Category : History

The Session #42: A Special Place, A Special Beer

August 6th, 2010

It’s the first Friday of the month, which means for beer bloggers that it’s time for The Session: a monthly group blogging effort on whatever topic our host chooses. Hosting duties change from month to month, and in addition to selecting the topic, each month’s host also compiles a list of links to all the participating bloggers—which means lots of good reading.

This month is the 42nd edition of The Session, and hosting honors belong to Derrick at Ramblings of a Beer Runner: the theme is all about location in A Special Place, A Special Beer.

Two of the best ways I’ve found to explore a new place are to run around in it, and to sample the beer from it. And like many in the craft beer community, I constantly exhort anyone who will listen to support their local brewery, while simultaneously seeking out beers from distant lands that are new, novel, and exotically foreign. The Session provides a unique opportunity to explore this connection between the beer in our glasses and the place it comes from with perspectives from all over the world

So I ask for this 42nd Session that you write about a special place in your life, and a beer or brewery that connects you to that place. It can be the beer from your childhood home, a place you once lived, your current hometown, a memorable vacation you once took, or a place you’ve always wanted to go to but never had the chance. Please take a few moments to think about the how the beer connects you to this place, and share this with us. Of course, the definition of “place” is rather open ended, and in some cases, highly debatable, so it will be interesting to see the responses on what constitutes a place.

This month’s topic is perfect because it gives me an opportunity to write about a brewery that I’ve been wanting to cover for a while: the defunct Birkebeiner Brewing Company from Spokane, Washington. (There are a couple of reasons for this. One is nostalgia. The other is in the spirit of trying to document a bit of the history of these breweries that are no longer around, combined with a bit of web archaeology.)

Back through the mid-90s I spent four years in Spokane, Washington, generally going to school and discovering my affinity for craft beer and homebrewing (which I’ve written about before). These were formative beer years for me, and while Spokane wasn’t the beer town that Portland was (or is), there were still several microbreweries, the best of which (in my opinion) was the Birkebeiner Brewery.

It was in fact one of my semi-regular beer haunts, in large part because Tuesday nights they had their $1 pint specials (I would get off work in the evening—I worked late hours while going to school—and enjoy two or three pints for cheap along with something to eat). They also had a tremendous number of beers on tap for a brewpub, a dozen or so, and were always rotating and experimenting with new beers: I remember when they first brewed a chili beer, and one night we were there and a woman at the table next to us had ordered a pint of it. She had barely a sip and didn’t like it, and offered it to me instead (she felt bad about sending it back). Always game to try a new beer (not to mention a free one!), I accepted.

It was awful. I couldn’t drink it either, but I had to give the brewery credit for attempting it.

I drank a lot of their beer, and two that stand out in memory are the Apricot Ale and the Oatmeal Stout. In fact, I even have an old T-shirt for that stout:

The Stout was a great beer, and the Apricot was well-brewed and tasted like an Apricot Ale should (not something I will say about a lot of versions).

The Birkebeiner was located in a (then) sketchy part of town, on 35 West Main, and they lasted from 1994 until 2000 (a few years after I moved away). Despite the fact that the brewpub has been closed for 10 years, there are still a surprising number of regional guide websites that have it listed—it even shows up on Google Maps! But real information online about the brewery is scarce; so far all I’ve found of substance is this article from 1999 that talks about the overall Spokane beer scene:

Just a few blocks away from Fort Spokane at 35 West Main Street is the Birkebeiner Brewing Co. Founded by owner/brewer James Gimurtu in 1994, it is located in an old dry goods warehouse and textile factory. The building has been extensively remodeled inside, with large storefront windows, a handsome bar and marble-topped tables. The surrounding area is sadly in need of refurbishing, however, consisting mostly of a row of crumbling warehouses. Just down the block is the House of Charity, a local mission for the homeless. It is reminiscent of Pioneer Square or the Market Area is Seattle twenty years ago, before its massive renovation.

