A call for more subtle beer tshirts

I have a great many beer tees that I love. The old Lagunitas and Lost Coast shirts are very high quality and are still in great shape. Green Flash, Olde Hickory, Green Man are all cool shirts, but my favorite by far is Adnams, with the company patch on the chest. It's navy with one horizontal orange line and beautiful, as is the hat. They are all seaworthy One Lagunitas shirt does say Fukin' IPA on the back, but I don't care. It's in the spirit of the old Lagunitas brewery that I know best.

 

Right on!

My two favorite brewery t-shirts are the ones my daughter got me for my birthday one year. A Sierra Nevada Bigfoot barleywine style Ale and Great Lakes Burning River Pale Ale with the old graphics before they changed the artwork. I think the graphics on both are cool and usually get a compliment when wearing them out in public. Cheers!

 

I regret that mine also finally had to be delegated to the rag pile. Great shirt.

 

Wow, I really want that shirt.

https://bissell-brothers.square.site/shop/merchandise/21

Bissell Brothers is about as subtle as it comes.

Just the “three B’s” logo. I see them everywhere too, people love their brand.

 

I'm perfectly okay with either premise. Subtle nods to breweries, or blatant logos are both fine with me.

 

C'mon, man - I asked you not to bring that up after you guys ragged on me for turning it inside out during that unexpected rain storm during our bar tour that day (I swear I saw that trick on TV once, Martha Steward maybe?). Yeah, the lining was even worse...

I later just stopped wearing it 'cause it turns out I didn't read the fine print - damn goose down - I'm allergic to it. Gimme Carhartt duck (not that 2% spandex Rugged Flex® shit, either) + blanket-lining any day.
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I was never a fan of the printed T-Shirt - wacky, band, brewery, work place, etc. Besides the "free advertising that the consumer pays for" aspect, all that "stuff" going on at the bottom of my line of sight just annoys the hell out of me. Plus the image is often uncomfortable ("comfort" being the only reason to wear a T-Shirt, isn't it?) and the shirts often 60-40 cotton/poly blends (I'm a 100% cotton for all clothes).

I recall one cold winter day I decided to wear a new T-Shirt the company gave us - big "Plastic-y" feeling logo, lotsa polyester in the blend - underneath my regular workshirt for warmth. Half way through a big pick-up as I was loading the truck down in the Wall St. area, I was so !@#$ sweaty and uncomfortable, I pulled the door down on the box truck and took off my jacket, hooded sweatshirt, long sleeve work shirt to remove that fuckin' polyester T-shirt. Into the donation bin in the supermarket parking lot they all went.

I do wear brewery (and other advertising) baseball caps - I can't see the logos on them. Some I even paid full price for but half were freebies or flea market/thrift store purchases (pretty easy to tell a never-worn hat from a previously used one). It does make for some interesting comments sometimes when you don't remember what your hat of the day says - often based on what beer you ordered vs. what brewery's hat you got on.

Although my favorite comment - and it's happened several times - was when I had on my Walden Pond hat from the Thoreau Society. (< That one's a different newer design that mine. The hat itself is a sorta ironic statement in my mind. Ol' Henry -- wearing a branded baseball cap! ).

"That's a great movie." Points at my hat.
"Huh?" Can't remember what hat I had on, pull it off and look. "Movie?"
"Yeah, you know with Katherine Hepburn, Henry Fonda and his Commie daughter."
"Oh, yeah..."

PS - Oh, wait. Before I stopped wearing such items, I once had a "homemade" white cotton T-Shirt with a small Thoreau pic (4" X 6") in the center of the chest - made by a friend of mine when she was taking a silk-screening class. The comments I remember best:
"Why do you have Abraham Lincoln on your shirt?"

 

My avatar is also a T-shirt I own (and wear):



Another brewery's T-shirt that was gifted to me (birthday gift):



Cheers!

 

I have that shirt. It's my favorite kind. Just an abstract logo; no writing, no pictures. Some of my other favorite shirts with just the logo are ones from Other Half and Monkish.

 

It's not a brewery shirt but I did just get a t-shirt from GBH that simply says "Maris Otter" on the front.

Haven't worn it yet - wondering what the reaction will be

 

Wow, that’s a really awesome shirt.

Simply because if you come across someone who even knows what Maris Otter is, you’re likely to have a solid beer conversation with them.

 

This whole conversation reminds me of the time I bought a beer whose label is a bunch of cartoon hop cones on a black background and the checker asked me;
"Why is this beer can covered in artichokes?"