Ballantine IPA

Appreciate the correction; I just gained a bunch of respect for the Phillies. If there is one thing about the Phillies I can relate to it's our mutual disliking of the Yankees.

Cheers

 

Latrobe was pretty small in the 50's (~ 250k) and still pretty local to western PA/Pittsburgh - probably couldn't afford sponsoring a team in one of the major markets at the time.

Schmidt of Phila. does seem more of a "natural" - the largest in the state, approaching 2M bbl. And eventually did become the Phillies sponsor right before the era when AB became the primary TV sponsor of almost every MLB team IIRC. (No idea these days with cable sports and national networks)

And, like many teams, local brewers did advertise on other team media, like Ortlieb (#2 in Phila., and around twice the size of Latrobe in the 50s) on the rear scorecard in the '50s.

(But Ballantine's ale and beer was big in Phila. and the rest of PA - and there's an interesting story that links the brewery with the eventually owner (and ex-con) of Schmidt's...)

 

Very interesting as always. Thank you for the info.

Ortlieb's was known as "The Wet Beer", huh? What a genius marketing slogan. Maybe this was a like a sarcastic jab at the whole "dry beer craze"? Speaking of which, I noticed they owned Rheingold for a while (The Dry Beer) so I wonder if there is any connection there. Rheingold was a family favorite (or so I'm told....my Dad's side of the family settled Newark).

What ended up happening to Schmidt's of Philly, anyway? Clearly they closed shop because the brewery is now a big apartment/retial complex. Wiki's article isn't all that informative. I always wondered if they shared any relationship to the Pabst-owned brand we know today (those Scmidt's cans/bottles with the wildlife on them)

 

Yeah, briefly. By my era, it was "Joe's Beer", after Joe Ortlieb the final owner. I didn't get Phila. TV or paper (where apparently he was featured in commercial and print ads) so the first time I saw that on the can, I though "WTF is "Joe"? and figured it mean "Joe Sixpack" (not the columnist, either).

Nope, that - the actual "dry beer" process - didn't come along for a few more decades but I took it as a play-on-words joke aimed at Rheingold and other beers labeled dry.

Schmidt bought the Rheingold labels in the late 1970s when they shut down their final brewery in Orange, and wound up selling some off (McSorley's to Ortlieb, the old Esslinger brand to The Lion) but no direct connection between Ortlieb and Rheingold, at least until the both became Schmidt brand when Ortlieb shut down a few years later.

Same thing that happened to every other large regional, more or less. Tried to compete with the national macros, tried to growth by acquisition of breweries (Cleveland, Norristown, even getting involved but failing when Pabst and [IIRC?] Schaefer were on the market) and buying up numerous brands from closed breweries like Scheidt, Duquense, Koehler, Reading, Rheingold, POC, etc., came out with new beers and "styles" (malt liquors, revived some ales like Tiger Head and 20th Century Ale and continued McSorley's, came out with an early low alcohol beer called PACE), did some contract brewing for some early craft brewers and even a version of Red Stripe - but eventually had to throw in the towel by the late 1980s, and sold out (labels only) to Heileman.

 

The brewery closed in 1987. I went to college in Philly (Drexel) and I knew some Chem E's that cooped at Schmidt's - they were able to purchase kegs of Schmidt's at employee prices (damn cheap!).

Cheers!

 

The other brewery (from MN) is Schmidt (notice the lack of an apostrophe). Those beers are now a Pabst (brewed by MillerCoors) beer.

Cheers!

 

I only ever saw it once around here and never tried it but wish that I did.

 

No relationship originally (there were also Schmidt-branded beers and breweries in Indiana and Detroit after Repeal, and countless probably before Prohibition). Heileman bought the MN Schmidt brand and brewery in the early 1970's when the Associated Brewing Co. closed up and sold off their breweries and brands, so Heileman wound up by the 1990s owning both Schmidt's of Phila. and Schmidt and, as they slowly collapsed they "merged" the brands together.

But, interestingly enough, while Heileman brewed one for the MN market in La Crosse, WI (they'd sold the St. Paul brewery to start-up Minnesota Brewing Co. along with the Grain Belt label by then) and brewing the other in Baltimore or the northeast Schmidt's market, at the former Carling brewery, they claimed that while the packaging and names were combined the beers' "tastes" (recipes) remained different . That could imply that the old industry claim that packaging cost more than ingredients for the AAL macro breweries, I guess.

 

I noticed that this ad purportedly from 1910 mentioned the use of Bohemian hops for the XXX Ale. I wonder if it's possible that they were using at least some Bohemian or Bavarian hops for the IPA in the immediate post-repeal period?

 

The Badenhausen brothers, the new post-Repeal primary owners and heads of the brewery hired a new UK-trained masterbrewer who had worked at Dow and Molson in the 1910-20s and together they designed a new beer for their flagship, using the pre-Pro "XXX Ale" name.

Ballantine typically referred to it as a "light ale" (rather than the more common "cream ale" or "sparkling ale")- in a 1938 Fortune magazine article describing it as based on "certain very light Canadian ales" of the US Prohibition era that had "seeped across the border" (not sure that's how it worked in the 1920s but anyway...) - no mention of the source or type of hops, but, sure, they may have been imported European hops at some point, but all the later info on the hops* used by Ballantine up until closing does not mention imported hops in any of their beers.

