Posted at 4:00 p.m.
One look at the shelves of beer retailers is enough to see that the current trend in brewery design combines vivid graphics and vibrant colors. Some microbreweries, however, are betting on presenting something more representative, even daring to use the cans to tell stories, real or fictional. A look.
With their lettering from another era and their fake headlines illustrated as if it were a newspaper from the end of the 19thand century, the cans of the brewery L’Apothicaire are frankly out of place, so much so that they are immediately identifiable among the hundreds of products on display. “On the shelves, everything is very fluorescent, flash, we wanted something more sober, the kind of can that tells you that you’re going to have a beer, and not a juice or a soft drink”, explains Dave Bérard, laughing. co-owner and brewer of the Saint-Jacques brewery, in Lanaudière. “As brewers and consumers, we observed the strong trend for IPAs and we felt a little neglected because we are more into malt and more traditional things. We wanted to find a look that matched our beer. »
The name of the brewery thus arrived almost simultaneously with the design of the cans. “It comes from our interests in fantasy literature and mythology, HP Lovecraft in particular,” says Louis Rocheleau, co-owner and treasurer.
As the apothecary was sometimes seen as a seller of miracles in the Wild West, a scientist who made concoctions with fantastic virtues, it’s a nod to what we do and what we love.
Louis Rocheleau, co-owner and treasurer of L’Apothicaire brewery
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PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
The cans of the microbrewery L’Apothicaire are all illustrated by a fantastic news invented by the brewers about a paranormal event that occurred in a municipality of Lanaudière.
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PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
The cans of L’Apothicaire are also illustrated with advertisements taken from newspaper archives from the turn of the 20th century.and century.
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“The character of the apothecary comes with paranormal phenomena, continues Louis Rocheleau. Is he an actor or simply an observer, we don’t know, but what we do know is that where he goes, extraordinary things happen. We get lost in reading the cans, rolled up by what appears to be an old yellowed newspaper, where we find the name of the beer, an advertisement taken from the archives as well as a fantastic short story featuring a municipality from Lanaudiere.
With its unique design and high quality beers, L’Apothicaire has certainly not reached the end of its adventures. “It’s a concept that we will always be able to rework, we invent what we want, it’s an infinite concept, maintains Pierre-Luc Gagné, co-owner and brewer. Also, it’s very Lovecraft to associate elements of reality with fiction, it’s always difficult to differentiate what happened or not…”
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
A few comic strips made by Pierre Drysdale appear on the cans of the Watford microbrewery. A QR code also allows access to additional content, including a biography of the wacky characters that inhabit the Watford universe.
WTF?
In a completely different register, it is also difficult to distinguish between fiction and reality when meeting some of the wacky characters illustrated on the cans of the Watford microbrewery. Are the picturesque John Watford, Sharon Charron and Mario Hamel inspired by residents of Sainte-Rose-de-Watford? “The idea comes from my native village, because I’ve always thought that Watford was a good beer call,” explains laughing Michel Nadeau, co-owner of the microbrewery that brews its products at Maltco, in Quebec.
We had fun playing with the clichés and commonplaces of beer, our characters were born that way.
Michel Nadeau, co-owner of the Watford microbrewery
There are several and more to come, whether it’s the brown knight, a nod to the knight O’Keefe, the scowling Yawb because his image has been overused by many breweries, or even Sharon, reference stripped of all those pinups that have always been used in the brewing world.
Marketing specialist, Michel Nadeau likes to build brand experiences, but he has always wanted to build a universe behind the beer; the Watford microbrewery has therefore brought together its two passions. “I was inspired by Bazooka Joe gum, which we bought at the convenience store when we were little,” he recalls. We started with a rubber that was not really good, but we still bought it for the experience! »
An assertion quickly qualified by his partner Jonathan Lebeau: “This is where the comparison with Bazooka Joe ends, because in the world of Quebec microbreweries, you cannot create loyalty with a bad product, he specifies. he laughs. Okay, we don’t have the resources to get creative at all costs with our beers, it’s not our niche. We want to tend more towards sure values with a twist, perhaps with less fireworks, but well executed. Something more accessible than stuff a little more tucked away. “With a funny image that frankly clashes.
PHOTO MARTIN CHAMBERLAND, THE PRESS
Most of the cans of Les Brasseurs de Montebello allude to events that marked the history of the Petite-Nation region.
Educational brews
For its part, the Brasseurs de Montebello brewery has given itself the mission of representing events or characters that have marked the history of the region. The owner and brewer, André Larivière, even hosts a podcast in which he invites representatives of the Louis-Joseph Historical Society to talk about facts alluded to in the name of his new beers.
This is how his beers sometimes allude to Victor Nymark, who directed the construction of Château Montebello, to the ghost of Ézilda Papineau, one of the daughters of Louis-Joseph Papineau, lord of the Petite-Nation, or even to the fire that ravaged no less than 30 buildings in the village, which inspired the beer Le Grand Feu 1913.
“Sometimes I go with the beer, sometimes with the story, explains Alain Larivière. For Le Grand Feu 1913, I brewed a smoky IPA, so I made the beer accordingly. »