But Birkebeiner is a bright spot in this somewhat seedy location. Gimurtu, an avid cross-country skier, named it for a legendary group of hardy Norwegian skiers who rescued the infant King Haakon V (birkebeiner means “birch binding”) Originally from Minnesota, James has lived in Seattle and Portland, where he went to hotel/restaurant school in 1992. Afterward, he moved to Spokane to open a coffee bar. James decided to open a brewery after taking brewing classes at UC Davis in California, and getting hands-on experience at a couple of western Washington brewpubs. Gimutrtu opened Birkebeiner in May of 1994.

He has worked hard to make a go of it in an admittedly difficult spot for business. The brewery has a comfortable restaurant, managed by Joe Kaler. It is handsomely decorated with vintage beer posters from old Spokane breweries, advertising Bohemian Club from Bohemia Breweries and Goetz Beer from the Spokane Brewing Co. (with its certificate of excellence from Siebel Institute in Chicago, no less.)

The menu is more adventurous than most pub fare, with choices like Buffalo Burgers and several Cajun items, including andouille sausage and jambalaya. Prices are very reasonable as well. The restaurant is open from 11:30 a.m. to midnight weekdays, until 2 a.m. on Friday and Saturday nights.

James brews with a 12 barrel brewhouse (the kettle size) from Century Manufacturing in Ohio, with two 22-barrel fermentation tanks. There are up to 12 beers on tap at any given time, including an American-style Hefeweizen; a somewhat fruity blonde ale; Alien Amber ale ( poured from a twisted rebar-hand tap handle), a nut brown ale, a roasty Scottish ale, a strongly bitter IPA, a seasonal winter dark, a hoppy, dark amber ale, and a roasty but smooth Oatmeal Stout. There are several fruit-flavored brews, including the blueberryish Tough Guy, a golden, aromatic but somewhat thin Belgian Raspberry, and an apricot ale, a cloudy pale ale which seemed to have the best fruit taste. Also available when I visited was a malty chili beer, with a good peppery aroma and not too much heat in the finish.

Good times. The Birkebeiner’s Apricot Ale inspired me to try brewing my own version (with fresh apricots a friend brought back from Moses Lake, Washington)—which turned out just okay as I recall, not great—which I hope gives you an idea of the impact the brewery had on me. It was a great place, and in some ways I wish I could revisit it. But then again, this month’s Session has helped me do just that.

Breweries’ historic buildings

May 18th, 2010

The Lost Oregon blog is starting a “Beer and history” series that looks pretty interesting:

Many, if not most, of our local breweries and drinking establishments are housed in older buildings just by the fact that rarely is a new brewery built from scratch because let’s face it, most older buildings have an existing personality, architectural touches, good location, and good bones. As I’ve sat at many a bar and sipped on a cold one, I’ve often visualized the building in its previous life – Storefont? Office building? House of ill repute? Haunted by a 1920s flapper girl? [Ghosts are always romantic figures like a scorned lover from the 1920s that threw herself out the window. How many junkies that OD’ed on smack in a flophouse stick around to haunt the place?]

This seems like it could be an interesting subject regardless of where the brewery is located, but being it’s an Oregon-themed blog, naturally it’ll only cover the Oregon breweries.

The first one featured is Widmer’s Gasthaus.

French Beer Week: Historic mishmash

October 30th, 2009

There’s not much more to this post than an excuse to quote Randy Mosher from Radical Brewing, on the subject of French historical beers.

France is generally sniffed at by the real brewing countries, and indeed its glory has always rested on wine, not beer. I guess the scorn is not undeserved, as a reference around 1800 describes beers showcasing grass, coconut, parsnips, beets, potatoes, carrots, and every form of sugar then known. If all that’s not bad enough, the same book also described a “bastard-beer” made from cooked unmalted barley and molasses, brewed circa 1774 to cover a shortfall in cider supplies. Overall, pretty appalling.

That’s all he posts on the topic. I thought it was pretty amusing.

Beer Wars is playing this Thursday

April 13th, 2009

The Beer Wars movie (I mentioned it previously here) is debuting this week in its one-night-only showing, on Thursday, April 16th. Remember, it’s the insider’s view of the U.S. beer industry and online buzz I’ve been seeing about it seems promising.

In Central Oregon, it will be playing at the Old Mill 16 at 8pm.

