Graphic Designer needs beer help!

[annakateselby]

Hello!
So, this thread is a bit different from the others, I would assume. I've found this forum because I have a question about beer, without any former beer knowledge or intention to actually create beer. You see, I'm a graphic design major who is creating a beer label as a class project. We are using old beer bottles and convincing liquids such an apple juice and coffee to replicate the look of an actual beer bottle. I am going for authenticity in my project, so I wanted to ask a few questions about beer to make sure that my brand is something that would actually exist commercially.

The name of the beer is Old Canary Black Stout, making reference to the canaries that used to be used in coal mines. Due to the coal mine reference, I have chosen to put it in a glass bottle that is flask-shaped and filled it with coffee to replicate the look of a stout. The bottles I have chosen to use have screw caps and I am concerned that my professors will have objections to that, as it is seen more commonly in the packaging of spirits and implies that the beverage can be resealed and kept for later.

Because the project is due in two days and because I am rather fond of the overall look of the bottle and label, I have crafted a fictitious story as to the reasoning behind the screw cap. I was going to make the beer have an extremely high alcohol content and therefore meant to be consumed like a whiskey, so hopefully the screw cap could be more relevant. This idea is inspired by the beer Brewmeister Armageddon, which has a 64% alcohol content and states, "consume like a fine whiskey" (this beer was found through Internet research, found at this website).

Does that make any sense? I literally know nothing about the brewing of beer and just want to make sure my project is authentic and makes sense to people who do know beer. Could there be such thing as a Black Stout with a very high alcohol content that's meant to be consumed like a fine whiskey?

Here is a picture of the labe I have designed (minus the unfinished canary illustration for the middle) and the bottle it is in. The content of the bottle is coffee. I haven't edited the alcohol content in this image.

** JUST TO BE SURE: I am not brewing REAL beer, just designing the label for one! I am a graphic design major and hope to replicate the look of a real beer bottle **


Thank you so much!

 

[scottyg354]

Well Black Stout is a non existent style. I can start off there. All stouts are pretty much black. 10% ABV I would call it a Russian Imperial Stout. I've never heard of a Russian Imperial hitting 64% possibly at max 14-15%? Most of the really strong beers are more Barleywine'esque. I would read into barleywines a little more. Most barleywine names start out with Old something, so your name would already make sense if you went that route. I would ditch the flask though. Beer doesn't come in flasks.

 

[twistr25]

A big difference between whiskey and beer is carbonation. Twist-off are ok, but I feel like that kind of a screw off would lead to CO2 escaping, leaving you with a flat beer. If you have to right up a report on bottle design as well, you would want to mention how that top keeps CO2 from leaking. I agree with scotty, ditch the flask. If you can, get a hold of a grolsch style bottle like this

 

[JLem]

Sorry to say that it does not look particularly beer-like. If you are going for authenticity, the flask won't work. The clear bottle is also less than ideal as exposure to light is bad news for beers - light is what causes beers to go skunky. I know there are plenty of examples out there in clear bottles, but most good, craft beers use amber glass.

Looks cool though. If you're not concerned with authenticity then it doesn't really matter if it has a rescrewable top or not.

 

[MuddyCreek]

My thought would also be that a nice stout would be even darker than the coffee you have in the bottle there. If you can darken the liquid up a bit that would be nice.

If you're just using a photo and graphics editors to make your project you could probably ask one of the folks here to provide you with a high definition photograph of one of their stouts. You could 'shop' that with your label and simply give credit to the brewer.

Just a thought. I'm sure a bunch of us have some stouts laying around.

 

[KingJim]

It's very uncommon to have beer in a bottle without color. This is because UV light can get in and spoil the beer.
You're much more likely to see 1 Brown 2 Green
Brown being the more common by a long way.
I thought the strongest beer out just now is BrewDog Sink the Bismarck at 41%. I can't think of a way you could get up to 60 odd in reality, with out actually adding pure alcohol to it.

 

[woozy]

Sorry to say that it does not look particularly beer-like.

Well, to be fair... novelty beers can have novelty packaging. (I always thought it'd be cute of someone would do "Beer Bears" in 10 oz. Honey Bear plastic containers.) However, they are merely novelty *packaging*. Screw-tops and bottle tops serve different purposes.

Now I don't *know* if you can have a carbonated beverage in a screw-top. You *don't* drink a beer like a whiskey in the one important aspect that once you open a beer you drink the *entire* thing. You don't put a cap on and drink more for later.


