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Licence to brew
Courier Mail (Australia), By Rory Gibson
The name is Boag . . . James Boag, the mysterious beer magnate
'Tasmanian ale and beer enjoy an intercolonial fame'
DO YOU really want to know who James Boag is?
I can tell you it's not that poor sod being stalked by bunny boilers dressed in stockings and little black dresses you see on those enigmatic ads.
If ever a man needed a drink to settle his nerves it would be that fellow, given that everywhere he goes there are scary-looking chicks perving at him through keyholes or over balconies.
The suite of ads for the Tasmanian brewer's Premium beer are very stylish and you may notice there's a new lot on screens big and small. But the latest batch still doesn't answer the question that all the previous ads have posed, ``Who is James Boag?''.
Which one, you might ask, because there were three of them.
The first James Boag was a Scot, born in Paisley in 1822. In 1853 he lobbed into Melbourne with a wife and four children, took one look at the place and herded them all on to a boat bound for Tasmania. A lot of people react like that when they get to Victoria.
He went to Launceston where he was given a job by his uncle, John Fawns, who owned an enterprise called the Cornwall Brewery. It was here the family's generational link to beer and brewing started.
J. Boag II arrived a year later in 1854 and grew up to be quite the sportsman, as well as earning a tiny place in history through his military service. The Examiner newspaper reported that when Australia celebrated Federation in 1901, at midnight ``twenty-one guns boomed out the royal salute from the Launceston Artillery under Captain J. Boag''.
He had joined his father at the Cornwall Brewery upon achieving working age and the two of them honed their beer-making skills there until 1878, when James the elder became licensee of Launceston's All Year Round Hotel. James the younger went to work at another ale maker, the Cataract brewery.
The 1880s were a momentous decade for the Boags.
In 1881 the third James Boag entered the world and a bloke called Charles Button established the Esk brewery in Launceston.
In 1883 B1 and B2 form a partnership, J. Boag & Son, and bought the Esk brewery. It has been all uphill since.
Well, except that B1 had a very brief retirement. When he hit 65 in 1887 he handed over the reins to B2, but instead of happily pulling fish out of the Tamar River and bouncing B3 on his grandfatherly knees, he went to Victoria. And died. He should have known better.
B1's death in 1890 meant that he lived just long enough to see his son buy the Cornwall Brewery - where the old man had started his beer-making escapades over 35 years before - and amalgamate it with the Esk.
The Hop Isle punched above its weight in the brewing business, even then, and the Cyclopaedia (yes) of Tasmania couldn't help but crow about it when it was published in 1900:
``Tasmanian ale and beer enjoy an intercolonial fame, and are generally admitted to being infinitely superior to anything produced elsewhere in Australia.
``Climatic advantages perhaps, to a great extent, account for the superiority of the article brewed on the island, but the aid of nature would be of very little service unless those who are engaged in the industry had taken intelligent advantage of it.
``Amongst those who occupy a foremost place in the ranks of those who have earned for Tasmania the celebrity we have just alluded to are Messrs J. Boag & Son.''
Skip forward a few years to 1919 and B2 dies, leaving behind a widow, five sons, four daughters and a brewery, which is then taken over by B3, who had been learning the trade at the Tooth brewery in Sydney.
B3 was managing director of J. Boag and Son until his death in 1944 and then - shock of shocks - a Boag not called James, but George, took his seat on the board until he retired in 1976. He was the last Boag to work in the brewery, which is now owned by Philippine company San Miguel.
So who is James Boag? Well, if you do a composite of all three of them you get a picture of a man who loves a beer, because making it is all he ever does; he loves children, because he has heaps; he loves manly pursuits, because he is involved heavily in the playing and patronage of sports; and he is a no-frills kind of guy, because he likes names he can remember easily, such as James and George.
Perhaps the ad producers don't realise there were three of them and are confused by J. Boag's longevity, much the way The Phantom freaks pirates out because he seemingly never dies, only he does but a long line of sons just keep putting on the purple Speedos and pretend he hasn't.
Anyway, I must acknowledge the Boag's website (www.boags.com.au) for all that history. Very interesting stuff.
There's also a neat competition which you can enter on the site whereby you send in a photo of yourself and if you win they put your mug on a specially designed label and slap it on 52 cartons of Boag's Draught stubbies and give them to you. You also get a trip to Tassie to supervise the bottling of your beer.
Jack Holmes, 25, of Mornington in Victoria, was judged a ``most outstanding recruit'' recently.
Beer for a year, and you can drink it out of your signature bottles. Enlist at www.testerreserve.com.au.