The Session #15: How it all started

May 2nd, 2008

First Friday of the month means it’s time for The Session! That’s when (beer) bloggers across the web all write about a selected theme having to do with beer.

This month’s topic comes to us from London-based Boak and Bailey: How did it all start for you?

Continuing the “Beervangelism” theme, we’d like you to write about the moment when you saw the light. At what point did you realise you were a beer lover / geek / enthusiast? What beer(s) triggered the conversion? Did someone help you along your way, or did you come to it yourself?

In short; how did you get into good beer?

I have two answers, and I can’t say for sure which came first because the mists of time have worked their magic on my memory and my chronology is a bit mixed up. Both answers related to things happening within a fairly short period of each other which is why I can’t quite remember… it’s a bit of a "chicken and egg" problem in that sense, I guess.

It was the mid nineties, we were living in Spokane, and—being in my early twenties and going to school—the cheaper the beer I could get, the better. Sadly, I was a big drinker of Keystone Light, mostly because it was available at Costco for $7.99 per case. But I wasn’t overly particular; sometimes I’d "splurge" and pick up Miller Genuine Draft—in bottles!—and at some point I graduated to Molson Ice. (Had the higher alcohol content, natch.)

I was certainly aware of the existence of craft beers; Deschutes was a big thing in my home town of Bend, and I’d probably tried various micros from time to time. But—well, it’s a familiar story, so I won’t bore you any more with it.

One of the first things to raise my beer awareness and start me down the path was my friend Geoff insisting I try some microbrewed beer one night while we were at Ichabod’s North, and he bought a pitcher of Widmer Hefeweizen. The beer was orange and cloudy and smelled like fresh bread. My first impressions: thick, yeasty, bready, crisp, bracing, and the most delicious beer to pass my lips ever, at that point. Seriously, it was that good, and it really opened my eyes to what was happening with craft beer.

The other thing that happened was my introduction to homebrew. This was around the same time, and my friend Justin—who was also getting into good beer—brought over some homebrewed beer that a friend of his had made. It was Toad Spit Stout, the Irish stout recipe from Charlie Papazian’s New Complete Joy of Homebrewing. (Yes, I intentionally linked to the second-edition version knowing perfectly well there’s been a revised edition released.)

That Stout was far better than I frankly expected it to be, and opened my eyes to homebrewing the same way that Widmer’s Hefeweizen opened my eyes to microbrew. I was hooked. I bought Papazian’s book and it became my bible. I started homebrewing—clumsily at first, naturally—and explored Spokane’s tiny craft beer scene.

(A big help in this was Jim’s Homebrew—the best beer and homebrewing store in Spokane. Not only a homebrewing store, they had (have) several big refrigerator cases filled with craft and import beers—so I got to try a lot more beer than I would have otherwise (there were no other stores in Spokane at that time offering a variety even remotely like Jim’s).)

After that, I had the bug. Ever since I’m always looking to try new beers, new breweries, and learn something new. Back in 2004, I went online and "officially" launched The Brew Site… and the rest, as they say, is history.

"Beer is Back": The return of Legal Beer

April 7th, 2008

Today’s the day—New Beer’s Eve, Legal Beer Day, however you’d like to call it—when Congress modified the Volstead Act to allow 3.2% alcohol beer legal as a precursor to the full Repeal of Prohibition later in the year.

Shortly before the beer began pouring at 12:01 a.m. on the morning of April 7th, 1933, August A. Busch, Jr., went on national radio (KMOX CBS) to address the nation.

Anheuser-Busch has uploaded that address to YouTube and put together a nifty video with it consisting of their historic imagery and video:

"There is a song in our hearts as ‘Happy Days are Here Again.’ And they are here again for out of a maze of confusion and anxiety has come a beacon light to guide the way to better times."

One of the first cases of Budweiser was shipped directly to President Roosevelt via air express… this really amuses me for some reason. Maybe it’s the image of a mad dash to get as much beer out to the people as possible as soon as possible… even to the President.

New Beer’s Eve

April 6th, 2008

The eve of Legal Beer Day! Or 3.2 Day…or New Beer’s Eve as Bob notes in this comment.

