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    Beautiful Beer: 10 Brilliant Beer Bottle Designs
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Beautiful Beer: 10 Brilliant Beer Bottle Designs

Beer Bottle Designs | In a market dominated by Anheuser Busch and Miller-Coors, finding beauty in beer is a difficult task. 

Far beyond the industrialized world of Big Beer, a large and growing group of independent breweries are not only investing in fine, hand-crafted beer but in sensible design practices as well.  To show just how beautiful beer can be, we’ve scoured the beer world for 10 truly brilliant examples of beer bottle designs. 

Related Reading: Top 10 Bottle Opener Keychains

Okay, so we threw in a couple cans as well– but we guarantee the beer lover in you will be entirely satisfied.  Cheers!

Carlsberg 900 Beer by JDO UK

Take a good, hard look at this bottle, because sadly you’ll never see one in the wild.  The Carlsberg 900 beer bottle was designed as a special, very limited edition package to be offered in select restaurants in Stockholm.  The design by JDO UK is refined, simple and at once both luxurious and industrial.  While this one-off limited edition beer may never see bottling again, we hope that Carlsberg will adopt this work by JDO and Werk in future revisions of the brand’s identity.

Carlsberg 900 Beer Gallery

Westmalle Tripel Beer by Jess McGeachin

The monks of Westmalle Abbey brew a fine blonde ale with passion and altruism, a beer whose proceeds are donated to charity.  Designer Jess McGeachin created a packaging identity for Westmalle Tripel that reflects this altruism and the brand’s religious values.  This four-pack box and bottle design includes the iconography of a church steeple and stained glass windows, creating one of the most beautiful packages of beer we’ve ever seen.  This is one package that, after consuming, you’ll never be able to part with.  Long after the beer is gone, the packaging will remain a collector’s item.

Westmalle Tripel Beer Gallery

Session Lager Beer by Jon Patterson

Watch where you pop this little can of lager, its appearance alone is likely to strike fear into the hearts of those around you.  The Session Lager Beer design by Jon Patterson is inspired by the hand grenade, featuring a grenade-style pin bottle cap and a cut-out label.  We’re no stranger to weaponized design, and this little can of beer just joined our favorites.  Nice work, Jon Patterson– just be sure to drink these with caution.

Session Lager Beer Gallery

Mariestads Beer by Neumeister

Mariestads Prima Lager needed an update to their identity which reflected the brand’s long history and standing amongst beer connoisseurs.  Neumeister created a beer bottle design that is traditional and refined, with box packaging that provides details about Mariestad’s 160-year history.  Neumeister focused not only on creating a premier label and package, but distinctive product photography that sells this design as effectively as the label itself.

Mariestads Beer Gallery

Lingerie Beer Cans by RAMM

This beer can may appear innocent on its own, but join two together and that innocence is replaced by sexy lingerie.  The Lingerie Beer Cans by RAMM show a city scene with factories and smoke, but when joined with another can a leggy pair of lingerie is shown.  This design is easily one of the best we’ve seen in the beer world, but it could also be one of the most inventive packaging designs we’ve seen in years.

Cable Car Beer

The design for Cable Car Beer is much more traditional than most on this list, but its vintage appeal earns it respect in the world of packaging.  The label shows the brand’s namesake and a batch number, while the sleeve on the bottleneck shows more detail about the date of origin from whence it came.  The six pack packaging offers its buyers “six rides”, a fun connection to the meaning of the Cable Car brand.

Inedit Beer by Estrella Damm

The beer bottle design and packaging for Estrella Damm beer is beautiful in its own right, but the Inedit Beer by Estrella Damm is a clear cut above.  Inedit Beer was created for specific food pairings, to be served in upscale restaurants where wine should not be the only option.  The design of Inedit Beer is tall, black and handsome, with a gold star and red sleeve.  We’re fond of Estrella Damm already, so you can bet when we finally taste Inedit that we’ll tip extra if we can keep the bottle…

Estrella Damm Inedit Gallery

Chambar Ale by Glasfurd and Walker

Chambar, a fine dining restaurant in Vancouver, B.C., has created a line of Belgian-style ales to serve amongst their cuisine.  The Chambar Ale bottle design by Glasfurd and Walker features printing directly on the bottle, a gold-and-glass design that speaks to the upscale focus of the Chambar restaurant.  The bottle is paired with a gold-rimmed glass baring the Chambar logo, a nice touch when you order a bottle of your own in Vancouver, B.C.

Stiegl Beer by Skinny Ships

Re-designing the label of a 500-year-old beer is not an easy task, but the design crew at Skinny Ships executed brilliantly.  The new label for the Austrian pilsner Stiegl is simple and contemporary, maintaining the familiar brand elements of the Stiegl font plus the stair-step logo.  Skinny Ships has shown how big, bold lettering and little else can sell a beer, giving it an old-time feel but a contemporary sensibility.

Stiegl Beer Gallery

Hallertau Extra Strength Heroic Beer

This gorgeous black-and-white beer bottle design may be filled with some seriously strong beer, but it is brimming with beauty as well.  The Hallertau Extra Strength Heroic Beer features designs inspired by Roman sculptures and bas reliefs, pure white on a black label.  While the design is serious at first glance, the characters within these designs are humorous themselves.  The soldier on the chariot above is saluting with rock-and-roll devil horns, and the fellow in the gallery below is holding nine barrels of wine on his shoulder with a smile on his face.  Humor aside, this design by Degree Design is easily one of the world’s most beautiful beer bottle designs, we’d love to have one in our own personal collection.

Hallertau Extra Strength Heroic Beer Gallery

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So, what is your favorite beer from our list of beautiful beer bottle designs?  It’s a tough decision to choose just one, although that Hallertau beer above is visually stunning in our opinion.  Let us know your thoughts in the comments.  While we were careful to exclude any beer we figured most of our readers would be familiar with, be sure to mention any craft or commercial beers whose labels you find intriguing.  In the mean time, share this article with your beer buddies– and check out these other liquor-related features right here on TheCoolist:

Last, if you’re interested in receiving bottles like these in the mail once a month, be sure to check out our coverage on the Beer of the Month Club!