D oes the enjoyment of craft beer go hand-in-hand with a generally creative disposition? It’s a question I’ve asked myself on many occasions and, at the time of writing, I’m of the opinion that the answer is a resounding ‘yes’‚ based almost exclusively on the plethora of beautiful labels that adorn the best beers in the world. It seems perfectly logical that a revolution in taste has been accompanied by a revolution in label design, with designers and illustrators pushing the humble packaging of beer in exciting new directions, creating images that are as much works of art as the beers they grace.

As a designer myself, I am perhaps biased in my appreciation of beer labels. I’d go as far as to admit that my enjoyment of beer is intrinsically tied to the design of its label: an excellent beer could have a visually unappealing label, of course, but I’m not sure such a beer would make the list of my all-time favourites. Nor could an inferior ale be saved by its artwork alone. For me, as a discerning designer and dedicated drinker, my enjoyment of a beer is a combination of its taste and its presentation. And who can afford to discard the artwork of the label when so much care has been invested in its creation? Think twice before you recycle your next bottle. Perhaps it could live out the rest of its days on your shelf‚ emptied of its contents, yes, but still reminding the drinker of the pleasures it once contained.

Hot Rum Cow asked me to select eight of my favourite beers that combine incredible taste with equally incredible design, in a nod towards the premise of 8 Faces, the magazine I founded, in which I ask designers to name their eight favourite typefaces; those they really could not afford to live without. Deciding on my eight beers has been challenging and I have, of course, favoured those with the fancier labels; The Kernel, for instance, doesn’t make an appearance despite my love for their beers and their rather daring anti-design. I’ve also included a few different countries for variety’s sake, as well as selecting labels that have little in common with each other. So, while these aren’t necessarily eight beers and eight labels I couldn’t live without, they certainly represent a selection of fantastic breweries, who care as much about visual presentation as they do about the beer.

St. Lupulin Extra Pale Ale

Brewed by: Odell Brewing Co.
Style: American pale ale
Country of origin: USA
Label designed by: tbd Advertising
ABV: 6.5%

Each of Odell’s beers is adorned with a label as beautiful as the liquid within, in a style that is very much their own. Drawing influence from the style of Art Nouveau and combining it with something closer to a traditional woodcut, Odell’s labels suggest a classic sophistication. It’s hard to pick a favourite and each is beautifully hand-lettered, but their summer-season brew, St. Lupulin, does an excellent job of weaving myth into Odell’s brand. The illustration depicts St. Lupulin, ‘who devoted endless summers to endless rows of hops’. For an extra pale ale, it’s neither as high in alcohol nor as intensely hop-forward as one might expect (their minimally titled ‘IPA’ handles those duties), although the hops here are particularly piney on the nose. There are plenty of citrus notes in the taste‚ orange especially‚ and it’s easy to see why this works as a summer beer.

Heirloom Pumpkin Barleywine

Brewed by: Almanac Beer Company
Style: Barleywine
Country of origin: USA
Label designed by: Damian Fagan
ABV: 12%

It will come as no surprise that the editor of a typography magazine would include such a type-tastic label in his top choices. Almanac’s ‘Farm to Barrel’ range of beers all sport effectively the same label, with a smaller label near the bottom of the bottle, dedicated to specific details. But what an incredible main label that is! With the ‘Farm to Barrel’ brand emblazoned in huge condensed type, variable-sized type around a woodcut-esque tree illustration, ninety-degree shifted blackletter logotype, and intertwined illustrative features, one could accuse the label of being overly busy, but the end result is far more refreshing. There is no concept of ‘front’ or ‘back’ here. Instead we have a bottle that deserves turn after turn. The beer shares the label’s complexity, but also its surprising balance. The sweet, syrupy characteristics of barleywine are infused with strong notes of pumpkin spices and the autumnal flavours of cinnamon and nutmeg. Then comes the unmistakable vanilla and oak from the brandy barrel-ageing. Made for sipping.

Broken Dream Breakfast Stout

Brewed by: Siren Craft Brew
Style: Stout
Country of origin: UK
Label designed by: Voyage Design
ABV: 5.6%

Siren is a relatively new British brewery and certainly the youngest on this list. Its core range of beers is each named after a mythological siren, and each label focuses on the bespoke illustration produced for these beautiful but dangerous women, created by Voyage Design. They are all wonderful pieces of monochromatic art in their own right, with their almost-monolinear linework and (again!) a strong influence of Art Nouveau. The stark white ink is the only colour that exists on the label besides the branded colour for each beer‚ in this case, a pale red‚ with the transparent sticker letting through the dark colour of the bottle and the beer. As a stout, this is, of course, a particularly dark beer, but with an unexpected level of smokiness that’s complemented well by hints of chocolate and coffee.

