The Royce Files

 What is this a one post a year blog now?! No! At this rate it will be a 2 post a year blog. On to the sign. Grain Belt Premium was the beer of choice in the upper midwest. These signs were everywhere in small town beer joints across Minnesota and the Dakotas and even into Nebraska (Grain Belt had a brewering in Omaha at one time.) They might even still be there considering how slowly things change out in the boondocks. As a side note, there was a bar in my town called the Boondocks. I think they only served 3:2 beer. They did not have a sign like this.  I discovered this sign out at Bonanzaville in West Fargo on a cold weekend in December. The pioneer museum has numerous old buildings from the region on the property including a few bonanza farm houses. The Brass Rail was a saloon and hotel in Page, ND . It existed since ND became a state in 1889 but did not serve alcohol until prohibition was repealed in 1933. ND was a dry state until that time. Although, considering the larg...

  My search for this beer first led me to Canada. There was a Northern Breweries that had a presence up in Ontario. I could find nothing about their beers beside a label for an ale. They happened to be the first employee owned brewery in North America. However, after selling to an investment group that intended to revive the brand, Northern Breweries went bankrupt somewhere around 2006 or 2007. However, this Northern Breweries was a dead end for this particular label. After a little more digging, I found the Northern Brewing Company of Superior, Wisconsin. This is the brewer that produced Northern Beer amongst other labels. Northern had been around since 1890 when it was the Klinkert Brewing Company. Through some reorganization in the years following, Klinkert became Rueping and finally Northern. It was quite the prosperous operation in Superior and NW Wisconsin. They even distributed some batches to Milwaukee. Unfortunately, their fortune would begin to diminish when a bad batch...

I see these scenic Schmidt Beer cans so often but I do not think I have ever written about them. They look good afor me harken back to days of hunting and fishing in the North Woods someplace while listening to a Vikings or Twins game on the radio. Schmidt Scenic Cans from G. Heileman era As it goes with collecting not all of them are that collectible. The early flat top cans that you needed to use an opener on command the most interest. The cans I have pictured abovecome from the G. Heileman ownership time and thus  are not very valuable. One collector even said he has recycled quite a few of them.  This style of Schmidt can were first produced when it was still Jacob Schmidt Brewing (early 1950s.) Artist  Les Kouba produced the art on these early cans.  After 1954 the brewer changed hands a few times until Rainer was producing the beer in the early 90s and this type of can were still being produced. As the the decade progressed the label seems to have gone dormant...

 2020 certainly will certainly pass with no one grieving its' departure. What felt like nearly a whole decade of ordeals and intrigue and unrest, I will gladly place that volume on the backside of the bookcase never to be opened again. One hopes 2021 will not be the sequel although in some respects it could be and perhaps for years to come. The impact was a large meteorite in the groin. Methinks I rambled on too much. It is was it is. In this new covidian era, you better watch out and you better not cry, 'cause the Santa drones are coming to town. And man are they ticked!    This is quite honestly the pandemic Santa we needed- harmless and antiseptic. That is unless you believe this is the ticked off Santa drone. Then you can just stay home. Coal for you.  On to other items. Namely signs of beer. A mid-century clock promoting the beer of choice of your fathers and grandfathers if they lived up in Minnesota or the Dakotas. As a child I only recall 3 brands of bee...

It is the dead of winter and what should one do? Grab a fine winter ale while they are to be had (such as Winter's Bourbon Cask Ale .) and read a bit about what signs of beer I have found in my varied travels. The entry today takes us back to late summer and the Minnesota State Fair. O'Gara's has quite the setup now at the fairgrounds. What used to be the St. Bernard's dining hall has been transformed into pub-like beer hall with plenty of wood trimmings and signage. While on my stop there I had breakfast and not beer. Not sure what Phil would say about that. Our sign however is not of the Smithwicks or Guinness or eve the Finegan's kind. Instead it comes from the brewery known as Schell's- that claims to be the 2nd oldest family owned brewery and is the largest brewery in Minnesota. You can read the details here . Over a 150 years of brewing- surviving prohibition and the big beer aquisition era. I have sampled some Schell's but have not really set...