(I kind of like "Legal Beer Day" for the 7th, and maybe "New Beer’s Eve" for the 6th…)

Anyway, some more tidbits I kind of like from the Anheuser-Busch stuff. First, I like this photo of St. Louis brewery workers loading up the trucks:

I guess I like the sense of "imminent to midnight" feel this seems to convey… loading up the trucks to be ready to roll out at 12:01 a.m. on the 7th.

Similarly, another picture:

The caption for this one reads, "A crowd estimated at 25,000 gathered at Anheuser-Busch’s Bevo bottling plant before midnight on April 6 to be among the first St. Louisans to taste post-Prohibition Budweiser." Sounds like a crazy Saturday at the Oregon Brewers Festival. Interesting on how A-B wasted no time in ditching their Bevo drink for the real deal—I imagine this sentiment was shared all over.

Speaking of Bevo, I’ve ferreted out some more Prohibition-era products A-B was producing. Aside from the Bevo and malt syrup and ginger ale and such, there were:

• Buschtee and Kaffo: soft drinks (introduced 1920, withdrawn ’21)
• Extra Dry Ginger Ale
• Old Devon Root Beer
• Grape Bouquet (?)
• Corn sugar, corn oil, corn syrup
• Carcho: chocolate beverage
• Other drinks: Malt Nutrine, Ino, Fermo, Windsor

Interestingly, by 1926 their ice cream sales topped 1 million gallons per year—though I don’t know what a comparable ice cream production/sales figure for other companies would be.

Tomorrow: Drink a beer for Legal Beer Day!

"Beer is Back" Prohibition products

April 3rd, 2008

Going through the press kit that Anheuser-Busch sent me for their "Beer is Back" campaign, I find the products that A-B produced during the Prohibition years fascinating. The main reference I have for these from the kit is imagery; what follows are some examples.

Along with non-alcohol Budweiser (think "near beer"), they produced other malt-based and soft drinks. First, Bevo:

Then, ginger ale:

Yes, the tagline says, "Makes an excellent horse’s neck." No, I don’t know what that means.

Of course, like many struggling brewers, A-B produced malt and yeast (but never to be combined!). An example ad for malt:

Perhaps the malt syrup could be poured over Anheuser-Busch brand ice cream. Yes, ice cream—another staple produced by brewers, whose vats and tanks and large-scale refrigeration equipment required minimal conversion:

And finally, this next image is so oddball enough that I couldn’t not post it:

No, I have no context for this image whatsoever. But I like it.

"Beer is Back"; counting down to April 7

April 1st, 2008

April 7th is the anniversary of the modification of the Volstead Act, where beer was made legal again after 14 long years of National Prohibition. Well, legal up to a point: up to 3.2% alcohol by weight, to be exact. (That’s 4% by volume.) Not only that, but this year is the 75th anniversary of the Volstead Modification (and Repeal), and Anheuser-Busch is pulling out all the stops to celebrate with their "Beer is Back" campaign.

(An aside: April 7th was not the Repeal of the 18th Amendment, and thus Prohibition; that actually occurred on December 5th with the ratification of the 21st Amendment. Bob Skilnik has a good post on this. Therefore December 5th is "Repeal Day" and perhaps April 7th should be called "3.2 Day" or something similar…)

In fact, A-B sent me a press kit package for Beer is Back, consisting of a CD-ROM full of material, a bottle opener, and, oddly (but in a strangely cool way), both those small things came in a rather largish wooden crate—the type of crate, I’m guessing, that used to hold those old-timey bottles of beer. It’s really well constructed, with a hinged lid… check out my pictures:

I know I’ll be using it to store beer in, at the very least.

But anyway, Beer is Back… A-B is really promoting this and the CD-ROM includes things such as historic imagery, the audio of August Busch Jr.’s radio address from April 7, 1933, bits about history, and more. I actually find this rather cool because I just read Maureen Ogle’s terrific book Ambitious Brew earlier this year and loved it—I thought it was particularly eye-opening in regards to the big brewers that people love to loathe.

Incidentally, Ogle has been running a daily "countdown" of sorts on her blog leading up to April 7th, as well… good stuff.

