The 30 Best-Looking Beer Cans in America—2019
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Simply making great beer no longer guarantees success for American breweries. With more than 7,000 breweries in the country (a new one probably opened up just now), there’s more pressure than ever to differentiate in a thronged marketplace. To stand out in crowded fridges and coolers, breweries are creating striking design on cans, 360-degree posters that customers can carry in their hands—and kill it on Instagram. “We’re in the golden age of can design because we have to be,” says Harvey Shepard, the brand manager at Blindtiger Design, a specialist in brewery branding. “The competition on shelves and consumers’ hunger for new and exciting choices continues to drive design as a means to stand out from the masses.” Here are 30 of the best-designed American beer cans (including one cider) that stood out to us in 2019.
The 30 Best-Looking Beer Cans in America— 2019
story By Joshua M. Bernstein Design by Tri Vo
“When you’re given such a small space to tell the brewery’s story it forces you to communicate with concise messaging and purpose... It pushes you to be a better designer.”
—Brian Eldridge senior designer for Blindtiger Design
Senior designer for Blindtiger Design
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Aeronaut Brewing Company: A Year With Dr. Nandu
The Boston-area brewery celebrated its first birthday in 2015 with this IPA featuring labels inspired by customer-generated coaster art. Dr. Nandu proved so popular that the beer remains in production today. Look close: The can tab–like element is Aeronaut’s logo, from Somerville studio Loyal Design.
Somerville, Massachusetts
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Alvarado Street Brewery: Mai Tai P.A.
Blindtiger Design provides the California brewery with its boldly hued, ’80s-inspired labels that nod to a universe of endless vacation. Mai Tai, which grabbed a gold medal at 2018’s Great American Beer Festival, takes its name from its fruity, tiki-drink flavor profile. “It’s loud, colorful, and fun,” says director of brewery operations J.C. Hill. “It embodies our brewery and approach to beer making.”
Monterey, California
Aspetuck Brew Lab: Cosmic Siesta
Inspired by the Connecticut brewery’s clean taproom and scientific leanings, Hops & Branding creative director Nick Gamma devised a periodic table–style design system that’s easily interchangeable, with each can distinguished by distinct abstract images like Cosmic Siesta’s interstellar scene. “It leaves it up to imagination,” Gamma says.
Bridgeport, Connecticut
Back Forty Beer Company: Peanut Butter Porter
“Comfort food in a can” is how Alabama’s Back Forty describes this luscious imperial porter, which tastes like a Reese’s Peanut Butter cup that hit the bar for a hard one. You’ll recognize the packaging in a Jiffy: a jar of peanut butter turned into a 12-ounce beer can.
Gadsden, Alabama
Bad Weather Brewing Company: The Hopcromancer IPA
Inspired by animated films from the 1970s and 1980s, Minneapolis artist/designer Lucas Gluesenkamp creates gauzy, dreamscape illustrations with one foot in the supernatural, like this one for the Hopcromancer, in which a wizard-like figure faces a foreboding hop. Lord of the Rings recast for the craft beer crowd.
St. Paul, Minnesota
Banded Brewing Co.: Wheat ’n’ Potatoes
“The beer embraces our state’s agricultural wealth,” brand manager Alexis Alber says of the session IPA made with Maine-grown potatoes and Blue Ox Malthouse wheat. The outline might be familiar to geography buffs. (Spoiler alert: It’s Maine.) “Prominently featuring our state highlights our pride in being a Mainer-owned and operated brewery.”
Biddeford, Maine
Big Lug Canteen: Kings Jive
“Big Lug’s packaging calls back to vintage beer cans when brewers were predominantly German,” says Isaac Arthur, a partner at CODO Design. “We created simple woodcut illustrations, bold, limited colors, and a cream throughline to tie everything together on shelf.” Kings Jive is a classic English brown ale, a toasty royal treat of coffee and toffee.
Indianapolis, Indiana
Blackberry Farm Brewery: Goat Hill
Helms Workshop, of Austin, Texas, helped update the Tennessee farm brewery’s design template, subbing the pastoral look-and-feel for a brightly geometric approach that would fit nicely in a contemporary art gallery. We like Goat Hill, the label’s colors echoing the bready character and bright, snappy hop profile.