Ninkasi

Brewed by: The Wild Beer Co.
Style: Belgian-style saison
Country of origin: UK
Label designed by: Miller Design
ABV: 9%

The Wild Beer Co‚ located just down the road from me in lovely Somerset‚ is another new-ish British brewery, founded by two former employees of the Bristol Beer Factory. Their own beers are more experimental than those of their previous employer and all harness the unpredictable nature of wild yeast‚ hence the name. Their branding is extremely strong: the only difference between each bottle‚ where the ink is thermal-printed directly onto the glass‚ is the colour of the stags in their logo and of course the beer’s name, set in the script typeface. As such, it’s difficult to pick a favourite design, but perhaps the Ninkasi takes the award thanks to its bottle (available only in 75cl size), which is sealed with a distinctive white wax. Its appearance certainly adds to its description as a ‘celebration beer’.

As Follows

Brewed by: Stillwater Artisanal Ales
Style: Belgian strong ale
Country of origin: USA
Label designed by: Lee Verzosa
ABV: 9%

Adorned with illustrations of goth-pleasing, skull-tastic, twisted fairy-tale scenes, each label from Stillwater is a joy to behold, and one can’t help but wonder if a mysterious narrative is unfolding before our eyes. The only things I like more than the labels themselves are the six-pack carriers, which strip the artwork of its colour and present the scenes in black-on-brown, like pages torn from a gothic fable. What continually impresses me about Stillwater beers is their blend of styles. Their saison, for instance, tastes like a distant cousin of a pumpkin beer. With their As Follows (an ‘Eschatological ale’), they put their distinctly American stamp on a strong Belgian ale, offering up a slightly more floral beer than might be found in the Old World. This wonderful, yeasty golden ale is surprisingly drinkable for a nine percenter.

Final Frontier DIPA

Brewed by: To Øl
Style: Imperial IPA
Country of origin: Denmark
Label designed by: Kasper Ledet
ABV: 9%

Danish brewery To Øl’s labels are distinct because they don’t really look like beer labels; they have much more in common with graphics seen in mainstream advertising campaigns. Not only are they heavy on photography, but they utilise additional labels that appear at the top of the bottle, foregoing small print for more of their abstract imagery. Designer Kasper Ledet, in his portfolio piece on To Øl’s label design, says: “The idea is to have a logo as the anchor of the identity and then approach the rest very openly and fluently. There are no specific rules, no manual and no style guide. I think of my work for To Øl as a continuous exploration. A journey.” Once again, we have a brewery whose beers and designs make it very hard to pick a winner, so I’m opting to go with my general preference for strong IPAs. The Final Frontier DIPA is a big beer, but the alcoholic strength is well balanced. Similarly, the typical grapefruit-esque bitterness is balanced with the caramel-like sweetness of the malt.

Humala IPA

Brewed by: Nómada
Style: IPA
Country of origin: Spain
Label designed by: Cristian Bravo
ABV: 7.3%

It’s refreshing to see a number of excellent craft beers coming out of Spain in recent years, and the Humala IPA from Nómada is one such beer brewed in the recent American tradition: full of hops and not afraid of alcoholic strength. The hop intensity gives the beer plenty of the bold grapefruit aromas and flavours you’d expect from a craft IPA. The label is what sets it apart, though: an angelic cat flies through the night with a hop in its paws. The story behind this image is unclear, but it’s as playful as all of Nómada’s designs and sure to raise a smile. As with several beers here, the body of the label sticker is transparent in order to make the deep brown bottle colour its background. It’s a technique that offers an easier, cheaper alternative to thermal-printing directly onto the glass.

Human Cannonball

Brewed by: Magic Rock Brewing
Style: IPA
Country of origin: UK
Label designed by: Richard Norgate
ABV: 9.2%

For the last beer in my list, let’s continue with the strong IPAs. Human Cannonball is something of a sequel to Magic Rock’s Cannonball: a double IPA weighing in at 9.2%, whereas its single IPA predecessor sports a comparatively weak (ha ha) 7.4%. Stronger and more intense still is the Un-human Cannonball‚ a triple IPA at 11%‚ but personally I feel that the sweet spot lies with the double: Human Cannonball achieves an incredible balance of hoppy bitterness with fruity and sometimes woody notes. Like all of Magic Rock’s beers, the label is based around the same (but colour-alternated) circus-themed illustration, although I’ve found myself noting how well that translates into their circular on-tap emblem.

---

Elliot Jay Stocks is the Creative Director of Adobe Typekit, founder of typography magazine 8 Faces, and co-founder of Viewport Industries, the publishers of Digest magazine. He lives and works in the countryside just outside Bristol, England, with his wife and their dog.

www.elliotjaystocks.com | @elliotjaystocks

---

---