Part 1 of this two-part article can be found here.
“A fiery coloured beer brewed using the finest malts, hops and crystal clear water from our own 700 metre deep well which gives this warming beer its rich, elegant finish. A perfect beer to enjoy with friends and to round off a great meal”.
Now stop a second and read that imaginary beer label description again. Then ask yourself the question “what does it actually tell me about the beer?”
We don't want one of these when reading beer labels. We want facts!
The truth is nothing, except maybe that it’s red. Or yellow. Or possibly orange.
To me all this description really says is that whoever wrote it should get out of the beer business as quickly as possible and go and write a novel.*
The scary thing is that 10 years I was writing beer labels that were pretty damn close to the one above. I was part of the problem, working in a beer industry that had gotten lazy and was content in pawning beer drinkers off with pointless prose rather than seizing the chance to educate them about the drink in the bottle.
In the past decade my opinions about how beer should be presented have changed radically. The arrival of craft beer to Europe is largely to thank for that because craft beer by its very nature almost always has something worth saying.
Craft brewers, by definition, try and use the best ingredients available to them, often in quantities that would make the bean counters at the major breweries wince. BrewDog, for example, typically uses 35 times more hops per barrel than the average industrial brewery.
So now more than ever before there’s a reason why breweries should list their ingredients. In doing so they not only make a proud statement that their beer is a quality and complex product but they also help us beer drinkers understand it just that little bit better.
To give a snapshot of where we are in the Swedish beer scene right now I grabbed three Swedish craft beers off the shelves of my local Systembolaget store to see what their packaging tells us about the beer inside.
First out we have S.t Eriks IPA from the indefatigable Jessica Heidrich. There’s no doubt the elegant 330ml bottle does a great job in raising expectations of this beer but the description itself, on this occasion, is frustratingly vague.
“A dark amber coloured IPA generously hopped with aromatic American hop varieties” is what it tells us.
For the die-hard beer enthusiasts among us our minds instantly start churning over caramel malts and intoxicatingly stinky US hops like Amarillo, but on the basis of this description alone it is merely guesswork. For the average beer drinker who has taken this off the shelf for the first time it will almost certainly mean nothing at all**.
Next up is Gustafs Finger from Dugges. Here the Gothenburg brewery in my opinion does a good job in conveying the beer’s character as well as telling us about the major ingredients that go into making it.
“This Strong Bitter (beer style – check!) with its classic dark malts (malts – check!) has both richness and strength (beer description – check!). Gustaf has a refreshing hoppy bite where Chinook, Brewers Gold and Cascade hops (hops – check!) lend taste and an inviting aroma.”
Finally lets look at the best of the bunch, Mohawk Extra India Pale Ale from flying brewer Stefan Gustavsson. This bottle label is a slam-dunk for me, containing pretty much everything I want to know about the beer inside.
“Mohawk Extra IPA is an extreme beer in the style of the American west coast brewing tradition (Beer style – check!)….. “lots of hops, high alcohol and extremely complex (beer description – check!)….”the colour is golden yellow with hints of amber (another beer description – check!).
The label then goes on to spell out all the different varieties of malts and hops in the beer (and in this particular beer that’s a lot of words!). Lots of checks there.
I concede the Mohawk is a 500ml bottle and therefore there’s considerably more room to fit on text than the two previous skinnier examples. However if this little exercise is anything to go by it’s encouraging to see that craft breweries in this country seem to be well ahead of the big boys when it comes to sharing information with us drinkers.
What would you like to see printed on beer bottle labels and cans as standard? Do you really want to know the names of the hops and malts or is it all just overkill? Would you like to know serving temperatures, the correct glassware, what foods to pair it with or the day the beer was bottled or canned?
Have you got any examples of beer labels that say a lot but nothing at all or have you already found the perfect beer label?
Let us know your thoughts by commenting below. Using you feedback I’ll maybe then attempt to construct the ideal beer label 
(Ed Note: I have a lot more to say about this subject, such as the idea of Swedish breweries implementing a standardized beer ‘guide’ similar to the Cyclops scheme in the UK and the equivalent that’s already in place here at the Systembolaget – does anyone pay any attention to those funny little symbols by the way? – so I’ll be returning to this topic in the coming weeks).
*As I wrote that I’m probably going to ignore my own advice. However I really do want to write a novel (and play for Liverpool).
**In fairness to S:t Eriks they have a wonderful website which goes into great detail about each of their beers. Of course you’d never all know this from picking up the bottle……
