Labels

Those were the days my friends and we thought the laughs would never end etc etc and so on, but here is the real past: beer labels that St Austell faced the world with in the 1980s and 90s. Smugglers Ale with the barrels, sailing ship and a lonely cove, close to a kids’ visual ideal of Cornwall; Cornish Ale, presumably made for the Jamaica Inn on Bodmin, whose parrot was ever so moth-eaten I seem to remember when I stopped by there in 1989, and then, and then, he pauses for effect, we have the gloriously entitled Cripple Dick illustrated by a holly leaf and couple of cherries. I think we got the joke. Oh things were so much more innocent over 20 years ago or not (oh look there’s Brown Willy, which is actually a hill on Bodmin for those of you who might take offence at this, pass me my smelling salts). On the other hand here’s a Guinness label, as bottled by St Austell from a time when a lot of breweries did such a thing. Artefacts from the past, embracing in their embarrassment indeed but not to be forgotten. The more light we shine on the past the faster we go forward — there’s nothing to hide here but naff branding, which a lot of breweries are complicit in (be interested to see how some of today’s imagery stands up in a couple of decades time). Fashions and tastes change, the future isn’t an incline or a decline, whatever exponents of both will say; the future muddles on though Cripple Dick (and its spiky graphic) is thankfully a thing of the past (though it’s not for me to say that’s a huge social benefit or not). 

Colour

Colour. The colour of beer, the pale blonde straw gold ale that brightly garnishes the clear nothingness of the glass; the sombre Sunday-best respectable Methodist brown of a pint (it has to be a pint, the pint has to be a pint) of bitter aloof in the same clear nothingness of the glass. There is another aspect of colour though, the colour (or even colours) that encourages, aids even, the consumer — that’s you and I and the man over there plus that woman at the counter — to make the informed choice over whatever we want to buy. For example, my morning coffee comes from a packet that has a sunlit yellow swab of colour on the front, I like it, it appeals to me, is it the main reason I buy it? I don’t know, but the appeal of the colour is on the same level of attraction as the price (£3 in the local Co-op) and the style of coffee (Americano it says, whatever that means, but I know it doesn’t me get too gibbery) — I can’t exactly remember who makes it, that’s pretty irrelevant. So how important is colour?

The reason I take this brief excursion into the realms of colour is that the other day I received a press release from Tring Brewery that trumpeted the news they had launched a new look for their beers’ pump clips, using in their words ‘applied colour psychology to appeal to beer drinkers…the brewery has rebranded, starting with its pump clips, unifying its look and increasing its appeal to new and existing customers. The beer names are derived from local characters, literature of legends with new illustrations produced to represent these stories and reinforce the brewery’s connection with the locality.’ You can read more about it here. 

As you can see from the image, the shield-like clips feature soft muted colours of leaf green, cherry red and a dark caramel orange. There’s a cartoon frog, a landscape that suggests to me far and away and this iconic British World War II poster, while the dog is a bit Black Bob. Ok, these are not hipsters’ labels, not designed with designers and ironic flat caps in mind and there’s nothing wrong with that. They’re homely and comfortable, mirroring myths and legends of the area — not everything has to be edgy. I don’t know what to think to be honest, as coffee packets aside I can be blind to design. 

Far more important though, what do the beers taste like? That I cannot say either, as I haven’t tried them but I do have a bottle of their Tea Kettle stout in the cellar, which was to sent to me, and I look forward to trying it (I like the fact that more breweries are making stout). Tea Kettle? Apparently Tring’s home county of Hertfordshire is shaped like a kettle, presumably that is why the label has a splash of what I would call light charcoal grey. It’s nice to drink in colour.