Thanks so much. That is a wizard suggestion. I'm going to wait for a few more comments, but I think this one might get a front/back/neck suite before too long.

Based on Paddyjoe's very cogent commentary on the Divine Wind label, I have put together a full set of labels for the bottle. Please feel free to continue to give input-it remains a work in progress.

In order, then, these are the Neck, Front, and Back labels.

http://photos-c.ak.facebook.com/phot...42542_9414.jpg
http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/phot...42540_8889.jpg
http://photos-b.ak.facebook.com/phot...42541_9161.jpg

i was just gonna say that i really liked the red dragon dude on the original......then i get here and see these awsome fucking renditions.....

wicked job Top......

that joe knows what he's talkin' about Top.....and with your art style......you pulled out some sweet assed stuff......these are deadly.

*must find way to try Tophat's homebrew*

Top, they look outstanding. Really nice job darkening the red image on the new version. The extra contrast sets it apart.

If fly finds a way to make it to Rochester, we'll make the 8 hour drive to your place.

This is just some very excellent applied art Tophat! They are marvelous and eminently collectible!

Hey Tophat!

What a great hobby you have! :p

About the Divine Wind: I like the warm blue color and the font really suits the theme on this label. However I'm not too sure about the orange colored font on the back. It looks like some of the letter might blend in with one another making it hard to read.

Btw! What are the chances of you brewing a Sissy Beer (what we Danes call a light beer)? :p

I've brewed what I would call a sissy beer - Berliner Weisse at 2.5%abv and The Purple Peril, which is not really a beer or a wine or a mead, but all three equally (one way to describe it is as a Honey Blackberry Raspberry Weizenbier.) As for an American Light Lager? Never happen. Might brew a Quarterbock at some point (A quarter batch of Doppelbock watered down.) That'd be a light beer.

I've also brewed a Brown Mild, which is a really nice low alcohol light bodied brown ale. That's what I think of as a light beer.

You misunderstood me Tophat. My suggestion was not only to brew a light beer but to actually name it Sissy Beer! :p

Much as it pains me to refuse such a talented and lovely lady, there is not a Televangelist's chance in Hell I'd brew a real light beer or name one Sissy beer.

anything new in the works Top?


we need update buddy........

I've got a new neck label for the American Ales. I'll post it up here tonight or tomorrow. Got a new Belgian Strong Ale label and a new Weisse Squad label in the works. Now, my buuddy and I are doing a photoshoot of his 18 month old stirring the pot this weekend for the Erin Go Brew label (she's named Erin) but that won't fly here, I'm afraid. So stay tuned. More to come anon (anon anon, anonanonanonanon).

Oh, I should note that I have brewed my first batch of Vinager. The 9 Melon Mead turned out undrinkable (though it is going to be a stellar marinade - sea scallops in honey melon vinager and scallions, seared, over an endive and grapefruit salad with herbed goat cheese. Very California.) I will do it again after I have bottled six gallons of it for gifts to teetotalers, this time with some tweaking so that it doesn't get infected.

In any case, as this is Tilted Artwork, some artwork. The first is the neck label for the Pride of Calaveras and Volta's Galvanic Ale. The next is the fourth incarnation of Weisse Squad, our Bavarian Wheat beer. The Last is for a potential Belgian Strong Ale, much like Divine Wind.

love the first one, very catchy, nice work
Ive heard making your own brew is very time consuming and hard, but very rewarding if done right

really like the 3rd one there Top.......

Thanks guys!

Hampshire, you heard wrong. Brewing your own can be very easy, and not particularly time consuming - say 6 hours in the course of 3 weeks (Of course, there is the actual waiting while the yeast does its work...). It can be as hard or as easy as you want it to be, but, so long as you pay attention to cleanliness and sanitation, it is hard to make a bad beer. In 7 years of brewing, I've only made one undrinkable and three disappointing beers, and one batch of Vinager (and that because I decided to dispense with some sanitation procedures. Not doing that again in a hurry). So less than a 5 percent failure rate.

Brewed the Weisse Squad Vier and the Purple Peril IV: the Fruit of the Devil last weekend. I've got the Weisse Squad label in the last post. Here's the Purple Peril one. (No, I am not a Satanist, nor am I particularly fixated on Devils. It just turned out that I had a bunch of devil related ideas at once.) Oh, and I have attached the file I used as my model too. (edit - and now it's gone...)

http://photos-d.ak.facebook.com/phot...42559_4026.jpg

i'm crushing your head.......fuckin' gotta like the kids in the hall.


i like the devil Top........looks cool

Really Liking the newest ones, Tophat!

They're little gems, each and every one.
Great stuff!

I can't see em Top.....unless of course yer namin it red x beer!

maybe if you layed off of the sauce,you wouldn't always see red X's..... :D

Well, it's been a while. I started fiddling around with Golden Sections the other day, and but together a label (front and back/side) for the Double IPA we brewed 3 months ago and will be bottling in the next week or so. (Stronger the beer the longer it takes.) Hope you like:

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y24...unnerIIPA2.jpg

And, as long as I am in here, here are a couple of others:

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y24...riochAmber.jpg http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y24...70sAlecopy.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y24...fectPorter.jpg http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y24...5/Beer/665.jpg

A word about the last two: I would have used the Divine Wind label on the last one, but we finished the 12 hour brewing day it took to make it on June 6, 2005, and this was too perfect. I did the drawing in sharpie and scanned it. As for Pyaray's Perfect Porter, that was made of leftovers. We had (no joke) 17 different grains in it and two different hops from 5 or 6 different packages.

