Every Friday we raise a glass to celebrate some of the best new boozy bottles to hit store shelves. This week we’ve been warned not to mix our drinks, so are keeping it simple with a selection of beautiful beers.
Viking Craft Beer, by Jónsson and Le’macks
Viking is best known as being the dominant lager in Iceland. You can’t move in downtown Reykjavik without seeing the brand’s gilded logo adorning bars and pubs. But Viking has diversified and, like all smart brewers, moved into the world of craft lagers. To wit, it now encompasses a stout, white ale, pale ale, pils, and a three-piece suite of boks, all packaged with geometric patterns designed by Siggi Odds and Albert Muñoz at Jónsson & Le’macks. Each beer has its own motif that draws inspiration from Viking ships and Icelandic nautical traditions. Skal!
Korev, by Cookchick
There is nothing more quintessentially Cornish than Saint Piran’s flag, the white cross emblazoned on a black background that serves as the hallmark of this fiercely independent English county. So to take it and slap it across a bottle of lager is a bold move that speaks volumes about brewery St. Austell’s values. Korev is a Cornish lager of course, but the county is usually associated with more traditional forms of beer; the warm, flat variety in particular. Will the locals embrace it we wonder?
Camden Town Brewery, by Jay Cover
Camden Town has always had a strong reputation for its artist collaborations, but since 2016 it has worked regularly with the illustrator Jay Cover to produce limited edition bottle designs for its seasonal brews. Cover’s strong character illustrations form charming scenes that imagine the Camden Town operation staffed by beaming brewers. Or maybe that’s just what it’s like to work in a brewery—all smiles and afternoon drinking. What bliss!
The Last Aurochs Weizenbock, by Hired Guns Creative
What says badass beer better than an ancient beast? Nothing. Nothing at all. Which is why Hired Guns Creative has chosen the mighty (sadly extinct) aurochs as the mascot for Driftwood Brewery’s latest offering—a creamy weizenbock.
“We laid out the aurochs so that it’s charging across the centerline, emphasizing the main action, with the left-of-center area almost entirely taken up by the aurochs’ iconic horns,” the agency explains. “To set it all off, we used a bold orange and indigo color palette, rendering in rim lighting to accentuate the silhouette’s strong curves and the motion of the kicked-up dust clouds.”
Does an aurochs roar? This one looks like it does.