Beer-collectible nuts to descend on city

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Phil Mandzuk, Winnipeg's top beer-collectible maven, with some of his favourite items. (BORIS.MINKEVICH@FREEPRESS.MB.CA)

Steen Borup-Nielsen had no idea when he took home his first beer coaster back in 1955 that it would lead to a lifelong passion and one of the world's largest collections.

Virtually every night, while serving in the Danish army more than a half-century ago, he and his fellow soldiers would go out for a couple of beers when they were stationed in Germany. Before they went home, he would put a few coasters in his pocket as keepsakes. Twenty years later, after realizing he had accumulated more than 25,000 coasters from beers around the world, he took up the hobby in earnest. Today, his collection tops 140,000 and he estimates it is the third- or fourth-biggest around the globe.

"I travel the world to pick up coasters," he said.

He estimates there are more than 250,000 unique coasters representing beers from around the world. Sometimes the difference between two seemingly identical coasters is as minute as a change in the brewery's telephone number.

Borup-Nielsen, who flew in from his homeland this week, will be one of more than 60 delegates at this weekend's national convention for the Collectors of Canadian Brewery Advertising (CCBA) at the Viscount Gort hotel. The highlight will be a buy, sell and trade show Saturday morning, according to Bill Wright, a member of Great White North Brewerina, a local beer collectors' club, which is hosting the convention.

"It's a collectors' flea market," he said, noting there will be 20 tables featuring a wide array of items such as bottles, cans, lighters, bar taps, matchboxes, poker chips, playing cards, dice, lighters, salt and pepper shakers, golf tees and balls, thermometers and broom holders.

"Beer companies will advertise on just about anything," Wright said.

Wright also hopes former employees -- or their relatives -- of long-closed microbreweries such as Drewry's Brewery, Kiewel's Brewing and Pelissier Brewing will visit the convention and bring old photos, memorabilia and stories to help him research a book he's writing on Manitoba's illustrious beer history, which dates back to Lower Fort Garry in the 1830s.

"There are a lot of really great stories that need to be told," he said.

One that is guaranteed a few pages is how local breweries bootlegged beer during Prohibition in the early 1900s. They would send out shipments of beer with labels marked "non-intoxicating" to other provinces -- a loophole allowed them to brew and export beer even though they couldn't sell it locally -- so it would make it past border inspections. But special marks on the bottle would alert the recipient which bottles contained alcohol and which ones didn't.

The granddaddy of all Manitoba beer collections belongs to Phil Mandzuk. (If you doubt his legendary status, Half Pints Brewery's Phil's Pils recipe was named in his honour.) Walls, showcases and shelving units on all three floors of his home are adorned with beer paraphernalia. He has more than 300 beer taps, 200 bottles (ranging from the late 1800s to the 1960s), and countless serving trays, glasses, bottle openers and other items.

"Anything you can name we look for as long as it has a Canadian beer name on it," he said.

Mandzuk's specialty is Manitoba beer memorabilia prior to the big breweries moving into Winnipeg in the early '60s. And while he has acquired much of his collection from traditional means, such as going to trade shows and swapping items with other beer aficionados, some items made their way into his collection in the most unusual ways. For example, a bottle from Crown Brewery, which lasted for just a couple of years after launching in 1911, was given to him after being found in the wall of a local apartment block during a late 1980s renovation.

"I've been a collector all my life. When I was four years old, I kept everything. I started out collecting soft drink bottles but eventually beer seemed more interesting," he said.

Borup-Nielsen, who was sifting through "swap boxes" of coasters in Mandzuk's basement Thursday afternoon -- he added more than 300 to his collection -- said his treasures would never be used for their intended purpose if you were to visit his home for a beer.

"You don't put water on them," he said, almost scoldingly. "But I have enough doubles of no value to keep you happy."

geoff.kirbyson@freepress.mb.ca

Republished from the Winnipeg Free Press print edition August 7, 2009 B2