Brookston Beer Bulletin

Jay R. Brooks on Beer

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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

Missouri Beer

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missouri
Today in 1821, Missouri became the 24th state.

Missouri
State_Missouri

Missouri Breweries

Missouri Brewery Guides

Guild: None known

State Agency: Missouri Division of Alcohol and Tobacco Control

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  • Capital: Jefferson City
  • Largest Cities: Kansas City, Saint Louis, Springfield, Independence, Columbia
  • Population: 5,595,211; 17th
  • Area: 69709 sq.mi., 21st
  • Nickname: Show Me State
  • Statehood: 24th, August 10, 1821

m-missouri

  • Alcohol Legalized: December 5, 1933
  • Number of Breweries: 41
  • Rank: 13th
  • Beer Production: 4,530,683
  • Production Rank: 14th
  • Beer Per Capita: 23.8 Gallons

missouri

Package Mix:

  • Bottles: 32.8%
  • Cans: 59.4%
  • Kegs: 7.4%

Beer Taxes:

  • Per Gallon: $0.06
  • Per Case: $0.14
  • Tax Per Barrel (24/12 Case): $1.86
  • Draught Tax Per Barrel (in Kegs): $1.86

Economic Impact (2010):

  • From Brewing: $6,740,265,346
  • Direct Impact: $7,922,625,437
  • Supplier Impact: $5,170,179,818
  • Induced Economic Impact: $4,126,112,200
  • Total Impact: $17,218,917,455

Legal Restrictions:

  • Control State: No
  • Sale Hours: On Premises: Most establishments:
    (Mon–Sat) 6:00am–1:30am
    (Sunday) 9:00am–12:00am
    Special licenses in Kansas City and St. Louis: (Daily) 6:00am–3:00am
    Off Premises: (Mon–Sat) 6:00am–1:30am
    (Sunday) 9:00am–12:00am
    Sales permitted until 3:00 am in those Kansas City and St. Louis bars grandfathered into the ability to double as liquor stores.
  • Grocery Store Sales: Yes
  • Notes:
    • No open container law.
    • No state public intoxication law.
    • Liquor control law covers all beverages containing more than 0.5% alcohol, without further particularities based on percentage.
    • Cities and counties are prohibited from banning off-premises alcohol sales.
    • No dry jurisdictions.
    • State preemption of local alcohol laws which do not follow state law.
    • Certain bars in Kansas City and St. Louis grandfathered into the ability to double as liquor stores.
    • Special licenses available for bars and nightclubs which allow selling alcohol until 3:00am in Kansas City, Jackson County, North Kansas City, St. Louis, and St. Louis County.
    • Grocery stores, drug stores, and even gas stations may sell liquor without limitation other than hours.
    • Patrons allowed to take open containers out of bars in Kansas City’s Power & Light District.
    • Parents and guardians may furnish alcohol to their children.
    • Missourians over 21 may manufacture up to 100 gallons of any liquor per year for personal use, without any further state limitation, state taxation, or state license. (Obtaining a permit from the Federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau and meeting other requirements under federal law probably still is required for private citizens to manufacture distilled alcohol — but not wine or beer — for personal use.)

    Missouri law recognizes two types of alcoholic beverage: liquor, which is any beverage containing more than 0.5% alcohol except “non-intoxicating beer”; and “non-intoxicating beer,” which is beer containing between 0.5% and 3.2% alcohol. Liquor laws apply to all liquor, and special laws apply to “non-intoxicating beer.”

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Data complied, in part, from the Beer Institute’s Brewer’s Almanac 2010, Beer Serves America, the Brewers Association, Wikipedia and my World Factbook. If you see I’m missing a brewery link, please be so kind as to drop me a note or simply comment on this post. Thanks.

For the remaining states, see Brewing Links: United States.

Dan Aykroyd For Schlafly Beer

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Paul A. Ner, who writes By the Pint, tweeted a fun photo of SNL alum and Blues Bro Dan Aykroyd holding a bottle of Schlafly Pale Ale.

dan-akroyd

Nice, I’m convinced one of the ways to pull more people into the craft beer world is through celebrity endorsements, not paid ones, just by seeing more and more famous folks drinking craft beer. Somewhere I have a current TV show star drinking a Drake’s IPA through a straw. I’m going to have to dig that up.

It reminds of a famous marketing strategy I learned about in college, perhaps one of the first stealth marketing campaigns. The Lacoste brand — the one with the crocodile on polo shirts — did well in Europe but not in the U.S. So in the late fifties and early sixties they began sending free shirts to famous people; movie stars, politicians, etc. Low and behold the shirts starting showing up in magazine, newspaper and newsreel photos of the celebrities and sales began to take off. Perhaps we should do something similar, maybe a Flickr pool of the famous drinking craft beer.