Behind the Beer // Seasonal Appeal
One of our favourite beers at S&O was our old flagship brew the Dry Hopped ESB. Like many ESBs before it, it suffered from being called an ESB (a style which not a lot of people know), and riding that hop-forward Ale category while being below the 5% threshold.
It has all the qualities of a beer we like. It was refreshing, it was hoppy, it was balanced, and it was lower ABV. People loved it, and it’s the beer we get asked about the most. But not enough people bought it over time to make it viable for us to keep it under the Flagship lineup.
We changed the name to West Coast ESB, then considered changing it again to a Pale Ale but thought that was disingenuous to the style that we were trying to achieve. Eventually we just decided to nix it all together and bring it back at a later date for those of you who missed it, us included.
That time is now.
We’re excited to announce that we are re-releasing ESB under a cheekier name, Seasonal Appeal.
It’s the same beer, now in canned format, and only for a limited amount of time.
Behind the Label // Seasonal Appeal
We wanted to keep the overall vibe of the Flagship ESB so that people would know it was a nod to the original beer but in a new format. Here is my design brief to Sami:
“So this beer is our original flagship S&O West Coast ESB. We stopped making it cause it didn’t sell well enough to warrant keeping it around all year. But it’s an awesome beer and one we get asked a lot about bringing back. So we’re going to in a limited fashion. Not sure if there is a way to play off of this being an original beer we’re bringing back or a way to tie it to our original ESB but just wanted to throw it out there.”
Sami got back to me with the following options and description.
“I tried to take inspiration from the original flagship packaging like you had mentioned. But interpreting it in a different way. Let me know what you think!”
We decided to go with something that felt like Option 3 but with ESB instead of S&O to make it more obvious. I feel like it’s pretty obvious now 🙂
We’re happy to have been able to bring back one of our favourites for you to enjoy again, but you know, seasonally.
Cheers,
Jorden
