Origins
(1851-present as Sapporo Brewery)
Where did it originate, and when?
John. H Sleeman eventually founded a brewery down on Waterloo Avenue in Guelph, known as the Silver Creek Brewery. The article displays the initials of George Sleeman indicating that the labels were created after the retirement of John. H Sleeman from the business, sixteen years after the opening of the Silver Creek Brewery. The XXX Porter beer label was developed after 1867 as that was when George Sleeman was the new manager of Silver Creek (Kidd, 2005).
How did it circulate?
George Sleeman was greatly entrepreneurial in sports. He loved baseball and when the game was introduced to Guelph in 1863, he sponsored (and occasionally pitched for) an amateur baseball team named after his brewery, the Silver Creek Club. He also advertised his beer, “Sleeman’s lager is the best on the continent” in the turf club’s racing programs, he also donated trophies to the curling club, the rifle association, and the Thanksgiving Day road races. (Kidd, 2005)
Where and how was it made?
Unfortunately, during my research on this article I haven't been able to find where the beer labels would actually be produced in as there isnt much given on the production organisation anywhere on my article. However, the labels must have been made by some type of labeling machine. Although I do not have the exact machine they used, I have some idea of the technological instruments they would have used using the information that XXX Porter is made after 1867.
The German Imperial Register of Patents of 1895 listed a “bottle labeling appliance” which facilitated the gripping of the labels by hand and there was also a “label attaching machine” patented in the USA in 1897 which was considered to be quite technologically advanced.
The photos below are some examples of pictures of what the machines may have looked like.
(Schmidt, 1894)
From what?
The material of the beer label would have been paper. According to (Master Brewers Association of the Americas [MBAA] ,1982) quality paper labels are judged by a multitude of factors; smoothness, weight, strength, stiffness, cost, density, caliper, behaviour in caustic soda solutions, curl characteristics and the uniformity of the product from the paper mill. The paper used usually consists of 42 to 55 pound stock. The application of under or over coating and inks will increase paper weight and stiffness of the label.
Two types of adhesives may have been used to label, casein or resin. Most likely to have used Casein adhesives for labelling as resin in newer and more modern, resin doesn’t really fit in the time frame of when the article was made (MBAA, 1982).