Judging beer by it’s cover
Go kiss someone.
I apologize in advance for this post. It’s a holiday week, and I’m in Vermont. Access to technology is limited. Though I do have an AWESOME bar review planned for next week.
Anyway. On the flight out here, I was thinking about what to write this week. And I came up with beer. I know, weird, right?
More specifically, labels. How do beer labels affect your drinking habits? If you haven’t heard of the beer or the brewery, does the label itself have an affect? Harder to examine, but how does the art itself compare to your personal aesthetic tastes?
Obviously knowing the brewery changes your opinion, much like knowing the author of a book changes your opinion.
There are good labels. There are bad labels. There are great labels. And there are terrible labels. From personal experience, some great beer is covered by a terrible label, and vice versa. A recent Twitter conversation uncovered the following truth: “Bud is bad inside and outside the bottle.” The beer and the label just don’t do it for me.
My first night in San Diego for San Diego Beer Week, I went to a Lost Abbey art showing, where they had the original art from their labels. That was neat. Drinking a Duck Duck Gooze while looking at the oil painted canvas that the label is based off of is a pretty awesome experience. Also, I realize I mention that beer in every post. I’m ok with it. Moving on.
I honestly find Russian River’s labels to be hilarious. They’re essentially like clip art or stick figure drawings. But the beer held within is absolutely amazing. Consecration is such a basic drawing of a dagger. The beer is disturbingly good. Pliny? It’s a circle.
Flying Dog’s labels are based on Ralph Steadman’s artwork, made famous through Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. I love that theme. I don’t love all the beer. Some are great. Some are not. But the labels are always interesting.
Mikkeller has awesomely simple labels. Creatively designed blocks of text. Slight images. Simplicity is fantastic.
I’m drinking a Brooklyn Brewery Black Chocolate Stout right now. The label is boring. The beer is amazing.
There are also beers that are boring, in both label and flavor. I personally think Summit makes a decent, middle of the ground, not-at-all-exciting beer. The labels, the beer name, everything follow suit. It’s not bad beer, but it’s not great either.
I’m trying to think of a bad beer with a great label, and nothing is coming to mind. I guess Long Trail is a good example. The labels are generally classic ovals with some sort of nature-based scene held within. Not bad, but nothing special. The beer is generally great.
What are your thoughts? What are you drinking right now? How does the beer compare to the label? Have you ever bought a beer based off the label, and if so, were you pleased?
Leave a comment with your thoughts on labels, the good, the bad, the ugly, and the amazing. I’ll try to put a photo gallery type post together with examples of all extremes.
Oh, and have a great holiday. Support your local brewery, or at least your local bottle shop.
12 Comments to “Judging beer by it’s cover”
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[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by ratebeer, topsy_top20k and RateBeer Hop Press, topsy_top20k_en. topsy_top20k_en said: Fresh off the Press Judging beer by it’s cover http://bit.ly/6oP7MR [...]
Fat Cat Lager is a poor beer with a GREAT label. I saved a can simply for the artwork. The beer inside is cheap swill, but actually not too bad for a vienna lager at $8/12-pack.
Hey PJ… Welcome to my state. I hope that you enjoy your stay here. Vermont is very beautiful and relatively unspoiled, but it is not blessed with many of the amenities and services that some visitors are accustomed to… like good cell phone coverage and easy access to broadband Internet.
Contact me if you need *anything* while staying here.
–Steve K
The first Flying Dog I ever purchased was based solely on the face that the label was “cool”. Of course, I had just turned 21 so I was dying to try something other than the typical college beers. My favorite beers typically come without labels at all – poured from a growler that I picked up at my local brewery.
Good post.
I like the labels from Brouwerij de Molen because there is so much beergeek info on them. Like De Molen Rasputin: http://img706.imageshack.us/img706/5046/rasputin.jpg
I also like the style of the Hair Of The Dog labels, like Adam: http://img97.imageshack.us/img97/4541/adam05.jpg
The details always are different. Nice.
Stone has got some powerfull labels too:
http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/5395/stoneimperialrussianlar.jpg
And Brewdog’s labels are nice too:
http://img51.imageshack.us/img51/7108/largebrewdogwide.jpg
Great article PJ! Keep it up. Cheers brother!
I drank Westvleteren the other day, and although the bottles are label-less those are the mose awesome bottle caps one will see. I really like the cantillon and struise pannepot labels. I think the best case of finding cool labels with not so cool beers inside the bottle is with belgian beers. A lot of breweries try to be the real deal without backing it up with much more than sweet brown syrup. On the awful-label-but-good-beer side I would have Great Divide up there somewhere on the list.
Personally I find the Chimay labels terrible looking. In fact, first time I ever saw it I thought it’d probably be some lower-class Indian beer… how wrong I was.
I bought London Porter for the first time based on the label – no regrets there, as it went on to become one of my all time favourites.
[...] few weeks ago I talked about judging beer by it’s cover. I thought it would be fun to look at some labels that people suggested were really good or really [...]
http://ratebeer.com/beerimages/66856.jpg – great can, bad beer (3rd percentile at ratebeer)
[...] Phill and I needed one more each, however. He ordered Malheur 10 the and I had a bottle of Westmalle Tripel. Both were tasty, though I liked the Westmalle much more. It’s just a great Trappist ale. I personally didn’t like the label on the Malheur; it reminded me of Summit’s branding, which I’m not a huge fan of either. I’m a huge fan of the Westmalle label. But, since we don’t judge beer by it’s cover… [...]
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