Beer In Ads #3909: Here’s How … To Take A Smooth Photograph

November 14, 2021 By Jay Brooks

Sunday’s ad is for “Hamm’s,” from 1949. This ad was made for Hamm’s Brewing, which was founded in 1865 by Theodore Hamm in St. Paul, Minnesota. At its peak, it was the 5th largest brewery in America, and operated facilities in five cities, including San Francisco, L.A., Baltimore and Houston, in addition to the original brewery in Minnesota. This one is part of a short series called “Here’s How,” in which a different skill is explained in each ad. In this one, they explain how “to take a Smooth photograph,” with the tagline: “Here’s how … with Hamm’s Beer Smooth and Mellow.” It details eight steps for how to set up and take a better picture.

Master Brewers’ Convention 1915

September 30, 2018 By Jay Brooks

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This is an interesting little tidbit I found looking through an old copy of “The Western Brewer: and Journal of the Barly, Malt and Hop Trades” from October 1915. In it, there’s a report on the Master Brewers’ Convention which took place the previous month in San Francisco, California. In addition to the story, there’s a really cool panoramic photo. Here’s the story:

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This photo of all the attendees, including delegates and guests, of the Master Brewers’ Convention was taken on September 30, 1915. It was shot on the steps in front of German House, in San Francisco, where the convention took place. The photo was printed on two separate pages, with the left side above here, and the right side below.

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I’m not sure if this list exactly matches who’s in the photographs, but this is a list of who registered to attend the convention:

And this photograph is inside German House of the meeting of the Master Brewers. Notice how there’s a beer in front of almost every person there.

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Inside Guinness August 22, 1953

August 22, 2016 By Jay Brooks

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In England, the Picture Post was the equivalent of Life magazine here in the U.S. It “was a photojournalistic magazine published in the United Kingdom from 1938 to 1957. It is considered a pioneering example of photojournalism and was an immediate success, selling 1,700,000 copies a week after only two months.”

On August 22, 1953, one of the photographers for the Picture Post — Bert Hardy — visited Dublin, Ireland, and was permitted inside the Guinness brewery at St. James Gate. I’m not sure how many photos he took, but recently Mashable featured twenty-two of them. Here are a few of them below, it’s a great glimpse into the past, and to see all of them, follow the instructions below.

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Workers drain beer from a mash tun.

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Workers watch as yeast is skimmed off the top of the beer before it is passed to vats for maturing.

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A worker fills casks in the racking shed.

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Workers at the Guinness brewery at St. James’s Gate in Dublin.

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Workers hose down casks.

You can see all 22 of them below, or visit Mashable.

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Margaret Bourke-White Photographs Of The Busch Family

June 14, 2016 By Jay Brooks

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Today is the birthday of Margaret Bourke-White (June 14, 1904-August 27, 1971). She “was an American photographer and documentary photographer. She is best known as the first foreign photographer permitted to take pictures of Soviet industry, the firsthand American female war photojournalist, and the first female photographer for Henry Luce’s Life magazine, where her photograph appeared on the first cover. She died of Parkinson’s disease about eighteen years after she developed her first symptoms.”

The International Photography Hall of Fame also has a good overview of her life, and so does the Encyclopedia Britannica. She was an amazing photographer, and many of her photos are iconic views of the 20th century. She was frequently featured in Life magazine, such as a series of photographs she took for the May 1955 issue, to accompany an article on “what the magazine called “the liveliest, lustiest family dynasty” in America: the Busch clan.” Here’s a portion of the text from that article:

In 1865 [LIFE wrote] a German immigrant named Adolphus Busch took over a small, failing brewery in St. Louis. In the decades since, the brewery has become the largest in the world, last year selling over 719 million foamy quarts of beer. In that same period period the Missouri family Busch has become just about the liveliest, lustiest family dynasty in the country.

Today the chief executive of Anheuser-Busch Inc., and in consequence the head of the sprawling family, is Adolphus’ grandson, a gregarious, impulsive, hoarse-voiced, 56-year-old extrovert name August Anheuser Busch jr., who is hardly ever called anything but Gussie. Gussie and the other present members of the family have lost little of the fierce, competitive genius with which their predecessors kept he world of hops hopping. And unlike the later generations of some robust business families, they have not noticeably slid into the sedentary or intellectual pleasures of wealth. They continue to love the outdoors, fine horses, huge houses full of hunting trophies, big families, roaring parties and beery choruses of “Im Wald and auf der Heide.”

The baronial splendor amid which Gussie lives with his handsome wife and their children prompts St. Louisans to say the Busches really live like German merchant princes of an earlier age. But their way of life adds a memorably exuberant and expansive segment to the American scene.

Here are a few of the photographs that Margaret Bourke-White took of the Busch family, along with the original captions from the 1955 Life article, if there was one. Some of the photographs taken by Bourke-White were not included in the article. If you want to see the rest of her photos from that session, by all means check out House of Suds: Portrait of the Busch Beer Dynasty at Play on Time’s archives.

Anheuser Busch heir August (Gussie) Busch Jr. and wife Trudy in the trophy-filled gun room of their mansion, Grant’s Farm, with their children Beatrice Alice and Adolphus Busch IV.

