Innovation in pint glasses tends to come in the form of shape or weight, though not much has changed in decades (save for the famous Sam Adams glass).  But clever marketers came up with a brilliant way to make you want to fill your glass with a dark beer: screen a special QR code onto the glass that can only be read when it’s up against a dark enough background.

For those who don’t know, QR codes are modern bar codes — they hold some form of data that can be read by one of dozens of different smartphone apps.  For a QR code to work, like a barcode, the scanner needs to be able to tell the basic difference between white and black to be read (or some other combination of contrasting color).  By printing a light-colored QR code onto a glass that simply can’t work with a light beer, it’s possible to provide some sort of bonus material with a dark beer.

Very clever, in the can’t-believe-I-didn’t-think-of-this-first kind of way.

Paste Magazine loves hip things, and there’s nothing hipper than craft beer and graphic design.  They picked 15 craft beer designs that they love, and we have to agree.

Included in the list is the IPA can design for our friends at West Sixth Brewing in Lexington, Kentucky, along with some of craft beer’s standard best.

Click through to see the list.

One good thing macrobrewers have done with their monstrous marketing budgets is create some very memorable and enjoyable advertising.  But over the years, the ads haven’t been quite as slick.  We pulled together 15 retro beer advertisements into this gallery to take a look back on what used to be.

Shooting a movie but can’t land that lucrative product placement deal?  We’ve got your covered.  Over at The Earl Hayes Press, you can find a wide assortment of fake beer bottles, cans, and packaging until one macrobrewer drops a few thousand in your lap.

They bottles all look a little dated and clearly came from a time before craft beer packaging came alive — there’s a noticeable lack of color and creativity.

from flickr

Our canning line should be in the building near July 4. It will be a couple of moths to get it up and running, but should start seeing Pale Ale in cans in late 2011.

We’re on the fence about what other beers to release, but I think we’ll have a couple of different brews available.

Cans will only be a small part of our output, but we’re excited to see how they’re received.

There are so many places where you can’t or won’t bring glass…up here in the foothills it just doesn’t make a lot of sense to bring a bunch of bottles with you in your backpack! This is really the reason we’re going for this.

From flickr user grovlam

Lost Abbey brewed up a Wit beer for the fall.  The label features a witch being burned at the stake, a historic and often-replicated piece of imagery.  The New York Times reports:

But one does not have to agree with Ms. Noble’s interpretation of history to share her offense at a picture on the label of Witch’s Wit, a limited-edition pale ale — “wit” means “white” in Dutch — produced by Lost Abbey, a division of the Port Brewing Company of San Marcos, Calif.

It was a painting of a witch being burned at the stake.

Ms. Noble went home and wrote to her e-mail list. “Can we stop this brewer from their hate imagery?” read the subject line, in all capitals.

“Can you imagine them showing a black person being lynched or a Jewish person going to the oven?” she wrote. “Such images are simply not tolerated in our society anymore (thank the Goddess) and this one should not be, either.”

Immediately, friends and followers of Ms. Noble began sending complaints to the brewery.

Actually offensive, or completely ridiculous?

From flickr user newhousedesign

Massachusetts brewery Just Beer has released a new IPA called “The Case of the IPA.”  But instead of doing the old boring label, Just Beer decided to print a long-form story.  In a 12-pack, each 20oz bottle contains a little more of a 20’s-style detective serial, each label acting as a page.

From the brewery:

Just beer is proud to reveal a unique collaboration between brewer and author.

“The Case of the IPA” is a hard-boiled detective farce printed chapter by chapter on 12 bottles of a newly released India Pale Ale. Each 22 ounce bottle not only has 22 ounces of brilliantly deduced IPA, but also 1 of the 12 chapters of the story. Each case has 12 bottles, which makes for the entire tale told in a case. And so, the Case of the IPA is indeed a case of the IPA.

Brewer Harry Smith proposed the idea to author Paull Goodchild and they quickly agreed on a format: a noir-ish detective serial. Smith brewed up a batch of hoppy craft brew whilst Goodchild penned the story. It’s a mystery of zany brewers and their intrigues; sure to tickle the ribs and please the belly of any fan of craft beer.

Great idea and nice to see some innovation in label design.  This is definitely a situation where you only want to read a page or two at time though.  (via Slashfood)

Southern Star Canning (flickr under a CC license)

The Houston Chronicle covers something we’ve covered many times before (and Joe wrote about just this week): microcanning.  They also note the stigma that comes with cans, which I think is the biggest drawback, though many canning breweries would disagree.

