England’s Alexander Newell is credited with bottling the first beer. He did not own a brewery; he just liked to fish and drink. He would have the local tavern fill a used medicine bottle with his favorite ale, then bury the bottle in the mud on the riverbank or tie it off to dangle in... View Article
Madison Avenue does its best to have us believe that the brewing industry continues to roll out new products. The fact of the matter is that breweries are better recyclers than they are inventors. The “new” categories created by today’s beer marketers are largely reruns of past product introductions. As the cable TV industry tries... View Article
Beer bottle labels since Prohibition have more importance than a simple mention in that Sheryl Crow song. Labels are a great way to trace a brewery’s lineage, as the part on the label that includes the brewery’s name and city is mandatory. For example, brands like Ballantine, Pabst, Hamm’s, Black Label, Stroh’s, Blatz, Schlitz and... View Article
One of America’s most talented and funny radio personalities in the 1950s was a beer drinker. Rege Cordic proved this every morning in Pittsburgh, PA. This pioneering genius of the theatre for the mind loved a good spoof and created a once non-existent brew known as Olde Frothingslosh.
A long-time collecting friend and labelologist, Bob Kay has taught me ways to trace brewing history from a simple piece of paper. Most beer bottles contain a neck as well as a body label; some more elaborate packages contain back and shoulder labels or even a foil neck wrap. They are all sources of information,... View Article
Many collectors, cursed with a lack of space for their treasures, follow the path of least resistance. These collectors acquire and preserve various small paper items issued by breweries, such as menu sheets, stock certificates and stationery. Breweriana collectors are true historians of the Mellow Nectar, and one of the greatest ways to research, record... View Article
In this holiday season filled with the opening of gifts, a little history on the opening of beer bottles is in order. As long as breweries have been packaging beer, inventors have been tinkering with ways to release the contents. Many inventive ways to keep the beer in the bottle were tried before 1892, when... View Article
As a collector of beer memorabilia, I’ve many times had novices ask me, “What’s the oldest piece in your collection?” My guess would be some of the embossed bottles from the 1800s.
One segment of breweriana collecting that has seen tremendous growth is items from the British Isles. The demand for glassware, pub towels, bar mats (coasters), ashtrays and draft equipment is on the increase. I attribute the interest and demand to the increasing number of British beer imports into the United States and the number of... View Article
