Old Fashioned Select Beer Cone Top Can

Old Fashion Select Beer Cone Top

This 12-ounce high-profile cone top container represents mid-century regional packaging from Montana. Framed between two diagonal metallic gold bands across a vivid green body, the label prominently displays Old English gothic script reading "Old Fashion" set above "SELECT BEER." Centered directly above the brand typography is a serrated starburst medallion encasing an intertwined "BBC" monogram. The upper diagonal band features a mandatory alcohol statement declaring "THIS BEER DOES NOT CONTAIN MORE THAN (4%) OF ALCOHOL BY WEIGHT," while the lower band identifies the manufacturer as "BILLINGS BREWING CO., BILLINGS, MONT."

Old Fashion served as the primary flagship label for the Billings operation across several decades. The brand was marketed on the foundation of local pride and ingredient purity, emphasizing mountain-fed brewing water that the company claimed surpassed the resources available to distant national competitors. To boost visibility across its home market, the brewery deployed striking novelty promotions, including a customized promotional automobile shaped like a giant beer bottle. Paired with the audacious regional slogan "The Beer That Makes Milwaukee Jealous," Old Fashion established a dominant presence in taverns and grocery shelves throughout eastern Montana.

The Billings Brewing Company was founded at the turn of the twentieth century by Henry Mueller and Louis P. Best in Billings, Montana. The plant quickly grew into an industrial fixture in the bustling railway hub. Like many regional producers across the American West, the brewery was forced to shut down alcoholic beverage production when statewide and national Prohibition took effect. Following the repeal of the Eighteenth Amendment in 1933, the company resumed operations and modernized its packaging lines to adopt canned distribution. However, post-war market pressures and intense competition from expanding national shipping breweries eventually led the independent facility to close its doors permanently in 1952.

Cans from the Northern Rockies hold enduring significance within breweriana collecting, documenting the independent brewing landscape that once thrived across the American West. With its distinctive graphic layout, localized alcohol declaration, and Western heritage, this piece serves as a classic relic from Montana's mid-century brewing era.