Courier Mail (Australia), By Rory Gibson
The name is Boag . . . James Boag, the mysterious beer magnate
'Tasmanian ale and beer enjoy an intercolonial fame'
DO YOU really want to know who James Boag is?
I can tell you it's not that poor sod being stalked by bunny boilers dressed in stockings and little black dresses you see on those enigmatic ads.
If ever a man needed a drink to settle his nerves it would be that fellow, given that everywhere he goes there are scary-looking chicks perving at him through keyholes or over balconies.
The suite of ads for the Tasmanian brewer's Premium beer are very stylish and you may notice there's a new lot on screens big and small. But the latest batch still doesn't answer the question that all the previous ads have posed, ``Who is James Boag?''.
Which one, you might ask, because there were three of them.
The first James Boag was a Scot, born in Paisley in 1822. In 1853 he lobbed into Melbourne with a wife and four children, took one look at the place and herded them all on to a boat bound for Tasmania. A lot of people react like that when they get to Victoria.
He went to Launceston where he was given a job by his uncle, John Fawns, who owned an enterprise called the Cornwall Brewery. It was here the family's generational link to beer and brewing started.
J. Boag II arrived a year later in 1854 and grew up to be quite the sportsman, as well as earning a tiny place in history through his military service. The Examiner newspaper reported that when Australia celebrated Federation in 1901, at midnight ``twenty-one guns boomed out the royal salute from the Launceston Artillery under Captain J. Boag''.
He had joined his father at the Cornwall Brewery upon achieving working age and the two of them honed their beer-making skills there until 1878, when James the elder became licensee of Launceston's All Year Round Hotel. James the younger went to work at another ale maker, the Cataract brewery.
The 1880s were a momentous decade for the Boags.
In 1881 the third James Boag entered the world and a bloke called Charles Button established the Esk brewery in Launceston.
In 1883 B1 and B2 form a partnership, J. Boag & Son, and bought the Esk brewery. It has been all uphill since.
Well, except that B1 had a very brief retirement. When he hit 65 in 1887 he handed over the reins to B2, but instead of happily pulling fish out of the Tamar River and bouncing B3 on his grandfatherly knees, he went to Victoria. And died. He should have known better.
B1's death in 1890 meant that he lived just long enough to see his son buy the Cornwall Brewery - where the old man had started his beer-making escapades over 35 years before - and amalgamate it with the Esk.
The Hop Isle punched above its weight in the brewing business, even then, and the Cyclopaedia (yes) of Tasmania couldn't help but crow about it when it was published in 1900:
``Tasmanian ale and beer enjoy an intercolonial fame, and are generally admitted to being infinitely superior to anything produced elsewhere in Australia.
``Climatic advantages perhaps, to a great extent, account for the superiority of the article brewed on the island, but the aid of nature would be of very little service unless those who are engaged in the industry had taken intelligent advantage of it.
``Amongst those who occupy a foremost place in the ranks of those who have earned for Tasmania the celebrity we have just alluded to are Messrs J. Boag & Son.''
Skip forward a few years to 1919 and B2 dies, leaving behind a widow, five sons, four daughters and a brewery, which is then taken over by B3, who had been learning the trade at the Tooth brewery in Sydney.
B3 was managing director of J. Boag and Son until his death in 1944 and then - shock of shocks - a Boag not called James, but George, took his seat on the board until he retired in 1976. He was the last Boag to work in the brewery, which is now owned by Philippine company San Miguel.
So who is James Boag? Well, if you do a composite of all three of them you get a picture of a man who loves a beer, because making it is all he ever does; he loves children, because he has heaps; he loves manly pursuits, because he is involved heavily in the playing and patronage of sports; and he is a no-frills kind of guy, because he likes names he can remember easily, such as James and George.
Perhaps the ad producers don't realise there were three of them and are confused by J. Boag's longevity, much the way The Phantom freaks pirates out because he seemingly never dies, only he does but a long line of sons just keep putting on the purple Speedos and pretend he hasn't.
Anyway, I must acknowledge the Boag's website (www.boags.com.au) for all that history. Very interesting stuff.
There's also a neat competition which you can enter on the site whereby you send in a photo of yourself and if you win they put your mug on a specially designed label and slap it on 52 cartons of Boag's Draught stubbies and give them to you. You also get a trip to Tassie to supervise the bottling of your beer.
Jack Holmes, 25, of Mornington in Victoria, was judged a ``most outstanding recruit'' recently.
Beer for a year, and you can drink it out of your signature bottles. Enlist at www.testerreserve.com.au.
