Starving Artist Brewery
BEER IS ART
I’ve been homebrewing for over 20 years and the only thing more fun than brewing the beer is designing the labels. Ok, sometimes I have more fun designing the labels. Below is a selection of labels and designs I have created for my beers.
STUDIO: Personal Project
ROLE: Brewer, Designer, Illustrator, Printing and Production
TIED IN KNOTS
For my sister’s wedding I brewed a complex and elaborate stout that needed an equally elaborate label design. I mean, it was a double hopped bourbon barrel aged honeyed imperial mocha milk stout after all. The challenge was to create a non-adhesive and water-resistant label that could withstand being chilled in ice at the wedding. To do this I created a linocut design printed on a printing press I built that uses a caulk gun for pressure. The front is a three-color linocut design with the date of the wedding stamped on a rubber band that holds the label in place. On the back of the label, the description of the beer was laser printed and complemented by a collage of floral rubber stamps and finished with a stamp of the brewery logo. The Rite in the Rain® card stock paper provides a water-resistant base that combined with the oil-based ink and pigment stamps can hold up to being chilled in ice.
INDONESIAN PALE ALE
For my Dad’s 75th birthday the family threw him a surprise birthday party and I crafted a one-of-a-kind beer — an Indonesian Pale Ale that has only ever been brewed once. Based on our family history and a ton of research, I created a story of how the beer recipe had been reverse engineered from a barrel of IPA recovered from a recently discovered East India Trading Company shipwreck that had been lost leaving the Dutch colony on Indonesia. The VOC ship, the Blackwatch Whisper, had been captained by a Prussian admiral by the name of R.E “Roaring Echelon” Nordeck. I created a Bill of Laden for the large 22 fl. oz. “Marine Ration” bottles. The neck hanger labels featured prints of Indonesian fabrics and small tags denoting “Officer Ration” for the 16 fl. oz. bottles and “Sailor Ration” on the smaller 12 fl. oz. bottles. There were a ton of easter eggs for my Dad and our family in the design. Shortly after brewing the beer, my shipwreck story came full circle and the app I was using for all my brewing notes, research and the final recipe suffered a fatal crash and I lost all my notes, research and the final recipe to a digital shipwreck…
THE KCAI LABELS
After brewing several beers with my step-dad and creating the Dr. David’s Basement Brewery identity and several label designs for him, I started brewing myself while attending Kansas City Art Institute and established Starving Artist Brewery. These are the origin of Starving Artist Brewery from when I was learning how to be a designer and the beginning of my obsession with finding, collecting and creating unique beer labels.