So each day up through April 7th I’ll be posting a bit from the Anheuser-Busch package, some historic tidbits here and there (along with my regular blogging). Basically just cool things I find on the CD, and maybe more.

In the meantime, check out that crate.

Canned Beer Week: More from Bob Skilnik

February 21st, 2008

More from Bob Skilnik:

One more thing to help give you more perspective on the origins of canned beer from my latest book, Beer & Food: An American History;

Packaged Beer

On January 24, 1935, the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company in Newark, New Jersey introduced the so-called "Keglined" can. This non-returnable container, manufactured by the American Can Company, offered a number of advantages over breakable deposit bottles. Retailers and tavern owners liked them since a twenty-four-can case weighed about half as much as a case of bottled beer, took up less shelf space, were easily stackable and offered some control over employee pilferage over draft products. Beer drinkers took notice of the fact that canned beer took up less room in household refrigerators, mechanical dwarves at the time in comparison with today’s giants. For those brewers who could afford canning machines, the lighter canned beers gave them a lower-cost alternative in shipping their beers into distant markets. American Can’s efforts were soon duplicated by the National Can Company and the Continental Can Company. Although the use of these dinosaurs of beer packaging was phased out by 1970, their lasting legacy is the pointed can opener, nicknamed a "church key," that’s still employed in today’s kitchens to open some canned fruit and vegetable juices.

The cost of a canning line, however, was more than many of the smaller breweries could afford. A conical-shaped can offered an alternative for those breweries with bottling lines; the coned cans could also be run through the same lines. Regional brewery G. Heileman of La Crosse, Wisconsin was the first brewery to use conicals, with Schlitz following soon after. In addition to the newly introduced flat and coned cans, stubby-shaped, non-returnable bottles called "steinies" were introduced, lighter in weight than standard beer bottles, but still no match for cans’ retail advantages. By the beginning of World War II, packaged beer had surpassed sales of draft beer, 51.7 percent to 48.3 percent. For those breweries that had settled on the distribution of draft beer after Repeal, the continued shift to drinking at home and the introduction of these new containers now made the purchase of a bottling or canning line imperative for breweries.

Beer and War

With the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 and our treaty obligations to our allies in Europe, the war brought a two-sided front, and with it, the need again for conservation of food stuffs and raw materials at home. Nervous brewers nationwide kept a wary eye on Washington, willing to accept grain restrictions and any other reasonable sacrifices that might be asked of the industry, but ready to challenge any potential attempts by prohibitionists to once again implement a moratorium on brewing operations. The painful lessons of grain rationing during WW I and its backdoor use by drys to institute National Prohibition had not been forgotten by the brewing industry.

On March 31, 1942, the use of tin for the civilian production of beer cans was prohibited. A few months later, tin plate for crown caps was reduced to 70 percent of 1941 allotments.

Because of the shortage of bottle caps, the industry actively promoted the civilian use of the metal-conserving quart and cumbersome, half-gallon "picnic" bottles. These 64-ounce goliaths utilized a single crown cap versus five crowns for five 12-ounce bottles.

When America went to war in 1941, G.I.s found conditions much different than their Doughboy counterparts did in WW I. Beer was no longer banned on military posts as it had been in the "Great War"; it was actually encouraged. Mindful of the problems that had arisen from National Prohibition, the Feds decided in 1943 that beer was now a morale booster and decreed that all U.S. breweries must allocate 15 percent of their production for the enjoyment of the Armed Services personnel, mostly in the form of canned beer. While the packaging of beer in metal cans on the home front was prohibited, servicemen continued to enjoy canned beer while serving overseas. Many of the cans were colored in camouflage green, including the tops and bottoms. This was done to lessen the possibility that moonlight reflecting off the bottom of a can during the evening might give an alert sniper the chance to make that final swig of canned beer a G.I.’s last one.

Canned Beer Week: A gem from Bob Skilnik

February 20th, 2008

In the comments to the "Links" post yesterday, author and beer historian Bob Skilnik left a gem of a comment (actually, he was expanding on a previous comment):

I’m all for the canning of beer, for all the reasons canning came about in 1935, portability, stackability, cools down faster, lighter than bottles, etc.

