You can judge a book by its cover. Or at least that’s what Joe Strummer was getting at back in the punky days of the mid-late 1970′s when he declared Like trousers, like brain! in a rather youthful and brash, in your face, way. The way you dress reflects your personality and mindset, was the point he was trying to make at the time. If you dress like a wally, there’s a good chance you are one.

Applying this ‘theory’ to beer, is it possible to tell the quality of the beer inside the bottle or at the other end of the hand-pull line by the way it’s being presented to you? Assuming you haven’t tried or heard of the beer before, a brewery’s initial point of sale for a beer is their label / pump-clip. (To save me writing label / pump-clip out several times, for the rest of this post I’m just gonna refer to both bottle labels and pump-clips collectively as labels.)

With this in mind, would you choose a beer over another (of a similar style), given the choice, where you aren’t able to try it first, based on the label? I know I have in the past and will likely continue to do so in the future. As a consequence, I may have missed out on trying a beer that could’ve been the best damn beer I’ll ever taste. I guess I’ll never know, but it’s a risk I’m willing to take – and it’s all the label’s fault! Sometimes I just can’t help but think, ‘well, if they’ve gone to such little expense over the label, how much care have they taken over the beer?’ Of course, I’m not daft enough to believe that a brewery would knowingly produce a beer to be substandard, because they probably wouldn’t be a brewery for very long. So, why, in some cases, isn’t the fruit of their labour given a better pair of ‘trousers’ to wear, so it can strut its stuff alongside the other beers it sits with as part of the label fashion show on a bar top or shop shelf?

I appreciate that not every brewery has the skills, know-how or budget to be able to create lavish, fancy labels, but I can’t help but think that some breweries are missing a trick. I’m not just talking about the vile, innuendo-ridden, monstrosities you’ll find on Pump-Clip Parade (see also this page of ‘hilarious’ offerings), but also the plain, ordinary, sometimes completely naff-looking ones. I could highlight the ones I’ve seen recently to show you what I mean, but I won’t, as I think that would be unfair on the guys behind the labels and the beer – especially as I don’t know them and, as I mentioned above, I don’t know what their budgets for such things are. All I will say is, perhaps they should allow for a few more pennies to be made available in that department.

Is it just me who feels this way? Perhaps. Although, I have seen people studying beer labels a lot in both the pubs and shop (Beer Ritz in Leeds, for all your beery needs! *cheesy grin*) I’ve worked in. And that’s what got me thinking about this. Are there enough people out there who are put off by the label of a beer to hinder the sales of that particular beer or brewery? Maybe it’s not as big a problem as all that, but there are certain beers – potentially very good beers – I’ve noticed that don’t shift as much as others. Beers that happen to have rubbish labels.

There are plenty of breweries that, in my humble opinion, have got it spot on. Way too many to mention, but I’ll give a shout out to Odell Brewing Co., Dark Star Brewing Co., Yorkshire Dales Brewing Co., Rogue, Great Divide Brewing Co., the eagerly anticipated Magic Rock Brewing Co., Uinta Brewing Company and Flying Dog Brewery so you can see where I’m coming from. The Uinta Crooked beers and the range from Flying Dog go beyond being simply a cool-looking label; they are a piece of art in their own right.

I love home-brewing, but the brewing of the beer is only one side of the hobby for me. I really enjoy making my own labels. Having previously worked in the publishing industry, I developed some pretty basic Photoshop skills and use these to design my own labels for the beers I bottle – learning new tricks and developing my skills along the way. I wouldn’t class them as art, nor would I suggest they’re suitable as commercial beer labels, but I like to think they add a little more to the overall experience of my beers.

My home-brew label creations

Nor am I suggesting that breweries should sit up and take note of my creations. Far from it. I just like doing it. And it appears that I’m not alone. A couple of home-brewers I’ve gotten to know over the past few months also adorn their bottles with home-made labels – labels that would give some breweries a run for their money.

