July 26, 2009

Brewing With My People

Nothing to report on the brewing front (our schedules are unlikely to align in just the right way until August), but Nahum passed along an interesting/topical post from the blog of fellow brewer Amy Mittelman.

It seems Amy is enough of an expert on the intersection of Jews and brews to have been invited to give a talk on the topic for the Jewish Community of Amherst. It seems that my people were not especially into the brewing experience upon their immigration to the U.S., but that didn't stop Samuel Leibmann from starting up the Rheingold brewery in the 1850s...then some other stuff happened...then in 2008, Nahum and I got into the act. That's the story (more or less).


I'll invite you to click here to read the whole thing, but the real takeaway is that Leibmann found an audience for his beer in the same way that pretty much anyone with any product ever found their audience: he put a pretty woman's face on it. Starting in 1940, the brewery started the Miss Rheingold competition, a practice that continued for the next 25 years. L'chaim to that!

1 comment:

Unknown said...

Brian, great article! I've studied the ancient history of Jews and beer for many years, but have only limited exposure to more recent history. Thanks for posting. Did you know that Jews connection with beer goes back a few thousand years, to Abraham. It's fun stuff to research! I live in Maplewood, so perhaps we can swap beer stories over a few pints some time.