Behind the Beer // Interstate Love Song
So how does a brewery from Portland and a brewery from New West get together to make beer? Well Interstate Love Song (like many collabs) started over beers. I first hung out with Gigantic co-owner and Head Brewer Ben Love at Farmhouse Fest 2018. What started out as a friendly couple beers ended with us eating DL Chicken Shack sandwiches and trying not to get the hiccups. From that point forward, a friendship was formed.
Our Head Brewer Eric went down to Portland for a thing and popped into Gigantic to chat with Ben. Ben thought it’d be cool and very BCish to brew something with oysters. Eric said “Oyster Pilsner!” (Eric wants to make everything into a Pilsner) Ben has a chocolate supplier that he loves called Woodblock and with the release being in winter it was agreed that a Chocolate Oyster Stout may be a safer way to go. Once back in BC we met with Scotty the Big Shucker who was fired up about the collab and recommended some oysters from Desolation Sound.
Interstate Love Song has 60lbs. of cocoa nibs in it. About one pound of chocolate per 50L of beer. 300 whole Desolation Sound oysters went into the boil to give ISL a bit of brininess and minerality. If you haven’t had an Oyster Stout before don’t be scared (unless you’re allergic), this beer doesn’t actually taste like shellfish. The flavour profile is more in line with salted chocolate.
It was rad having Ben and his wife Andrea up for the brew day and we would love any excuse to brew with Gigantic again!
Behind the Design // Interstate Love Song
Interstate Love Song was originally going to be called Contains Shellfish. Buuuut I got a little pushback so we thought ISL was a creative name playing off of the Interstate that joins us, Love being Ben’s last name and the fact that this beer is made with some aphrodisiacs and will be launched Valentines Day, and finally, it’s a sweet Stone Temple Pilots song!
Here is my full brief to our designer Sami:
“What I’d like to do is for all 650ml bottle designs (including bottle collabs now) stick with the diamond shape label. I feel that the consistency on the shelf looks good. However, much like the regular collab labels we were doing before I think the interior of the diamond can be anything. It doesn’t need to follow the regular format of all other diamond labels. So it can really be anything you want, inside of that diamond shape. Gigantic is from Portland and has a very comic book feel to all of their stuff.”
If you had a look at our designer Sami’s S&O Instagram takeover you’ll actually be able to watch her design one of the versions of this label. The options I was sent are below and here are Sami’s explanations for each.
We decided to go with Option 1 but threw some colour at it. I think Sami did a great job of still keeping the font based vibe we use for S&O while adding a bit of that comic book feel that Gigantic is known for.
We’re really excited about this beer and hope that you dig it too. Unless you’re allergic to shellfish, then don’t dig this beer at all please.
-Jorden