I *think* screw-tops are impossible for beer because when the beer carbonates and its contents are under pressure, the pressure is likely to actually unscrew the tops from the inside.

 

[satph]

12.7 fl. oz. ≠ 354 ml

 

[fizgig]

40s have screw tops, I think you're fine. High end for beer is around 20%.

http://www.dogfish.com/brews-spirits/the-brews/occassional-rarities/world-wide-stout.htm

Here's a good beer for you to take a look at.

 

[beergolf]

As mentioned already, a clear bottle is not good for beer. Also the bottle you show will not hold pressure and the pressure from carbonation would blow up the bottle.

You really need to put it in a proper beer bottle. I know that you are trying ti be unique, but what you are proposing will not work. It also does not make me think of beer.

 

[woozy]

It's very uncommon to have beer in a bottle without color. This is because UV light can get in and spoil the beer.
You're much more likely to see 1 Brown 2 Green
Brown being the more common by a long way.

There are exceptions. Newcastle Ale for example. (Why do they break this rule?) And light lagers like Corona and Pacifico and Miller.

But in general too many exceptions to pretty standard rules that have very legitimate reasons are just going to ding you. The screw-top and clear glass are really going to ding you. The flask you can get away with I think.

[Anything darker than a lager would look disgusting in a green bottle. Newcastle is the only brown beer I know that uses a clear bottle. (not sure how that get away with it.) Now a black or purple bottle (or deep deep serpentine green) would be an intriguing marketing novelty.]

 

[Kahless]

For high alcohol content (even higher than a barley wine) it could be made to get that way via freeze distillation - this could be on the label or the back.

Beer is stored in strong bottles that can maintain the pressure difference between the carbonated beer and the outside atmosphere; a flask may easily shatter/explode. You could say that, being such an expensive whisky like beverage, it would have a custom flask which is made of much thicker glass than normal (although the non round shape is not ideal for holding pressure).

This beer is originally glass but then has a ceramic effect sprayed onto the bottle to imitate older ceramic bottles; your beverage could come in a "ceramic bottle" to avoid skunking.

The screw top on a beer bottle would have to be a pressure tight one like the ones on plastic cola bottles plastic homebrew bottles use such screwtops and these bottles hold 3 times the pressure of normal beer bottles), and not the cheap kind they use on spirits, as they do not seal to be air tight on re-screwing, and wear away quite easily. If you are careful uncapping a beer bottle, you can de-label the bottle after an overnight soak in warm soapy water it and press the cap back on gently.

Opened beer would lose its carbonation and suffer damage from air, but I don't know if much stronger beers would last longer in this respect. You could say on the back to chill once opening and drink within 3 days of opening; cask ales are served from casks which are opening up to the atmosphere and are tapped until consumed, which is hopefully not too long.

Edit: Just want to add the thought that record-high ABV beers such as those from Brewdog might be more appealing to me as a consumer if they came in something that resembled other beverages of the same cost, and not the same type. If you were to make the bottle opaque or/and draw technical diagrams (front/side view with dotted lines and so on) of the bottle as though it was incredibly thick and tested for pressure, you could spin it as so with the added cost of bottle production more than absorbed by the hypothetical increased sales (along with a plan to conduct market research on that plan). If you can invent anything that prevents oxygen damage to the beer after opening then you might be widening this new market

 

[KingJim]

Yep, I didn't notice that; those flat sides would fail with much pressure in the bottle. That's almost any pressurized vessel is always round.

 

[ja09]

I'm also a designer and brewer so I can appreciate what you're doing. Some notes:

- The whiskey bottle shape is definitely not authentic, but it's original & creative..I like it!
- A twist cap is a very bad idea for a high abv beer since they mostly improve with age and yours will lose carbonation and let oxygen in. However, you could get away with it if you dipped the cap in seal wax. Black would go with your design and could look pretty cool. Something like this or this. Don't know how you'd get it off with a twist top though! Maybe look for an old cork bottle instead.
- The clear bottle is also a bad idea, an beer that requires age like yours needs a dark UV protectant bottle.
- Your 'coffee' is not dark enough. Use some black food coloring or something.
- All stouts are black, instead of a "Black Stout", maybe call it an "Imperial Stout". Or, to go with your theme, call it a "Whiskey Stout" or "Bourbon Stout", then include a little story or sentence about how it's aged in bourbon barrels. Miners love whiskey!...I think

Hope this helps. Overall I think it's a good creative start, but not authentic. Post the final design!