Out for the daily ride, Trudy astride Happy Landing and Gussie on Miss Budweiser amble across the lawn of the 34-room brick mansion Gussie’s father erected in 1911.

Singing at Schlachtfest, Gussie sits with guest, Mrs. Charles Thomas, wearing chef’s hat and apron which his male guests received.

There’s no caption for this one, but I’d sure like to know what the hell’s going on in this one. A Schlachtfest, according to Wikipedia, “is the German term for the ritual or ceremonial slaughter of an animal, which is often followed by feast. Today, it usually refers to the practice in many parts of Germany, such as the Palatinate, for a celebration or festival involving the ceremonial slaughter of a pig reared or bought by a private household or an inn for that purpose.”

Paul Victor von Gontard, general manager of San Fernando Valley brewery, sniffing hops.

Toast to their master and mistress is drunk in champagne at annual gathering of 20 Grant’s Farm workers, who just received envelopes containing their annual bonus. In dark jacket at left is zookeeper Frank Parko and alongside him are stablemen, grounds keepers. Butler and cook are at right.

Fehr’s Beer Bear

January 10, 2016 By Jay Brooks

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My most recent “Beer in Ads” post was for a Bock by the Frank Fehr Brewing Co. of Louisville, Kentucky, which was in business from 1890 to 1964, and even earlier as the Otto Brewery. In researching the brewery, I found some amazing promotional photos for the Frank Fehr Brewing Co. at the University of Louisville Digital Collection. If a brewery tried this today, the prohibitionist groups would go seriously apoplectic. Fehr’s actually used a teddy bear, which they referred to as a “Beer Bear” or Fehr’s Bear” in their marketing.

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This M.R. Kopmeyer Co. photo of Fehr’s bottle of beer is from July of 1959.

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And here’s another one of a Teddy beer with Fehr’s beer bottles from August of 1959.

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“Frank Fehr Brewing Co. Int photos of Jack Schnatter and Fehrs beer at Kroger store at Shelbyville Road Plaza,” taken August 28, 1959.

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And here’s a close-up of Jack Schnatter and the teddy bear at the same visit to Krogers.

I can just imagine the hue and cry today if any beer brand tried using a teddy bear as a part of their marketing. You know they’d be accused of “targeting” children, a frequent charge leveled by modern prohibitionists and yet in what I imagine was a conservative southern town in the late fifties people seemed to take it all in stride. What does that say about the people running prohibitionist organizations in the 21st century that they can’t tell the difference between targeting and having fun, between knowing what appeals to all people and not just children.

I confess Fehr’s was not a beer brand I was familiar with. I suspect it was only available, even in its heyday, in and around the Louisville area. So there it’s probably well known. They certainly had some great slogans, the one I see the most is pretty awesome. It’s always Fehr weather.”

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I guess we know from that how Frank Fehr’s name was pronounced. They used it it a variety of marketing materials, from coasters …

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to crowns …

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to trays.

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Another play on the name was “Be ‘Fehr’ to Yourself” — Drink — Fehr’s Kentucky Beer.”

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It’s certainly popular enough in the Louisville area that some people are trying to bring back the brand, and have a website and Facebook page up, though there was more movement and even some local news coverage two years ago.

Daguerreotypes Of Beer

November 18, 2015 By Jay Brooks

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Today is the birthday of Louis Daguerre, the inventor of the daguerreotype process of photography, one of the earliest successful methods of creating photographs. He was French, an artist as well as a photographer, and “became known as one of the fathers of photography. Though he is most famous for his contributions to photography, he was also an accomplished painter and a developer of the diorama theatre.” When I took some photography classes in college, my great aunt gave me some daguerreotypes taken by my great-grandfather along with some glass plates that I was able to develop in a dark room. There were even a few showing the construction of the clock tower at Kutztown University (his alma mater and near where I grew up in Pennsylvania), which was finished in 1910. Sadly, none of my family daguerreotypes involve beer, since they were for the most part teetotaling mennonites for a majority of the time they worked the farm after arriving here in 1745 from Berne, Switzerland, fleeing religious persecution. I, on the other hand, am such a disappointment (not really, the farm was sold before I was born and they even drove cars and had the occasional beer by the time I was born).

But first, what is a daguerreotype?
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Here’s the basics from the Wikipedia entry:

The daguerreotype process, or daguerreotypy, was the first publicly announced photographic process, and for nearly twenty years, it was the one most commonly used. It was invented by Louis-Jaques-Mandé Daguerre and introduced worldwide in 1839. By 1860, new processes which were less expensive and produced more easily viewed images had almost completely replaced it. During the past few decades, there has been a small-scale revival of daguerreotypy among photographers interested in making artistic use of early photographic processes.

To make a daguerreotype, the daguerreotypist polished a sheet of silver-plated copper to a mirror finish; treated it with fumes that made its surface light-sensitive; exposed it in a camera for as long as was judged to be necessary, which could be as little as a few seconds for brightly sunlit subjects or much longer with less intense lighting; made the resulting latent image on it visible by fuming it with mercury vapor; removed its sensitivity to light by liquid chemical treatment; rinsed and dried it; then sealed the easily marred result behind glass in a protective enclosure.

