• Creative Design

Beer: Taste Or Marketing Course?

One of my friends gave me the book yesterday, it’s a “Beer School: Bottling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery” by Steve Hindy and Tom Potter.  This is the book that inspired me for a post today. Have you ever thought why you like this or that beer? Whether it’s the taste itself that makes the beer popular and lovable or this is the marketing intrigue?

So I went to the website of Great American Beer Festival. This is the festival where they give awards for the taste not for the brand and you can participate there if you have a small pub with your own beer, restaurant, whatever but i was very interested to see how the small companies approach beer logo design nowadays. This year 46,000 attended and participated in this great event that took place in September. And of course, there are the winners in lots of categories (75 if to be exact) and you can check the full list here. I decided to check the logos of just a few winners and you can see them below.

Category: 1 American-Style Cream Ale or Lager – 25 Entries
Gold: Lone Star, Pabst Brewing Co., Woodridge, IL
Website: www.pabstblueribbon.com

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Category: 3 American-Style Hefeweizen – 52 Entries
Gold: Henry Weinhard’s Hefeweizen, MillerCoors, Milwaukee, WI
Website: www.henryweinhards.com

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Category: 4 Fruit or Vegetable Beer – 87 Entries
Gold: Pyramid Apricot Ale, Pyramid Breweries Inc., Seattle, WA
Website: www.pyramidbrew.com

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Category: 8 Rye Beer – 24 Entries
Gold: Roggenbier, Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant – Media, Wilmington, DE
Website: www.ironhillbrewery.com

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Category: 9 Specialty Honey Beer – 33 Entries
Gold: Honey Lager, Capitol City Brewing Co. – Capitol Hill, Washington, DC
Website: www.capcitybrew.com

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Category: 12 Experimental Beer – 82 Entries
Gold: Arquebus, Cambridge Brewing Co., Cambridge, MA
Website: www.cambrew.com

These guys don’t have anything yet but this logo, simple and relaxing

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Category: 13 Gluten-Free Beer – 10 Entries
Gold: Redbridge, Anheuser-Busch, Inc., St. Louis, MO
Website: www.redbridgebeer.com

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Category: 21 Smoke-Flavored Beer – 31 Entries
Gold: Rauch Bier, Sly Fox Brewing Co., Royersford, PA
Website: www.slyfoxbeer.com

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Category: 23 German-Style Pilsener – 44 Entries
Gold: Kaiser Pilsner, Pennsylvania Brewing Co., Pittsburgh, PA
Website: www.pennbrew.com

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Category: 24 Bohemian-Style Pilsener – 34 Entries
Gold: Pleasantville Pils, Durango Brewing Co., Durango, CO
Website: www.durangobrewing.com

Their website is a coming soon and the only bottle images I found on their servers are not available in bigger sizes

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Category: 25 Munich-Style Helles – 30 Entries
Gold: Himmelbrau Helles, Laurelwood Brewing Co., Portland, OR
Website: www.laurelwoodbrewpub.com

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Category: 27 America-Style Light Lager – 25 Entries
Gold: Coors Light, MillerCoors, Milwaukee, WI
Website: www.millercoors.com

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Category: 47 Imperial or Double India Pale Ale – 50 Entries
Gold: Hopnotic 2X IPA, San Diego Brewing Co., San Diego, CA
Website: www.sandiegobrewing.com

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Category: 52 Scottish-Style Ale – 24 Entries
Gold: Highland Courage, Rock Bottom Brewery – Bethesda, Bethesda, MD
Website: www.rockbottom.com

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Category: 54 English-Style Dark Mild Ale or Brown Ale – 48 Entries
Gold: Sweet George’s Brown, Dillon DAM Brewery, Dillon, CO
Website: www.dambrewery.com

I was really pleased to see how different these logos are from the giants of beer industry and these have been chosen from the long list of 75 winners occasionally. Some of breweries don’t even have the websites and they sell their beer locally in restaurants and pub and though some of the logos don’t look tooo interesting….this is a great start! They have the concept and the power and one day they will win recognition. That was very interesting to study those logos and who knows, maybe some of you will get inspired with the beer logos