But when cans first came out in the Repeal-era, those smaller breweries that had a hard enough time buying a bottling line, used to belittle canning efforts, the most frequent criticisms being that the beer tasted "tinny."

Thus was born the cone top can that could be fitted on a bottling line, saving the expense of owning a bottling and canning line. This did mute the criticisms by smaller breweries of cans because even those with a bottling line could now can their beer. At the heart of the argument was really cost, but that was deflected with criticism of cans themselves. Cone cans were a good idea except they didn’t meet the stackability requirement. Because shelf space was and is at a premium, cone cans put themselves out of business.

15-20 years ago, when the craft beer was still crawling, there were a few beer writers who criticized the canning of craft beer (the idea was always out there), using the same old arguments that were bantered about after Krueger started canning in the Repeal-era. They were the same tired arguments, including the "it taste tinny (or metallic)" argument.

In reality, the issue was cost, and a bit more. Even the WSJ article notes that there was a bit of snobbery behind NOT canning craft beer. Heck, there were even a few small craft breweries who didn’t bottle, but instead, chose draft beer as their only beer. And hindering the portability of beer can be a killer.

Why only draft? The real reason was cost again. Bottling lines and all the accompaniments are not cheap, but the argument put forth was that these breweries wanted to bring the freshest beer to their customers and draft beer was the only way to go. The argument was transparent. What it really was saying was "We don’t have enough money to really be in business." Most of them either eventually bought a bottling line or went out of business.

In the meantime, the bigger breweries, including some fine regional breweries, canned their beer successfully and developed the market for canned beer.

I chuckle now when I read glowing articles about canned craft beer. What it shows is a maturity in the craft industry. Instead of crawling, it’s now walking. But to read these articles, it’s as though these craft breweries came upon the idea all by themselves. In actuality, as back in the 1930s, the thing that has held back craft breweries from canning en masse is cost, and that annoying snobbism that says, for some reason, craft beer is beyond or above canning. If a small brewery had had enough money and a large enough market, they would have been bottling AND canning their products years ago. The fact that some craft breweries are now canning their beer shows market maturity.

Rather than denigrate the concept of canned beer, embrace it, but don’t try to reinvent it either.

I thought this was too good to try to summarize or otherwise mangle, and deserved front page exposure.

Pueblo Indian corn beer

January 3rd, 2008

Jeffrey at Wort’s Going On Here? posted a link to this article on FOXNews.com: Study: Pueblo Indians Brewed Beer From Corn 800 Years Ago. It seems familiar but it’s pretty recent (the earliest reference I can find to it is from December 6th here). The gist is that it appears that the ancient Pueblo Indians of the American Southwest brewed a corn beer, hundreds of years prior to the arrival of the Europeans.

What makes this news is the fact that historians thought the Pueblos didn’t have beer—or fermentation—at all. Archaeologists have proved otherwise via a method that should be familiar to Dogfish Head fans: using gas chromatography and mass spectrometry on ancient pottery shards to detect the existence of organic beer compounds.

So it has to be asked: will Dogfish brew a Pueblo Corn Beer? It’s right up their alley… and since I struck out on my Dogfish prediction for last year with the Irish brew, I’ll have to go ahead and make sure it’s on my list of predictions for 2008.

"Beervana" documentary on OPB

October 23rd, 2007

This is interesting: Oregon Public Broadcasting‘s "Oregon Experience" program is debuting a beer history documentary on November 5: "Beervana".

Beer brewing has a long, colorful history in Oregon. Today, Portland is known as the beer capital of the world.

Oregonians have long been enthusiastic about their beer. In 1852, beer came to the Northwest when Henry Saxer opened the Liberty Brewery at the corner of First and Davis in downtown Portland. Many came in Saxer’s wake — most notably fellow German immigrant, Henry Weinhard — to quench the thirsts of loggers, miners, fishermen and farmers who would build the region. The next installment of Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Oregon Experience series looks at the history of beer brewing in the state and at the vibrant craft beer industry that exists today. Tune in to the stations of OPB on Monday, November 5 at 9pm to find out about how the adventurous tastes of Oregonians inspired a micro-brewing movement.

