Announcement that Anheuser bottled lager beer won the premium award at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia

November 1876 announcement in the St. Louis Republican that Anheuser bottled lager beer had won the first premium award at the 1876 Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The announcement was placed by the brewery’s agent in St. Louis, rather than by the brewery directly and did not look like an explicit advertisement for the company’s products. This was in keeping with Anheuser’s broader resistance to placing commercial advertisements for his company’s beer in newspapers and instead relying on positive publicity from newspaper stories of the brewery’s success at fairs and other product tasting events to sell beer. “First Premium,” St. Louis Republican, November 10, 1876, p. 8.