In the very beginning (9 years ago) we served only our own fresh made draft beer and filled growler bottles for those wanting to take some to go. After about 2 years we saw that there was a demand for cans that would allow travelers to be able to take product home without worrying about refrigeration during the trip and being able to consume it at their leisure.
We bought a very small 2 head filler and manually canned and hand labeled small batches of cans for that need. Eventually once we moved to our current location and increased our production we then began contracting a mobile canning company (we used Iron Heart Canning and highly recommend!) to come in about every 6 weeks and can off what we needed. This allowed us to offer cans to our distributor and local retailers as well as a more consistent can offering to our brewery visitors too.
The growth of our products into cans made us even more aware of a marketing aspect in which we were under funded and under staffed to fulfill. If you could not pay for a designer or have your own team in house, label design can be expensive and daunting. The aspect of what to put on the can became an even bigger question.
Our earliest label designs were done by a talented artist/illustrator with simple designs that reflected the history of our area and landmarks that were used in naming our flagships.
These included:
Cacapon Kolsch (background showing the Cacapon River)
Berkeley Brown (Famous castle overlooking the state park)
American Amber ale (American flag and early pioneer wagon imagery)
Stonewall IPA (featuring Stonewall Jackson on horseback carrying a bag of lemons)
Apple Butter Ale (apple butter making over a kettle outside as is still done during the annual festival)
Warm Springs Pale ale (a beautiful scene of a woman in the natural warm springs)
The only problem was they were not eye popping enough to stand out on a shelf over 1,000s of other brands. I am attaching early label images and the newly revised designs so you can see our transition. You will also notice our Brewery Logo has changed as we now use one that is the state outline with a red star indicating where we are located.
This dilemma reinforced our slogan inspiration "No BS, just good beer!" which was established because as I was getting into the craft beer scene as a consumer and learning my likes and dislikes so that I could make educated choices I would often get frustrated by the can that was so busy and so distracting that I could not easily determine what was actually in the can and whether or not I might want to drink it. We wanted to keep our craft away from so much BS and market our beer for what it was rather than how crazy we could make the label.
We have since developed new brands and taken our label designs into more creative artwork and tried to maintain a level of integrity while hopefully putting something with enough eye appeal out there.
Examples recently include a line of IPA's called "Michigan Rag" with a likeness of the frog from Warner Bros dancing across the stage, "Chief Hopper" with a likeness of the police chief from Stranger Things as well as a new amber lager called "Runaway Beer Truck" in honor of a WVU football player that earned the same nickname. We've had some of our original designs reworked with brighter imagery and larger font so that they stand out better on a packed shelf. Since Covid it has definitely become more of a can market. In 2020 since we could not have Iron Heart come onsite, we financed our own canning line, spent 100s of hours learning how to use it and eventually were able to perform our own in house canning runs doing as much in 1 hr that previously took us half a day manually. Even with this upgraded equipment we are still very small - brewing 7 bbl (roughly 200 gals) at a time and putting out canning runs of 40-50 cases at a time.
Recently we have made the commitment to purchase a new inline labeler that receives the can directly from the canner, rolls the label on then we pack the cans. This will eliminate 1 person from our normal 4 person canning run and hopefully make the runs smoother. Often times now the labeler has issues, the labels shift around or jam up and the person hand labeling cannot keep up with the 24 cans per minute that are being filled.
Although we still keep our 20 taps rotating in the taproom and still fill a fair share of growlers, the reality is that the draft beer market is slowly dwindling as bars and restaurants struggle with staffing issues and finding more efficient ways to store and track inventory, cans have become a viable method of offering diverse product with less waste.
So the next time you walk down the craft beer aisle in the market or liquor store I hope you take a moment and look at some of the cans that may not be the most extravagant or have the most controversial labels and consider them for your purchase as what's in the can should be more important that what's on the can.
"No BS, just good beer!"
I welcome any comments and insights from others in this crazy industry, Cheers.
Denise
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