Oregon Original Fine Ales ball cap

Came across a guy selling NOS hats at a flea market a few weeks back and since I needed to replace my garden straw hats, I picked one up for a buck or two. Liked it so much when I saw him again, I asked if he had more (the original price tag for the Paul Fredrick hat said $58.00 marked down to $29.00 ). While he was checking the truck for stock, I glanced down and among the baseball and football and college logo ball caps, I spotted this antique:



Cost me a buck - how could I resist (even though I have boxes and boxes of ball caps)?

Oregon Originals was a Boston Beer Co. brand in the late 1990s which started out as a kind of joint venture with one of his ex-brewmasters, Walter Scheurle (ex-Pabst/Blitz-Weinhard and Pittsburgh Brewing Co.) and another employee (ex-Gallo). Scheurle was working at Pittsburgh for those initial batches of SABL and was the guy Koch sent to Germany to find out if the export versions of Beck's and St. Pauli Girl were brewed with adjuncts.

Koch got a LOT of criticism from craft brewers, especially those in Oregon, particularly after he moved the brand from Oregon breweries ((Saxer and decidedly non-craft Heileman/Stroh owned Blitz-Weinhard) to Cincinnati after he bought Hudepohl-Schoenling (or maybe it was when he was still just contracting at H-S?) Koch officially apologized for the brand when he dropped it, IIRC.

But I primarily posted this because I was tired of seeing that Lemp postcard thread as the most current in "Breweriana", tho'.

 

"Priceless" ? There was a price, I said I paid a dollar for it.

Actually, I have dozens of ball caps but of late I've seldom worn them because the baseball style hat has been the preferred headgear of America's homegrown fascists. I hope to get over that soon but probably never will wear the Oregon Originals hat, because of it's historic infamy. Probably just throw it in box next to my SABL painter's hat.

 

Well, now you're confusing things. The work gloves are simply in beer boxes - not in any way "collectables". Although, in the case of my other primary collection (labor union material) I do have a pair of cool ACTWU (Amalgamated Clothing & Textile Workers Union) stamped work gloves. As for the catagory of "hats, non-ball cap" there's this dual collectable, from the Brewery Workers Union Local 161 (Detroit).