Viewing a daguerreotype is unlike looking at any other type of photograph. The image does not sit on the surface of the metal, but appears to be floating in space, and the illusion of reality, especially with examples that are sharp and well exposed is unique to the process.

The image is on a mirror-like silver surface, normally kept under glass, and will appear either positive or negative, depending on the angle at which it is viewed, how it is lit and whether a light or dark background is being reflected in the metal. The darkest areas of the image are simply bare silver; lighter areas have a microscopically fine light-scattering texture. The surface is very delicate, and even the lightest wiping can permanently scuff it. Some tarnish around the edges is normal, and any treatment to remove it should be done only by a specialized restorer.

Several types of antique photographs, most often ambrotypes and tintypes, but sometimes even old prints on paper, are very commonly misidentified as daguerreotypes, especially if they are in the small, ornamented cases in which daguerreotypes made in the US and UK were usually housed. The name “daguerreotype” correctly refers only to one very specific image type and medium, the product of a process that was in wide use only from the early 1840s to the late 1850s.

So while I don’t have any daguerreotypes of my own that involve beer, there are a few of them out there, and I’ve selected some of the best ones I came across. A lot of early photographs, as mentioned above, are mis-identified as daguerreotypes when in fact they might be another early photographic process. So the ones I found are identified as daguerreotypes, but of course it’s hard, if not impossible, to be sure. At any rate, this is just for fun, so if you have evidence that one is not strictly speaking, a daguerreotype, let me know, and if you know of one I missed, send me a link to it or as as an attachment.

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Munchen Hoffbrau Interior, c. 1896-1905, by Robert L. Bracklow (New York Historical Society).

Man with Beer, 1899.

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Four men posing with mugs of beer, c. late 1850s.

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Four [More] Guys and Their Mugs of Beer, c. 1880.

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St. Louis Park Beer Garden, South Broadway, c. 1860. Daguerreotype by Thomas M. Easterly.

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Self-portrait of Frances Benjamin Johnston, from 1896. “Fannie” was one of the earliest American female photographers and photojournalists.

Paper Moon, c. 1910. Paper moon backgrounds appear to be a popular backdrop from photographs at events.

Another paper moon, date unknown.

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Thomas Coffin Doane, taken at the Molson family brewery after the fire, in Montreal, Quebec, Canada, 1858.

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Union House Bar, Bidwell, California. “A fire destroyed the first Union House (also known as Fitzgerald House) August 2, 1854 along with most of the town. Upon careful study of the dark sign on the right, these are the words: “OFFICE FEATHER RIVER & OPHIR WATER CO”. This company was incorporated Feb. 6 1855. Apparently the second Union House was constructed during the winter and spring of 1855. I believe this daguerreotype was taken in the summer of 1855 after the Union House had been resurrected.”

GABF Awards With Photographs 2015

September 28, 2015 By Jay Brooks

On Saturday, September 26, the winners of the 34th Great American Beer Festival were announced. A record 6,647 beers were judged in 92 categories by 242 judges, of which I was again privileged to be one. I was on hand at the awards ceremony and thought I’d share the results again, this time along with some of the photographs I took during the awards.

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Inside the back of the theater, about an hour before the award ceremony began.

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Justin Crossley, from The Brewing Network, on stage getting ready to simulcast the awards.

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After the theater filled up.

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A partial panorama view of the theater.

[Read more…]

Session #102: A Beery Landscape

August 9, 2015 By Jay Brooks

For our 102nd Session, our host is Allen Huerta, who writes Active Brewer. For his topic, he’s asking us to look at the big picture, the entire landscape of beer; yesterday, today, and/or tomorrow, or as he more fully explains what he has in mind for the August Session in his announcement, “The Landscape of Beer:”

SURPRISE, SURPRISE! The Landscape of Beer in America is changing. It has even begun influencing beer in countries all around the world. Everyone has their opinion on Local vs Global, Craft vs Macro, and Love vs Business. Those who were at the Beer Bloggers & Writers Conference in Asheville this past weekend had a brief talk about how “Small and Independent Matters”. Something that quite a few people say matters to them, but where is the upper limit? Does a purchase of another brewery still allow a brewery to fall into the Small and Independent camp?

Our topic this month is, “The Landscape of Beer“. How do you see that landscape now? What about in 5, 10, or even 20 years? A current goal in the American Craft Beer Industry is 20% market share by the year 2020. How can we get there? Can we get there?

Whether your view is realistic or whimsical, what do you see in our future? Is it something you want or something that is happening? Let us know and maybe we can help paint the future together.

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Because the weekend’s all but over, I decided — as usual — not to follow instructions per se, and instead found four literal landscapes of beer’s constituent parts in my library of photographs.

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The River Trent, in Burton upon Trent, although the brewing water actually comes from an aquifer deep below the town (but the photo of the aquifer is pretty dull).

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Barley growing in the San Luis Valley of southwest Colorado.

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Hops in the Yakima Valley, Washington.

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Yeast bubbling at White Labs in San Diego.