 

[cchristian35]

I'm in the planning stages of opening a brewery and could use some help from a graphic designer on labels, posters, etc. If you want to make a little extra money, shoot me an email at [email protected]

 

[emjay]

Well, to be fair... novelty beers can have novelty packaging. (I always thought it'd be cute of someone would do "Beer Bears" in 10 oz. Honey Bear plastic containers.) However, they are merely novelty *packaging*. Screw-tops and bottle tops serve different purposes.

Now I don't *know* if you can have a carbonated beverage in a screw-top. You *don't* drink a beer like a whiskey in the one important aspect that once you open a beer you drink the *entire* thing. You don't put a cap on and drink more for later.

I *think* screw-tops are impossible for beer because when the beer carbonates and its contents are under pressure, the pressure is likely to actually unscrew the tops from the inside.

Soda is much more carbonated than beer and it uses screw tops. In an adequately pressure-rated bottle (not a flask), a screw top should be fine. However, if it's meant to be resealed, it needs some sort of rubber-ish thing in the bottom of the cap to form an actual seal, which I doubt a flask has.

The bigger problem is that a flask just couldn't handle adequate pressure unless it was made of VERY thick and strong glass. Look around at beer and champagne bottles and find the weirdest bottle you can. It will almost definitely retain some sort of the same basic shape.

Also, a previous poster was right about coffee not looking quite like stout. Could you not just buy a cheap stout and use that to fill the bottle?

Oh, and green is just as useless in protecting against UV as clear bottles are, and you'd never see a stout in one. An brown or even opaque (eg ceramic) is what you're looking for.

 

[stpug]

From strictly the standpoint of screwtop bottles and carbonation - soda pop.

High proof beer? Sure. There are many fine examples of high-proof beer - one that comes to mind is:
Hair of the Dog's Dave (a barley wine that's freeze distilled to 29% ABV)

Stouts and porters are commonly served with minimal carbonation units - some of the lowest. So having a beer that becomes very low in carbonation is fine. Another point in the right direction is that they are often some of the warmest served beers - maybe not back-pocket body temperature but in the 50s sure. Combining high alcohol and low carbonation makes sense to me from a "drinkers" standpoint.

Black stout? A stout generally isn't heavy with black malt (black patent) but denoting a "black stout" could mean that it's heavier with black malt than normal BUT DOESN'T cross the border into a porter.

Overall, I think it's a cool presentation and you'll have many talking points to justify your decisions should you choose to stick it through.

 

[Gitmoe]

Nothing about that bottle or label really says beer to me. I'm a graphic designer and bottling/labeling my beers is just as fun as actually brewing the beer. Checkout this thread with over 100 pages of beer label/bottle designs... https://www.homebrewtalk.com/f46/show-us-your-label-229144/

There's a lot of so-so work in that thread as most homebrewers aren't designers, but there are a lot of good examples as well... Good luck with the project.

 

[tdexterc]

As a thought to the back-story, if you have a beer with an absurdly high ABV, it's going to be absurdly expensive to boot, and the packaging will likely also reflect it's exclusivity. This brings to mind The End of History by brewdog (brewery referenced earlier above) currently not for sale, but when it was, it was to be purchased for some $762/bottle... and presented in a stuffed squirrel. True story. Perhaps if you were to find some old bottle without the screw top you could cork and cage it? This would imply a more exclusive beer and add to the authenticity of it. Is the canary going to be hand painted in the middle? Because that would look bad ass. Best of luck, and nice label!

 

[andy6026]

St. Peter's Ale comes in a flask-like bottle, however i's green and it's capped.

 

[tdexterc]

Well would you look at that! Who knew?

 

[emjay]

St. Peter's Ale comes in a flask-like bottle, however i's green and it's capped.

Kind of. The St. Peter's bottle has a much rounder profile than the flask he's using. Could he get away with it? Who knows... he knows his prof better than anyone here. And the green would still be inappropriate for a stout.

OP: I noticed you avoided using an actual beer bottle and actual beer in the bottle (which would obviously be more realistic). Is there a reason for this? Does the project prohibit it? If not, I'd visit a good bottle shop and find a good brown bottle you like. If it's not a nice dark stout, also find one you can use to put in the bottle. I'm assuming you don't know any homebrewers, but if there's a homebrew store in your area, bring it in, explain what you're doing, and they'd probably be happy to properly cap it for you.