Fougeron also believes cans helped differentiate the brand when Southern Star began production two-and-a-half years ago. The brewery is on pace to double production in 2010, he said.

“I attribute some of our success to being in a can,” he said. “It really sets us apart at the retail level.”

…

Wagner said he has no intention of switching to cans because glass maintains a “psychological” edge in the pricier craft segment.

“If people are going to spend eight bucks on a six-pack, they want it in a bottle,” he said. “… We don’t want to put our product in a package that somehow conveys cheap, low-quality beer. There’s no doubt that cans still carry some of that stigma.”

I can see both arguments, and it’s entirely plausible that as canning becomes more popular, the stigma slowly disappears.  But right now, I think the fact that it conveys “cheap” is still a problem for canning, even if it’s not true.

They also provide some helpful numbers:

Cumulatively, sales of craft beer in 12-ounce cans were up 80 percent in the first half of 2010 compared with a year earlier, according to data compiled by marketing analyst SymphonyIRI Group. That compares with 11.2 percent growth in six-pack bottles of comparable size.

Cans still have a long way to go to catch up. In the first half of 2010, craft brewers sold $376.5 million worth of beer in bottles, compared with $2.3 million in cans.

Yet craft brewers — generally smaller, independently owned companies that use premium ingredients and lack the production-scale savings enjoyed by mass-market giants — have been turning to aluminum in greater numbers since Colorado-based Oskar Blues got the can rolling in 2002.

Keep in mind: if you’re reading this and understand why microcanning is, you probably don’t need to be convinced.  But for your casual craft beer fan — for the person who’s looking to try something other than Miller Lite — there’s something to a bottle that people associate with quality.  It may not be right, but for now, it’s reality.

I was visiting family in Ohio and came across 2 new beers that I have never tried and were being sold only in cans. The first was from Southern Star Brewery. I have had the Pine Belt Pale in the past so I decided to try the Buried Hatchet Stout, which I will try after I return home. The other was from Keweenaw Brewing Company, which is brewery from the Upper Peninsula of Michigan that I have never tried. Keweenaw had a couple of styles to choose from and I picked the Lift Bridge Brown Ale.

Despite over 50 breweries canning, I have yet to go to a bar to see someone drinking a microbrew from a can. I think it will take someone like Sam Adams or Sierra Nevada to start paving the road of acceptance to the main stream. New Belgium has released Fat Tire and Sunshine Wheat in cans but I have not seen that in Pennsylvania yet.

Cans offer a certain novelty and differentiation when displayed along a wall of bottled beers. Whether or not differentiation is the intention of a canning start-up brewery, I would think this would help get consumers to try your beer for the first time. Also, there is a sustainability upside to canning. These positives include: less cardboard needed for the case since cans take up less space, cases can be stacked without an extra support being added to the case (the cans support the weight), more cases can be loaded onto a truck, more recycled material is in a can vs. bottle, and there is not a sustainable outlet to recycled glass according to this article.

There are parallels between what beer is going through with cans as what wine is going through with boxed wine. Boxed wine has the benefit of never introducing air or UV light to the undispensed wine allowing it to stay fresh weeks after it has been opened. I would think that because of the shape, it also is more efficient to ship. Canning provides beer similar benefits but has the negative connotations of being cheap and lower quality.

I like seeing canned alternatives on the shelf and look forward to seeing which breweries decide to expand their product line or which new breweries start with only canned beer.

Tuned Pale Ale

Gadget blog Gizmodo caught wind of a now-defunct Tuned Pale Ale, which came in brilliant (and likely very expensive) packaging:

The Tuned Pale Ale’s bottles show a musical scale on its label. Drink it down to the note you want, blow on it, and it will play it back. Buy a pack, and form a band with your friends.

Actually, the pack itself becomes a drumming box, and the bottles’ special washboard shape also serves as percussion source.

While the Tuned Pale Ale was manufactured in a small microbrew batch—to great success, according to designers Matt Braun and Chris Mufalli—it’s not longer in production. Too bad, because this should be the standard for all beers. We need more music in the world.

It’s a mistake to get caught up in the package if the beer is bad, but it’s still a pretty brilliant way to sell your beer. More photos below.

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