Maryville, Tennessee
Brouwerij West: Falling Water
Brouwerij West’s tactile, surrealist cans are produced by breaking an artist’s work into a series of individual overlapping stickers, creating a secondary canvas that acts like a 3-D sculpture. “People feel they need to touch the can to understand what is happening,” marketing and brand manager Vito Trautz says of beers like Falling Water, the design a collaboration between artist Tristan Easton and designer Matt Varnish.
San Pedro, California
Coronado Brewing Company: Cosmic Ocean
Coronado’s quarterly Art Series cans feature fan-submitted artwork oriented around the theme of “stay coastal.” The first 2019 release, a bone-dry IPA, was decorated with photographer Anthony Drake’s hyper-realistic imagery. Says marketing director Melody Crisp, “His stunning time-lapse photos of the ocean and night sky inspired the name Cosmic Ocean.”
Coronado, California
Fair State Brewing Cooperative and Modern Times Beer: Spirit Foul
Ultimate Frisbee inspired both the name and design for this collaborative hazy IPA. In the sport, a “spirit foul” is an infraction that goes against the spirit of the game, if not necessarily the written rules, says Mike Schacherer, the creative director of Little and Co. “That’s why we created a hazy pattern of graphic Frisbees.”
Minneapolis, Minnesota/San Diego, California
Fonta Flora Brewery: Nebo Pilsner
Cows once roamed the grass at Whipporwill Farm, a bygone dairy producer reborn as Fonta Flora’s farmhouse brewery. The refreshing pilsner’s label honors the farmstead’s former life. “As many dairies did, they offered ice cream as a value-added product,” says head brewer and cofounder Todd Boera.
Nebo, North Carolina
Great Notion Brewing: Double Stack
“We were big fans of Chad Eaton’s lumberjack-and-forest artwork before we asked him to design beer characters for us,” says Great Notion co-founder Paul Reiter. “We loved the Sasquatch that he’d previously drawn, but we wanted the Sasquatch sitting in the forest drinking coffee and eating pancakes.” It became the ideal can design for Double Stack, an imperial stout seasoned with coffee and maple syrup.
Portland, Oregon
Half Acre Beer Company: Volo
This year, Half Acre celebrated its tenth anniversary of brewing in Chicago, and in its second decade the Windy City brewery continues to combine compelling liquid with equally compelling design. Here, Half Acre highlights Volo’s signature ingredient—barley grown for the brewery at an Illinois farm—with a throwback agrarian illustration.
Chicago, Illinois
Harpoon Brewery: Rec. League
Rec. League is Harpoon’s entry into the burgeoning low-calorie, better-for-you beer category. The hazy pale is brewed with sea salt, buckwheat, and chia seeds that checks in with 120 calories per 12-ounce can. The liquid is as memorable as the design, which would be right at home in a Midwestern bowling alley circa 1975.
Boston, Massachusetts
Hoof Hearted Brewing: Belloq
While chewing on the tagline “intellectual competitive flavor,” artist Thom Lessner leafed through an early ’80s GQ. “I found a Jockey underwear ad with a fierce and hairy man playing tennis and knew immediately I was looking at the blueprint for competitive, intellectual flavor,” Lessner says of the inspiration for Belloq, a stout flavored with vanilla and coffee.
Marengo, Ohio
HopFly Brewing Co.: Beach Beer
To bring the adventure-loving, outdoor-focused North Carolina brewery to life, Pittsburgh branding and design firm Top Hat created a series of fun, wraparound illustrations that contain visual Easter eggs for fans to find.
Rocky Mount, North Carolina
Jackie O’s Brewery: Who Cooks for You?
The Jackie O’s team starts its can-design process by selecting an animal, that then turned into a woodcut illustration by West Virginia artist Bryn Perrott. This hazy pale ale features the barred owl, a southern Ohio native with a notable call. “People around here say its call sounds like it is saying ‘who cooks for you,’” says marketing and event manager Sophia Karageorge.
Athens, ohio
Level Beer: Let’s Play!
Based in a former produce market, Level makes some of Portland’s most balanced beer, in particular this German-style pilsner punched up with citrusy American hops. We like the beer as much as the arcade game–inspired label, Pac-Man with ghosts replaced by hops, water, malt, and yeast—the building blocks of beer.
