According to Michael Jackson's 1982 Pocket Guide, Tiger Head was top fermented and "although hopped twice in the kettle, is fairly mild nonetheless". Some years back a few Philly brewers planned to resurrect Tiger Head and some other old Philly brands. They obtained the trademarks on some of the brands that had expired. I think that might have been shortly before Covid. I don't think that they ever got the project off the ground.
Jackson also said that Schmidt's Tiger Head was top fermented. Wouldn't cross-contamination of yeast strains be more of a danger with the wooden fermenters and storage tanks that Schmidt's used? Ortlieb's closed in early 1981 and Jackson's book came out in 1982. I don't think we can tell exactly when Jackson wrote what he did about McSorley's. Then in 1982 the GABF booklet says that McSorley's was top fermented. Maybe Schmidt's temporarily brewed McSorley's with bottom fermenting yeast (would it have been fermented in their lager fermenters?) before switching to top fermenting yeast? That GABF material looks pretty convincing to me. Slight change of subject - didn't you quote the definition of ale that was adopted by the federal government in the 1930s? It wasn't based on ale being top fermented, was it?
C. Schmidt sued Pabst for trademark violation over their Tiger on Olde English 800. (Not sure, did Pabst create that image or was it used previously by Blitz Weinhard, which Pabst bought in the late 1970s?) Below that - a pic a good friend of mine (RIP) took about 2 decades ago, in an antique shop in New England somewhere. Yeah, the initial legal definition created after Repeal did require top fermentation but, after complaints from brewers, the rule was amended to drop both the specific yeast type requirement and the minimum alcohol content limit.
Yeah, some of the nearing-50 year old info in Jackson's books is questionable. In 1977's (US ed.) World Guide to Beer, he also says about a Yuengling product: "a lively, sweetish and well-hopped, top-fermented ale called Lord Chesterfield" while Dick, Jr. told Modern Brewery Age in a 1999 interview: Jackson's first Pocket Guide corrected that. Of course, Jackson also said of Ortlieb's Neuweiler's Cream Ale that it was "beloved of Philadelphians". I'd like to the polling results on that one, circa 1975.
I don't remember a tiger on an Olde English label before Pabst bought Blitz. Schmidt should have noticed earlier too. For most of the 70s, crosstown rival Ortlieb was brewing Olde English under contract.
That looks like Wiley E. Coyote on the Olde English 800 to me. The date when the Tiger Head went into use seems to have been a moving target. When Robert Smith got the Tiger Head trademarked in 1891 he said it had been in use since 1840. Thanks for the definitions. I found some testimony that Edward Schmidt, President of C. Schmidt & Sons, and Carl Badenhausen, President of Ballantine, gave in 1938 when the new definition was being considered and I couldn't tell what was being proposed. So the definitions that you provided really help. Schmidt testified on behalf of a group of ale brewers who wanted to keep the top fermenting yeast requirement. He got into how Tiger Head was made in some of his testimony. Schmidt said that Tiger Head was about 5% abv. I think Badenhausen also wanted to keep the top fermenting requirement, but I found some of his testimony confusing. He mentioned Ballantine XXX being 5% abv and that Ballantine also made a stronger ale, which must be the IPA although he didn't call it that. The stronger ale was said to be 6%-7% abv in one place and 7%-8% in another. He sad that XXX sold much better than the other ale and that the stronger ale wasn't more than 1% of Ballantine's production. After repeal Ballantine put out both ales, and the XXX is what customers preferred. Badenhausen seemed to accept that ale could be brewed with bottom fermenting yeast, but he estimated that 95% of US ale brewers used top fermenting and he said that he had never tasted bottom fermented ale.
Oh, yeah - where did you find that? I found some but don't remember Badenhausen's. Yeah, lots of people in the industry followed the Feds lead after Repeal and usually gave alcohol content by weight (the lower figure) rather than volume. It can get pretty confusing. Some of the early post-Repeal ads for the IPA called it a "stock ale". Badenhausen and Ballantine ads often used "light ale" for the flagship XXX Ale - a brand that dated from pre-Pro era but which Badenhausen had reformulated after Repeal to duplicate the Prohibition-era Canadian cream/sparkling ales which (as Fortune Magazine in 1938 euphemistically put it) "seeped across the border" where Badenhausen had a camp in Maine. That article and a lot more Ballantine info on my P. Ballantine & Sons website (some pages have not been updated since Google changed the formatting of their sites ).
It was in a 1938 Brewers Journal that I cobbled together from google snippet views (although google calls the publication Beverage Journal). I can send it to you if you want it. Thanks! What a great site!