Firstly, Rob Derbyshire:

“I’m a graphic designer for a living and after I started home-brewing I always planned to produce my own labels. I’m a sucka for a good bottle label. The whole presentation of the beer adds to the experience and sets certain expectations (sadly my graphic design experience out weights my brewing). When I started home-brewing I was going to brew single hop beers to work on my process and took a visual lead from Mikkeller’s Single Hop IPA range. But after I saw other new home-brewers going all out on both flavour and artwork I decided to branch out a bit. I do always try to tie the idea back to my website; HopZine.com. My most recent beer and label were kind of inspired by an in-joke between myself and a friend… titled Citra King: Bandwagon Straddling IPA.”

Rob's striking label designs

Dean Pugh is the manager of Mr Foley’s Cask Ale House in Leeds and is also a keen home-brewer (Blue Suede Brews) in his spare time:

“All the beer I’ve brewed so far have been Elvis-themed (All Shook Up, an American pale, American Trilogy, an imperial IPA and Devil In Disguise, a black IPA) and the name of my home-brewery, thought up by a regular in the pub, is a pun on Blue Suede Shoes. The labels have mostly been an altered image of the record sleeve to the original song, or in the case of Lawdy Miss Clawdy an image of the vinyl centre. I’ll probably divert away from Elvis for future brews, but I’ll be sticking to a musical theme.

Below are pictures of my fourth home-brew, Lawdy Miss Clawdy, a 4% ‘Extreme’ Wheat Beer (it’s overly hopped for a wheat beer, coming in at 66 IBU’s) and home-brew number five, Suspicious Minds, a 5% Stout with maple syrup added to the last 15 minutes of the boil and also to the bottle for priming.”

Dean's Elvis-inspired labels

I recently sent a few of my designs (minus the one for Konstrukt, as I hadn’t made that at the time) off to a magazine in the States who run an annual home-brew label contest. I don’t know whether they accept entries from this side of the pond and, if they do, I don’t expect to win, but figured it was worth a shot. If the winning label from last year’s competition is anything to go by, however, I think I’d be happy with an honourable mention…

A thing of beauty: Last year's Brew Your Own competition winner.

They’ve been running the competition since 1996, so if you’ve got a spare hour or two you can check out all the previous winners and honourable mentions here. Could breweries, whose budgets are limited, tap into some of the quality efforts being designed by home-brewers? There’s plenty of them out there, that’s for sure!

I’m not saying that Strummer’s off-the-cuff social comment is necessarily true – nor that “rubbish label, rubbish beer!” can be appropriated to it – just that the quality of the packaging is definitely something that people take into consideration when buying beer and, as a result, perhaps it’s something certain breweries should spend more time and money on.

Cheers!

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The punk ethic of doing it yourself is something that’s long struck a chord with me. I may have only been born just as the lights were going out on The Clash’s reign as the best band for a generation, but the inspiration they – and the other players in the punk movement – gave people at the time seems just as relevant to me today as it ever did. The spirit of giving it a go, on a shoe-string budget, with very little knowledge, skill or training, fuelled purely by passion, is right up my street.

That’s why I decided to learn to play the guitar (twice) and form a band. The lack of any skill or patience on my part, however, put paid to this very quickly and left me with a couple of rather expensive ornaments in the shape of an amp and a guitar, tucked away in my loft.  Around the same time as my musical failings I was also made redundant and started to work a few shifts at a pub, which reignited a forgotten interest I had in beer.

Within a few months I’d given up on trying to find another job in the publishing industry and was content with pulling pints and learning about beer. This is where my interest in the “do it yourself” approach to things kicked back in (except actual DIY, which I hate) and I decided that I wanted to make my own beer.

Transferring boiled wort to the fermentation bin, ready for it to be chilled and then the yeast added.

My knowledge on how to make beer was very basic, so I set about reading a book, which is something I don’t do all that often. The book in question was Brew Your Own British Real Ale by a guy called Graham Wheeler. It describes everything from what kit you’ll need, the processes involved in making beer and what effects the different ingredients have on the taste of a beer. It’s a great starting point if you’re not 100% sure of what’s involved. For a more in-depth look into the world of home-brewing, I’d also recommend you seek out a copy of Radical Brewing by Randy Mosher (yes, that is his real name.) This book is a brewing bible and covers every aspect of brewing in incredible detail, as well as looking at the science involved in making your own beer.

Briefly, the entry level to making your own beer is by using a kit, Read the rest of this entry »