LIC Beer Project: Higher Burnin’
“As an art collector, I always appreciated the beautiful murals at 5 Pointz: The Institute of Higher Burnin’,” head brewer and founder Daniel Acosta says of the legendary outdoor gallery, located near the brewery. “After it was sadly demolished, I wanted to pay homage to the artists and the neighborhood.” The tribute IPA pops with pine and ripe strawberries, art of a different sort.
Long Island City, Queens
Marz Community Brewing: Marz Beer
“If we’re doing our job right then we actually don’t know what the next Marz label artwork will look like,” says Michael Freimuth, the creative director of design studio Franklyn. “As beer nerds, we’re continually looking to surprise ourselves.” The double IPA’s can looks to ’80s cult classic Repo Man and its generic beer cans. “This pops off the shelf via its non-design.”
Mikkeller Brewing NYC and Thin Man Brewery: Filthy Flow IPA
On January 1, 2018, the NHL’s annual Winter Classic featured the New York Rangers battling the Buffalo Sabres at Citi Field—the Queens home of the Mets and Mikkeller Brewing NYC. To commemorate the game, Mikkeller partnered with Buffalo’s Thin Man Brewery on this IPA showcasing a Keith Shore illustration on an old-school hockey goalie.
Queens, New York / Buffalo, New York
Noon Whistle Brewing: Mr. IPA-Nut
The suburban Chicago brewery unites salty peanuts and beer in Mr. IPA-Nut, a partnership with snack titan Planters. Noon Whistle brewed the IPA with honey-roasted peanuts and peanut powder, balanced by fruity Citra and lime-like Wakatu hops. And yes, that’s the Mr. Peanut gracing the label.
Lombard, Illinois
Pipeworks Brewing Company: Genuine Bock Beer
Bocks are strong German lagers synonymous with goats, harking back to the beer’s birthplace in Einbeck. Some pronounced the city’s name as Ein-bock, the beer’s name shortened to bock, which is German for “billy goat.” The label for Pipeworks’ Genuine Bock offers a sly anthropomorphized take on the style’s namesake—getting your goat means getting your beer.
Reuben’s Brews: Bits & Bobs IPA
No matter the release, the Seattle brewery’s cans feature a single iconic constant: its cursive r. Annually, Reuben’s Brews rolls out a different version of this seasonal IPA, the unique blend of malts hops as vibrant as the design. Here, the r “mark resonates with color, which evokes the tonal nature of Bits & Bobs,” says cofounder and brewmaster Adam Robbings.
Seattle, Washington
Shacksbury Cider: The Vermonter
The forest-green tint of Green Mountain state license plates and two words—The Vermonter—inspired the visuals of this gin barrel–aged cider. “The joy of working with a designer like Annemarie Buckley is she can take your average idea and turn it into something far beyond what you could have imagined,” says partner Luke Schmuecker.
Vergennes, Vermont
Temescal Brewing: Pils
Pastels, contrasting patterns, and fun typefaces are just a few of the elements that Creative Director Tollef Biggs uses to execute the East Bay brewery’s signature aesthetic, which would look pretty good on a Trapper Keeper in 1985. Here, the crowd-pleasing Pils receives a slightly simpler, sunnier look that’s as bright as the beer itself.
Oakland, California
Threes Brewing: Logical Conclusion
Multidisciplinary creative agency Yard NYC has settled into a winning groove for its color-popped labels that utilize simple graphic elements to outsize effect. Logical Conclusion’s label symbolizes the life’s unerring reality: it’s a love-hate world. P.S. We love this label.
Brooklyn, New York
Transmitter Brewing: S4 Saison
Graphic designer and illustrator Jeff Rogers looked to ham radio cards from the early 20th century to create a vintage typography feel for the New York City farmhouse brewery. We’re big fans of S4’s information-rich label, clearly communicating ingredients and tasting notes.
Brooklyn, new york
Zero Gravity Craft Brewery: 40 Thieves
You’ll find forty real and fictional rapscallions and ne’er-do-wells such as Pablo Escobar and Nicolas Cage circa National Treasure (“I’m gonna steal the Declaration of Independence,” he says as Thief No. 35) on the label of this Vermont-brewed double IPA. How many can you name?
Burlington, Vermont