It’s the craft beer of Oregon — made locally, recognized worldwide — that contributes significantly to the state’s economy and fuels a vibrant social culture in the form of numerous brew pubs. With its clean water, hops and barley production, Oregon is fertile ground for the beer industry. And with a population willing to try a range of styles and categories of beer, it’s no wonder that Portland, with more breweries than anywhere — including Germany — is now considered the beer capital of the world. With ingenuity and determination, the industry survived the temperance movement and prohibition, and now pumps over $2 billion into the state’s economy.

This documentary tells the story of this industry through compelling and amusing anecdotes from the fascinating characters of the Oregon beer community.

It’s a half hour, premiering Monday, November 5th at 9pm. If you’re in the Oregon area, check it out (on whatever your local OPB channel happens to be).

That Bronze Age Irish brew…

August 21st, 2007

By now the news about the Bronze Age Irish beer has been seen and commented on (I think Jay’s post is the most extensive), and I really didn’t have anything to add. Well, until now.

I’m wondering when Dogfish Head will get around to brewing this beer? Seriously! They already have three historic beers that they brew, doesn’t this just seem like a perfect candidate for a fourth?

There’s be some modifications to the basic procedure, of course, but they’re pretty innovative in their extreme brewing; using hot rocks in a brew couldn’t be that hard for them.

Sam, Bryan: I’d totally buy it.

In-depth history of the Rainier Beer commercials

July 17th, 2007

About a year ago I pointed to the classic motorcycle Rainier Beer commercial on YouTube (found by Jeff) and wondered a bit about some of the other Rainier commercials. Today, I got an email from Ed Leimbacher (blog), who, it turns out, was key in the development of those:

For a dozen years from 1973 to 1985, I was the official writer-producer for all the Rainier Beer ads released during that stretch of time—each year three-to-five radio ads, maybe a half-dozen TV ads, up to a dozen print ads, and whatever other support material was needed.

This is a really good read (there’s a follow-up here), worth reading in full, but I’ll post some excerpts I like:

But I want to focus on a few TV ads that gave me some extra pleasure, or headaches, or both. The Motorcycle Spot, for example, really was the all-Northwest all-time favorite. Very simple: camera looking down a straight back-country road, nothing in sight, then gradually a spot becoming a motorcycle coming straight at the camera, passing close, flash-pan to follow it tailing off toward a looming Mount Rainier—and all the while the shifting gears have been keening/singing, distantly at first, then louder and louder, "Raaaaiiiii-niiieeeerrrr… (zoom by and receding sound) Beeeeerrrrrr…"

Looked amazingly simple, but of course there was much going on behind the scene. Building the soundtrack, for example, we found that we could not stretch the words out over the full 30 seconds, had to settle for 20-plus to be understandable—which meant the visuals had to not show any bike at first. Then trying to capture the actual motorcycle shot we found that we could not pan fast enough as the bike passed, so we had to make a hidden cut during the pan. And neither the weather nor the motorcycle itself cooperated at first—we had to go out filming on three different days to get the bike actually operating properly, at a time when Mount Rainier was also visible!

And, from the follow-up post:

Our other engineering challenge was a take-off on TV spots back then that used continuous rows of toppling dominoes which, once started, would go on tipping over sequentially, flowing in some pattern for 30 seconds. We hired an engineering firm to put a slight edge-crimp on about 2600 Rainier bottle caps that we could also stand on edge in rows. These, we hoped, when toppled and sent rippling onward, would create a giant version of the somewhat calligraphic Rainier R.

I was one of the lucky sods who had to place each and every cap painstakingly into position on the 12-foot-wide translucent surface; we "cappers" often wound up lying on our stomachs and reaching down from scaffolding above to line up the ones impossible to place from outside the circle. As I recall, the caps crew put in about 30 man-hours getting set. As a result, we all rather dreaded the actual moment of shooting, because if anything went wrong… yes, 30 more hours to set up for a second take.

And of course, there’s now a ton of classic Rainier commercials on YouTube.