Brewery

October 29

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , , ,

What was advertised in a revolutionary American newspaper 250 years ago today?

Pennsylvania Evening Post (October 29, 1776).

“Different kinds of beer, as usual, equal in quality to any in this city.”

Francis Wade was back in business and he wanted the public to know it!  In late October 1776, the brewer began running advertisements in the Pennsylvania Evening Post that both acknowledged that his “absence for some time past obliged him to shut up his brewery” in Philadelphia and announced that he “has began to brew for the season.”  In early November, he inserted the same advertisement in the Pennsylvania Gazette in his effort to increase his market penetration by reaching more prospective customers.

Wade did not explain his absence, nor did he give directions to his brewery.  Perhaps he assumed that “his former customers and others that are disposed to make trial of his beer” knew where to find him.  For several months in late 1774 and early 1775, he ran advertisements that directed “his old country customers” to his new location at the corner of Fourth and Race Streets.  Perhaps Wade believed that his brewery became such a familiar location once he established himself there that he did not need to elaborate on his location, despite his recent absence and suspension of production.

Now that Wade’s brewery was operating again, he hoped that his former clientele and new customers would purchase the “different kinds of beer” offered there.  He pledged that all of them were “equal in quality to any in this city,” putting him in competition with other brewers that included Robert Hare and his Best American Draught Porter.  He claimed that customers could expect such quality “as usual,” suggesting that he believed his beer already earned that reputation and he wanted consumers to recall that was the case.  Even if he exaggerated, Wade stood to benefit from such puffery.  Prospective customers who had never tried his beer, he may have reasoned, might find such assertions convincing when they contemplated “mak[ing] trial of his beer” in their own homes or serving it in their taverns.

October 25

Carl Robert Keyes Daily Advert Update , , , ,

What was advertised in a colonial American newspaper 250 years ago today?

South-Carolina Gazette (October 25, 1773).

“Let the Beer justify itself.”

As October 1773 came to a close, Edmund Egan promoted his “CAROLINA BEER” in the South-Carolina Gazette and the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal.  The prospects of this new product hitting the market excited the compositor for the South-Carolina Gazette enough to enclose the headline within a border of decorative type, distinguishing it from all other news and notices in the October 25 edition.  The headline did not receive the same treatment in the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, though in both publications it had a prime spot at the top of the column in a section for “New Advertisements.”  Readers could hardly miss it.

To incite demand for the beer, Egan told a story about it.  He began by declaring that the “BREWERY … long laboured under many Disadvantages,” but Egan overcame them and the brewery “is now complete, and amply supplied with a Stock of the best MALT and HOPS.”  In so doing, the brewer crafted a narrative that only briefly focused on resilience in the face of adversity before extolling the factors that made his beer such a quality beverage.  Egan cited his own “unwearied Application” in launching the brewery as well as his experience and his “first Connection in London,” perhaps where he learned “the most regular Principles” of his craft.

South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal (October 26, 1773).

All of that led Egan to assert that he would produce a “constant Supply of BEER and ALE … equal to any imported from any other Country.”  He also suggested that consumers should not take his word for it.  Instead, he proclaimed, “Let the Beer justify itself.”  That declaration appeared in italics in both the South-Carolina Gazette and the South-Carolina Gazette and Country Journal, suggesting that Egan did indeed instruct the compositors in both printing offices to give it some sort of special treatment to make it stand out from the copy in the rest of the notice.  The brewer did not need to say anything else about his “CAROLINA BEER.”  He could not say anything else that would be a better recommendation than consumers drinking his beer and ale and experiencing it for themselves.  “Let the Beer justify itself” simultaneously resonated as an affirmation, an invitation, and a challenge.  Egan was confident that customers would not be disappointed.