Quick Lagunitas Sucks Question

I wonder if it supposed to be sealing wax?

 

I don't think they bottle date their bottles. I could be wrong though.

 

We do date our bottles... it should be hard to read but it is on the neck... the first three digits are the Julian date. But, they can be rubbed off and sometimes our ridiculously expensive and proportionately unreliable ink-jet date coder takes a crap and we have been so pressed to keep up that we have to run anyway. However, any Sucks in the world was bottled between December 2 and today. The DayTime mentioned hasn't been bottled in many months but that beer really seems to hold up. This isn't very scientific but Ive left bottles on the porch at home all winter and it remains tasty. Most recipes are not like that.

 

You guys are just plain awesome. That is all.

 

I completely agree. If I knew nothing about Lagunitas and their beer, the packaging design would be an instant turnoff.

 

As someone who does branding for a living, I would suggest that there's nothing C+ about their packaging and copywriting. It's very much maverick, odd, humorous, but not in a cloying, hipster way. It's completely true to the brand and Tony's outsider persona. (A good analogue in the wine world would be Randall Graham of Bonny Doon Wines.) Put another way: if you're someone who wouldn't buy Lagunitas because of their packaging, you're not their intended customer.

 

Fortunately I don't buy my beer based on packaging. I do appreciate good design in pretty much everything but at the end of the day the actual product is what will win me over. What you describe as "maverick, odd, humorous, but not in a cloying, hipster way" I would describe as lazy, odd, and failing to be humorous. I agree that it does not come off at hipster. It kinda reminds me of some homebrewing labels I've seen. All I'm saying is if you stuck a person that knew nothing about craft in a beer store I think they would steer clear of Lagunitas.

 

Do you really think Lagunitas intended customers are people that like their packaging? I would think it would be anyone who loves great beers, not someone who likes reading silly nonsense in small print on the side of a beer bottle. The packaging issue has been beaten to death in past threads on BA. Packaging, whether its good or bad may sell a beer once, but the real "craft beer enthusiast" isn't buying a bad beer because of packaging or silly stuff written on the label, they buy it because its a great product and that is why I love Lagunitas, they make some great beers.

 

Um... Everyone submitting a response to this thread (including you) is giving Lagunitas free advertising on the world's biggest forum about craft beer. I would say they are geniuses.

 

That's not what I said. To put it yet another way: if you're the kind of person who turns down buying Lagunitas because you don't like their packaging, you're not who they're trying to sell to.

To be clear, I'm not really that invested in this argument. But what I can say, on a different but related note, is that high-end (read: expensive, design-by-committee) visual identity is the easiest way to disguise the the nature of a mediocre product.

 

We already know that Lagunitas makes great beers, though, so obviously you or I could give a damn how the labels look. Labels only influence your purchase decision if it's a new beer for you. I try to do my homework before I go out hunting, but I know I've picked up absolute crap beer because the label caught my interest, and I'm sure I've passed up gems because I don't really notice them due to poor labeling. You might like to think you're immune to marketing, but unless you've got a smartphone (I don't) and are looking up each and every bottle on the shelf, you're not immune at all.

 

Or that they don't feel like they have to spell everything out for their customers.

 

For the complainers. It's beer. If it cracks you up. Try it. If it's good. Like it.
From a graphic standpoint. They must be doing a few things right considering how large they are within this tiny little segment of a huge market and enjoy taking the piss out of people who are serious about this fizzy yellow stuff.

 

I think I might actually have an answer. I was talking to a Firestone Walker Rep who had a close friend in Lagunitas, he said that it is supposed to be BIRD SHIT. It was due to them being shit upon when they were investigated, naming issues with Censored ( I guess it was supposed to be called The Chronic) and subsequent issues with production of Brown Sugga. I guess they felt that they were being shit on some how. This is only what I was told, but it sounds plausible.

 

Except that in message #59 in this thread the guy from the brewery explained what it was about and it wasn't that.

 

Is it just me, or is there a definite East Coast bias in the complainers about Lagunitas's packaging?

I've never had a second thought about it myself (I'm in California, but am a native Midwesterner), but then again it took me a long while to figure out the Wilco Tango Foxtrot thing.

 

Oh so you are saying its an abstract expressionism piece with real deep feels which I am obviously too ignorant to comprehend. Yeah ok, I'm sure all the shitty label designers use that excuse.

 

Ahhh, I see. Well, it was bird poop (maybe), so it wasn't that far off.

 

No, that's not what I said at all.

 

I had always thought the splatter on the bottle was a blood splatter, seeing as it's called Sucks, thought it might have been taking a playful jab at all the resurgent vampire popularity. Kind of like Lagunitas own version of the drink "True Blood"