I have been thinking about giving home brewing a shot, as it really seems like a good hobby to get the creative juices flowing. Labeling, however, I had not thought about until I stumbled across this thread in a search about homebrew. I had no idea that you could brew the variety of beers that you've done, it's quite a collection!

So I got a great deal on a pound of Crystal Hop Pellets ($5. Cannot beat that with a stick. That's like 80% off.) guaranteed fresh (guy setting up new store, ordered ounces, got pounds.) So, I figured, let's get ludicrous. Let's get Snakes on a Motherfarkin' Plane ludicrous...

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y24...dofHopsIPA.jpg

Oh my, Tophat...I'd never seen this thread before but I'm glad I found it! My SO and I are looking at getting into homebrewing as a hobby. I hadn't thought much about putting labels on our product as we've got to HAVE a product first, but this looks like something I can really get into, especially if we're brewing something I'm not really interested in (ie a porter--I'll drink it, but it's not my favorite...however, I would be very interested in brewing an IPA or a cream ale or a wit).

And that last label...Hilarious. A whole pound of hops sounds insane but delicious. Sounds like a recipe I would enjoy.

Brewed an 8 1/2 gallon batch of Bock last weekend, but don't have anywhere to hold the temp below 50 for lager yeast, so we used a nice, clean ale yeast. So this technically isn't a bock, but something else.

http://photos-a.ak.facebook.com/phot...72460_5803.jpg

Can't believe that I never saw this thread before. These rock! Very nice work for sure.

TopHat, I hadn't checked this out before but now I'm laughing so hard that I'm sorry I hadn't dropped in earlier. Honestly, I like most of your earlier labels better (except for the Sam Jackson, which killed me). They were less overwhelmed with text and things, and quite simple but playful. I frequently pick beers to try based solely on label and name, just to expand my horizons and have found multiple that I would never have tried just based on the description. I've always wanted to come across the Two-Headed Turtle Stout... the mascot of the Order of Procrastinators (or some such similarly named fictitional organization). Nice, slow pour that's worth waiting for and takes time to enjoy.

Cool! Thanks much.

I see what you mean. The labels are starting to get cluttered. I need to try to keep that in mind. Maybe save the wit for the neck label.

Now, Will and I brew an excellent doppelbock, along the lines of Salvator, that we talked about for 4 or 5 years before we got around to brewing it. Since Doppelbocks traditionally end in "-ator", that became Procrastinator, with part of the batch split out and repitched with different yeast and named Prevaricator. (And let's keep the politics out of it. It was going to be Clinton, but by the time we got around to brewing it there was a different president.)

I'm thinking that idea of the two-headed turtle in a pushmi-pullyew sort of mode would be an excellent label theme for Procrastinator 2 (with the tag line , "We'll come up with a more original name later.")

In any case, the labels:
http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y24...castinator.jpg

http://i6.photobucket.com/albums/y24...Doppelbock.jpg

***Bump***

Now that I'm in my new house and will have enough room to homebrew, I thought I'd revive this topic to see what Tophat & Gamma Hooch have been up to in the past months.

Tophat???

Well, my brewing buddy is awaiting his second child, I am distracted by Martial Arts and Aquaria, and we've let brewing slide for a while. Recently had our combined B-Day/Homebrew appreciation party. Whole Pound of Hops was one of the offerings. The other three were another incarnation of the Purple Peril and these two...

right on!!!!



Top is playin' again..........can't wait to see more man.

Good to be back, Fly. My cockles are definitely warmed.

I'm so happy this thread was revived and I found it again. I've got a buddy who has recently gotten into homebrewing within the last 3-4 months and I was telling him about a forum thread of homebrew labels that I thought were just awesome. The problem was that I couldn't remember where I had seen the thread and I had really wanted to show him the labels. Now I can! Sweet!

Keep posting the labels, they are great inspiration. I'm going to try to talk him into us doing some and actually bottling the beer with labels. Right now, they just put it in plain brown bottles and I think it goes away too fast for the label portion to be appreciated by many people, but hey.. maybe this will inspire them! :)

Thanks again for the updates to your amazing collection of labels.

***BumP***

Okay... THIS time I'm serious. I'll be hooking up with a local homebrewing club on Friday and picking their brains about what to buy and how to start. I have been wanting to get this started for a long time, and I'm finally pulling the trigger. I should have some good homebrew on tap in my garage by Christmas.

Oh, and label art too...

You better get hopping then. Pardon the pun. But by the time you get everything, brew, ferment and age it a bit you are going to be pushing that Christmas goal.

One thing about it though, there should be someone in the homebrew club you are hooking up with that can recommend something that may be done by that time.

Is anyone else not seeing the images?

I see very few of them. This is an old thread. The Internet ate most of them by now.

So I headed over to a local place called The Brew Hut and their 'tasting room' called The Dry Dock. Great bunch of guys there, and they are all homebrewers who were ready to help out a noob. So far I have picked up The Joy of Homebrewing, and will be reading that to get up to speed on all the lingo and processes.

The goal of a Christmas brew is rather lofty, I'd have to be boiling today for that, and I'm just not ready yet. I'll be starting with a boxed beer extract kit and work my way up from there, but that probably won't be for 2 weeks or so.

I'll keep y'all posted, and I may post a new topic with my own labels here shortly.

I don't know if you've seen the other home brew thread here. http://www.tfproject.org/tfp/showthread.php?t=18460 It is another older one. But there are some recipes and links to recipe sites in it.

OK, I purchased all the equipment, and a boxed beer kit for Irish Stout. I'll be doing the boil today and putting it in the fermenter. I have a label ready, but its on my work computer, I'll post it later.