lousy graphics. “It’s always first for thirst, always right for real refreshment.” Just saying the brewery’s name — if you can even pronounce it — is “the passport to pleasure.”

Griesedieck-Bros-Brewery-1939

Urban Chestnut To Buy German Brewery

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urban-chestnut
Here’s some interesting news, and a nice twist or role reversal of recent events. Florian Kuplent, the talented former Anheuser-Busch brewer, in 2011 opened the Urban Chestnut Brewery in St. Louis, after A-B was acquired by InBev. I first met Florian in Denver shortly after he’d brewed an excellent German-style hefeweizen at the Fort Collins A-B brewery. Kuplent was born in Bavaria, Germany, and also was trained as a brewer at Weihenstephan.

Florian-Kuplent

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Urban Chestnut “has acquired the Bürgerbräu Wolnzach brewery in Wolnzach, which is about 35 miles north of Munich.” That’s right, a small craft brewery has bought a German brewery. Apparently, Bürgerbräu Wolnzach closed down around six months ago, and Klupent saw an opportunity. The Post-Dispatch explains that the “St. Louis-based company plans to brew small batches of beer at the Bavarian facility in the second quarter of 2015. Financial terms of the acquisition were not disclosed.”

burgerbrau-wolnach

Beer In Ads #833: Christian Staehlins Phoenix Brewery

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Thursday’s ad is for the Christian Staehlins Phoenix Brewery, from 1850. The brewery was located in St. Louis, Missouri. I love these old posters of longshots showing the entire brewery complex. Don Russell was just telling he’d recently learned that a lot of these were created for insurance purposes since photography was expensive and hard to do from the vantage point you’d need to get the whole brewery in the shot.

Christian-Staehlins-Phoenix-Brewery-1850

Beer In Ads #530: Christian Staerlin’s Phienix Brewery

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Friday’s ad is old one, undoubtedly from the 19th century. It’s for a St. Louis brewery, the oddly named Christian Staerlin’s Phienix Brewery. I love these old industrial illustrated love letters, showing large, gleaming colorful industrial complexes. They seem to have been quite common at one time. I wonder if anyone’s ever done a survey of all of them. Now that would be a cool coffee-table book.

phoenix-st-louis