An undated (1940-50s) brewery handout notes only that "...the hops used in brewing beer are not exactly the same type used in brewing ale. The hops used in each brew are grown in different areas of the United States to obtain the precise flavor characteristic of each brew".

 

... Amazing o_o Is this all from memory?

 

I think I heard this morning one guy mentioning Goose Island has a set up at CBP, how is that?

 

Nothing like credible sources and good research to help educate the masses.

 

Yeah, well, I'm sorta a "reliable source" guy (and even then, will often use qualifiers like "according to/based on..." - Hey, I wasn't there ).

While I wouldn't be surprised at all if Clusters were part of the hopping of BIPA at some point since as we know, after Repeal into the 1950-60s, Cluster hops ("Late" and "Early") made up the vast majority of hops grown in the US. I just have no source at all to back it up, as I do for the hopping history I noted above in posts #37 + #50.

In fact, I have never (that I remember ) found any ad or even company promo material from any brewer in the US that specifically notes the use of Clusters during the period in question (Repeal up to the Craft era), although one might assume that brewers’ mentions of "(New York) State Hops" "Yakima hops" “Yakima Valley” “Yakima Seedless” or “Sacramento Valley” hops were likely Clusters – especially since other US grown hops were referred to as “Yakima Goldings”, "Fuggles" "Bullions" and, of course given the OP's topic, "Brewer's Gold". Even more common in US ads and some of the recipes that survive is the more general "domestic hops" or sometimes "American hops".

Only with the rise of the "craft breweries" and, probably not just coincidentally, the creation and release of more US hop varieties, did brewers start specifically mentioning using Clusters. Here's a few examples, from the 1982 GABF program (when pre-craft era brewers' beers still made up a majority of entries):

Augsburger (Huber) -“a complex blend of Cluster, Cascade, Hallertauer and Spalt hops”
Christian Moerlein (Hudepohl)– “a blend of Yakima Valley Clusters and German Hallertauer hops”
Rainier Ale (Heileman) – “Yakima Valley highly bitter Cluster hops in both kettle and dry-hopping phrases”
River City Dark – “A blend of one-third Spalt, one-third Tettnanger, and one-third Cluster hops are used in the boil."
Sierra Nevada Pale Ale – “Cluster, Cascade, and Tettnanger hops.”
Sierra Nevada Stout – “Norther Brewers, Cluster, Cascade and a new hop variety from the Pacific Northwest, Galena.”

Even Yuengling, which now specifies "Cluster hops" called theirs only "Yakima Valley hop pellets" for Chesterfield Ale and Porter.

 

Interesting! I never saw an early recipe for SNPA. They presently solely use Cascade to brew that beer.

The fact that Cluster hops are listed for the 1982 version does not surprise me since utilizing Cluster for bittering was typical for US breweries 'back in the day' but I am bit surprised to see that Tettnanger was used.

Cheers!

@SierraTerence

 

I wish I knew as much about beer in the early 70’s as I know now. Drank Newark brewed BIPA a few times but did not respect it. It was guzzled down like it was an AAL. All that is remembered is a very powerful aroma, a heavy body and it being very bitter by the standers of that time.
Any time I shared a SNPA with my father e would claim it reminded him of Ballantine IPA.

 

Grossman is also quoted in a May '83 article in Brewers Digest:

What has always puzzled me is M. Jackson's Pocket Guide [1982] SN entry:

Typo? Wrong info? Reference to the lower ABV "Draught Pale Ale"?

 

I thought the chapter on the marketing of hops from The Hop; Its Culture and Cure, Marketing and Manufacture was interesting in describing the terms used to market American hops by the turn of the century. You had the grading system of fancy, choice, prime, medium or poor (or common), then the origin which could be very broad or very narrow, and the year of the crop. The author makes the point that the same hops grown in a particular area of California might be known in the trade as either "American", "Pacific Coast", "California", "Russian River", "Sonoma" or a Healdsburg hop. None of which were varietal names. So if an east coast brewer was buying choice Pacific Coast hops from the 1904 harvest, or fancy Russian River hops from the 1905 harvest, they would likely not have known themselves what the varietal name was. There was probably a gradual shift over time over to the buying of hops on the basis of varietal name as opposed to geographical origin, but I wouldn't be surprised if much of the domestic hops were bought and sold on the basis of the grading system, geographical origin and harvest year for quite some time after the turn of the century. With imported hops you had the world renowned names such as Saazer and Spalter, and to an extent Hallertauer, and the renown was reflected in the price of those hops.

On a slightly related note Al Haunold made an interesting point about German hops imported to the US in the 1970s (starting at 12:48):

 

Yeah, I've been making a random list of hop names (gotta add a few of those to the list), most of which were used only among the hop growers and researchers- at least the breweries themselves never use most of them.

Damn, I thought I had an article describing the post-Repeal PNW hop quality rating system but can't locate it now..

 

I will not buy any German Hops just labeled Hallertau for my homebrewing. Those can be anything, usually Hallertau Gold.

If I want Hallertau Mittelfrüh, the package has to say that