 

[annakateselby]

Wow! Thanks for all the input, guys! I totally understand all of the points you're bringing up about the flask bottle. While I love it as someone who is totally unaware of the finer aspects of brewing, I don't want to look like I didn't do my research when I bring this project to an interview. I understand the point made about "Black Stout" being redundant, and I'm currently reworking the type for that section to say something more appropriate. I appreciate all the tips which suggest I try out different bottles, but unfortunately this project is due Wednesday. I'm going to rework it again for myself over the summer and want to investigate using bottles similar to Black Cab Stout uses.

However, for the time being, I'm going to use this beer bottle and repaint the cap yellow (it's currently spray painted ivory).

OP: I noticed you avoided using an actual beer bottle and actual beer in the bottle (which would obviously be more realistic). Is there a reason for this? Does the project prohibit it? If not, I'd visit a good bottle shop and find a good brown bottle you like. If it's not a nice dark stout, also find one you can use to put in the bottle. I'm assuming you don't know any homebrewers, but if there's a homebrew store in your area, bring it in, explain what you're doing, and they'd probably be happy to properly cap it for you.

Because there are so many students in my class that are under the age of 21, all of our professors requested we use "beer-like" substances in order to bypass someone underage trying to blame the school for a possession of alcohol ticket. Of course, we are allowed to use actual beer bottles, but we had them capped by our professors after filling the bottles with the appropriate liquid (such as apple juice or coffee, and vinegar or something to keep the liquid from molding).

Since the project is due in two days, I unfortunately don't have a way to make the liquid in the brown bottles darker, but thankfully I can do that through the powers of Photoshop for my portfolio version. The physical version that will be turned in on Wednesday will just have to have an amber-ish liquid inside.


Is this starting to look more authentic?

Again, THANK YOU for all the help!


EDIT: Not sure why the liquid is so low in this bottle... The rest of the six pack is filled to an appropriate level. Grrrr.

 

[satph]

There are commercial examples of "Black Stout", so although Imperial Stout is more common, I think you could leave it as Black Stout.
Big Bear Black Stout
Ards Bally Black Stout
Altes Tramdepot Black Stout
Red Hook Double Black Stout
Atwater VJ Black Imperial Stout
And the extra redundant Hite Brewery Black Beer Stout. I don't think I'd model myself after this particular beer. Even if Black Beer Stout is just a bad English translation, the score of 9 on RateBeer isn't promising.

 

[KingJim]

I bet you didn't expect this amount of interest in your question?

 

[hogwash]

Looks good! That would catch my eye on a store shelf. I like the yellow cap idea, maybe put the canary on the cap too?

 

[MuddyCreek]

That is a good label. It would definitely catch my eye!

 

[Gitmoe]

Your fill is a little low.....

Sorry, couldn't resist.

That looks much better overall. Do you have an online portfolio? As a designer myself, I love to see other people's work...

 

[Kahless]

That look's fantastic, I'd definitely buy it and try it. Will it be okay for your submission include comparison to the original flask design along with research notes (pros/cons) as to why you didn't choose it? You technically did do your research after all, and adjusted your design appropriately so I hope you get credit for it.

 

[DrunkleJon]

Now you have me wanting to draft up a recipe for an Black Lung Stout. Maybe make it an imperial and go overboard and push the SRM as high as I can get it. Mash high for a thicker body. Funny how the name comes before the beer sometimes. Possibly even follow the OP's ideaa of extra high abv and just freeze concentrate it. An assault on all senses.

Love the labels by the way. I agree with the others about using Black Stout as by definition stouts are dark. You can play off the mining theme and steal the lung part if you would like.
Also, I wonder if there is a way to dull the glass of a bottle some to make it have that sort of sea glass appearance. I think that would look awesome with the old style label that you have going there. Probably way too much effort though. I would like to see this tactic in commercial brews. Would really stand out amongst the shiny new looking bottles offered by everyone else.

My apologies for being all over the place. Way too much coffee this morning.

 

[fizgig]

nice work. just a thought, black cap with an old timey miner's cap on it illustrated/outlined in white.

also for those still talking about the screw top, I said 40oz once already, screw tops are used on beer like substances.