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House Bill 37: The Ohio ABV, a Good Change for You and Me

On May 31, 2016, Governor John Kasich passed House Bill 37. The bill removes Ohio’s alcohol by volume (ABV) of 12 percent. The last change was in 2002 when the cap rose from 6 percent to 12 percent. For beer aficionados and the brave, these changes are long-awaited. But, what do alcohol laws in Ohio like HB 37 actually do and what does it mean for Ohio craft brewers?

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Growlers VS. Crowlers: What’s the Difference?

⚞ The Highlights:

A growler is a reusable jug, typically glass or stainless steel, for transporting draft beer, while a crowler is a single-use aluminum can that’s filled and sealed on demand.
Growlers commonly come in 64 oz. jugs requiring labels around 4×6 inches, while crowlers are typically 32 oz. cans needing labels closer to 6×9.5 inches.
In comparison, a standard 12 oz. beer bottle or can holds less than a 32 or 64 oz. container and generally needs a shorter label—often around 3.625×8 inches.

What is a growler? If you’re a beer aficionado, you’ve heard of the growler. Growlers are airtight glass, steel or ceramic jugs that provide patrons with a portable, refillable vessel that can be filled up with draft beer at your favorite craft brewery and taken on the go. As the name might suggest, growlers are quite large in size and can transport a lot of beer—64 ounces, to be exact, or a little more than five bottles of beer—while half growlers (called howlers) can hold a respectable 32 ounces. Some herald growlers and howlers as a more mobile flavor-keeping keg. Indeed, what a time to be alive!

So, what can make the new age of beer transport even better? In comes the crowler. But what is a crowler of beer? It’s the half growler’s aluminum twin. If you haven’t seen a 32-ounce crowler can of beer yet, you will – and you will love it. However, is one portable beer vessel a better option than the other? Both crowlers and growlers have their perks, so keep reading to find out which may be the better fit for your needs.

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5 Hot Foil Label Designs We Love

One of the things we love most about our job is that we work directly with some of America’s best packaging designers. The most successful projects are a collaborative effort between the brand owners, designers, and packaging vendors to make products that capture the customer’s interest and imagination. These projects use a variety of decoration techniques like embossing, spot varnishes, and screen printing to achieve a high level of complexity and depth.

Of all the decoration techniques, hot foil stamping stands out as the most effective. At a relatively low cost per piece, gold, silver, and other types of foils can be used to create outstanding, multifaceted compositions very economically. We’ve compiled five hot foil label projects that we had a lot of fun working on to demonstrate the versatility of foil stamping, especially when used in combination with digital printing.

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Antique Beer Bottles We Love

When building the vision for your unique beer bottles, you can learn a lot from what’s been done in the past. If you want a vintage look for your craft beer, antique beer bottles like these can inspire your design. And as mentioned in a previous blog post, it’s not just the label that can set your beverage apart from others. It’s the container type, too.

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Weighing the Pros and Cons of Beer Canning

Should you switch to canning your beer? If you do, how will it affect the look and feel of your product, including your beer labels? We’re here to help.

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3 Traits of Great Beer Bottle Labels

There are a lot of ways to design great beer bottle labels. Label designs in craft brewing are much like the beers themselves, innovative, eccentric, bold, and endlessly original. In our line of work, we happen to encounter a lot of great custom beer labels; this article talks about three things that a lot of great labels have in common.

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