i went to the library of congress on saturday to see their exhibit of kodachromes from the 30s & 40s
http://memory.loc.gov/ammem/fsowhome.html
and immediately grokked the connection between this picture
http://wibles.webhop.net/toms/locFSA-OWIkodachromes/slides/blended33to1.html
and the rolling rock mystery
http://www.straightdope.com/classics/a2_044.html
perhaps cecil can further illucidate;-)
Nah, it’s how much ammo was carried in a WWII fighter pla…
Wait a minute…
wrong thread! 
Great find on that pic! I hope someone makes a more knowledgable post on it than I just did.
James Tito said it; I believe it; that settles it.
To quote an ad for Pabst from the 1940 period:
From another ad, same period(by the way, there doesn’t seem to be an ad such as this much before 1940).
Still, an interesting observation.
From Cecil’s column,
To my mind, there are two mysteries surrounding “Biere 33,” a brand well known (as “Ba Moui Ba”) to U.S. servicemen who served in Southeast Asia thirty and forty years ago [1]. The first gets to what the “33” refered to; the second gets to the belief (held by many of these same servicemen) that this brew contained appreciable amounts of formaldehyde [2].
Fixative aside, I’ve heard one somewhat plausible if slightly unsatisfying explanation for why this particular beer was named “33”: that theory holds that BGI was one of the first brewers to offer beer in 33-centiliter bottles.
That claim is repeated at http://www.beerhunter.com/askmichael1.html:
That page then goes on to say that “[t]he parent company’s registered offices in Paris were at number 33 Avenue de Wagram, but that seems to have been a coincidence.”
(And I’ve also heard that the brew was simply named for the number 33, said to be lucky in Vietnamese culture. I honestly have no idea whether that number has ever held special significance for Southeast Asians. No doubt “33” is merely a reference to the brew’s formaldehyde content . . . )
– Tammi Terrell
[1] My understanding is that Biere 33 was first produced mumble decades ago by Brasseries et Glacieres d’Indochine (BGI), an old French brewery (est. 1875) based in Vietnam and later Laos and Cambodia. (At some point after it expanded into France and Africa and pulled out of Southeast Asia, BGI eplaced “d’Indochine” with “Internationale.”) Furthermore, I understand that Biere 33 is now owned and distributed by some division of Heineken as simply “33 Export.”
[2] Gregory Clark’s Words of the Vietnam War (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 1990), which chronicled wartime slang, describes Ba Moui Ba as a
Per Rolling Rock’s world’s most annoying website, the “33” is attributed to:
Prohibition was repealed in 1933 (fun, but doubtful)
There are 33 letters summing up the letter count in the ingrediants list (maybe)
The standard 33 words on the back of the bottle (makes good sense)
and interestingly enough, the final claim is that Latrobe breweries has 33 different recipies for beer, and Rolling Rock is the 33rd.
Author and Vietnam Vet Mark Berent said in his fictionalized account of the war that Ba Moui Ba was nicknamed “Bomb Me Bad”.
33 Export is indeed still avilable.
Makes more than good sense. Makes duh! sense.
Given 33 was the age of Jesus at the crucifixion, I’m surprised no one has tried to claim Rolling Rock was served at the Last Supper.
Were any of the first 32 better than Rolling Rock?
I’d be willing to to give 1-32 a shot, if it can be arraigned with the brewery.
That is of course unless the brewmasters of old were totally incompetent and it took them 33 tries to get something that didn’t make the drinker go blind and die.
Roling Rock is the only beer I’ve tasted that I found to be “like making love in a canoe.”
Is this because you’ve never tasted Coors? Or is that you believe Coors is what’s keeping the canoe afloat.
Tammi Terrell,
At the time of my reading this, your post count is…33. Kinda weird.
She’s all that and more. 
I am going to play it safe. Just a glass of 6-up and maybe a bowl of Lieutenant Crunch.