I was surprised to find this on my bike trip last summer. This actually was the men's bathroom mirror at the Hawk Museum campground. That spread of cold cuts and fixins certainly looked delicious after a hard day of pedaling and slogging through the rain. Canadian Ace was produced by the Manhattan Brewing Company of Chicago . So its not really Canadian beer. So I doubt Cal Clutterbuck or Sidney Crosby will be drinking it. There was also a lawsuit contending the misuse of name Canadian but I am not sure of the outcome. As it so happens Manhattan Brewering had connections to organized crime, specifically associates of Al Capone. Trying to shake their mobster owned image, Manhattan became Canadian Ace Brewing Company in 1947 ( although elsewhere I found the name changed in 1933.) They closed in 1968. I am unsure of the date of the mirror, but I guess it was somewhere between the 1940s and the 1960s. I have yet to find one of these online to compare. Most Canadian Ace collecti...

Man alive! It's December already. Once Thanksgiving come its a slippery slope to the end of year. It has been a while since I've had time to post. I still don't have time, but I will anyway. But what this post needs is pictures!  At left is my MFG (mostly Finnish girlfriend) holding a box of Lux flakes - a popular soap from yesteryear. Lux used to sponsor a few radio shows- notably the Lux Radio Theater which produced radio adaptations of current films. For some unknown reason this box was found back at my parents home. I decided to use some and I think it worked out ok. Oh and by the way I am doing a radio show of sorts on December 11. You might want to come- more info here . You won't regret it. Went swing dancing tonight. Only danced 3 times until it was over. I was just warming up by the 3rd time. There will be other times. Here's the Thanksgiving feast my family devoured. Nearly all this food was prepared by my brother in law. It tasted fantastic. My FMG j...

The end of summer may be the last time you will put away a case of Gluek's for hunting season. The regional label will no longer be produced by the Cold Spring Brewing Company down there in Cold Spring, MN (which is near Ricori, right?) The demand for craft beers was cited as reason for extinguishing Gluek's. Gluek's had been around for quite a while. Its namesake, Gottlieb Gluek, starting brewing in Minneapolis around the time of Minnesota statehood according to this history page . The Minneapolis brewery ended up being bought and then demolished by the Heileman beer giant. Gluek's brand was eventually acquired by Cold Spring Brewing in 1997. I have not experience with this beer. I have seen it in cans around town but didn't really give it much attention altough it was a regional brew. The only thing I have drank that Gluek's/Cold Spring Brewing had a hand in was Dorothy Molter Root Beer . I drink a lot of the stuff when I visit Ely, MN. Hey, Lileks has a tr...

In the first installment of this series we met up with a Hamm's Beer sign. There is still more Hamm's stuff to encounter. That is what we have here today, the lovable Hamm's Beer bear. The bear has appeared in numerous advertisements for the beer since 1952 when Patrick DesJarlait created the bruin for a commercial. The bear's name is Sascha which was the name of a wife of one of generations of Hamm's which ran the brewery on the east side of St. Paul. As Hamm's ownership changed hands over the past 2 decades the bear faded from its association with the beer. Still, Sascha is quite popular. Popular enough to have a monument in downtown St. Paul. The St. Paul Pioneer Press also named the bear as one of the 150 most influential Minnesotans of the past 150 years in 2008. The Twins's mascot, T.C. Bear , could be a relative of Sascha.  I suspect this article may have been part of a liquor store display rather than a monument that another blog ...

The Back to the 50s swap meet of a few weeks ago has many remarkable finds. None of which I purchased. I don't have room for this stuff. But the internets do. So let's begin our tour. Here we find 2 bottles of Schmidt's City Club beer, a  Whistle Beverage bottle  of some kind (I believe it is a soft drink bottle but I could be wrong), and a goblet with the mark of Pabst Blue Ribbon  (of which one is already owned in my family). Brewed in St. Paul, City Club began its life as a near-beer during prohibition. Some of my ancestors lived in the shadow of the brewery that made it along the Mississippi River. It's still there but not sure if its being used for much brewing any more. In a previous signs of beer post I wrote more on Schmidt's. A few years after prohibition, 1936 to be exact, City Club became a full blow beer. Production of the label disappeared in the 1950s. Then in 1997 the then current owner of the label and Schmidt brewery, Stroh's, decided to re...