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| The man behind all those kick-ass Great Lakes Brewing labels is artist Garnett Gerry, who in tandem with the GLB graphic designer gave the Toronto brewery's beers some real creativity to go along with their brews' outstanding taste. Also he is sporting a righteous Beard to 'Stache ratio so 100 points to Gryffindor for that alone. |
I bring this up for two reasons. Reason #1) I'm not saying I'm Batman... but I sometimes sign my credit card receipts using that name. And Reason #2), Every time I see a Great Lakes Brewing product, I found myself pondering, "Who draws these wonderful labels?"
I found out not long after I wrote my "Best of 2015" column and included GLB's Maniacal Hopshop IPA as the Best Label of the Year. (The brewery's Octopus Wants To Fight won the Best IPA, though Maniacal was in the mix.)
A kindly dude on Twitter named Josh read my "Best Of" piece and tweeted, "Hey, just wanted to let you know that the very talented @garnettgerry does the artwork for @GreatLakesBeer." Okay, cool, now I had a name. A simple matter of Google, Twitter and Facebook navigation would give me the story of the man behind those cool labels.
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| Garnett's sketchpad drawing of the Great Lake's Maniacal Hopshop IPA label gives you a sense of his eye for detail and awesome cartoon style. |
And I found it easily - an exceptionally well-written NOW magazine story from July 2014 penned by their gifted spirits columnist Sarah Parniak told the story of how Garnett hooked up with Great Lakes. (Part two of the same story was how Collective Arts use different artwork on every label, given their strong connection to the art and music community. They must literally have hundreds of different ones because I've had tons of Rhyme & Reason Extra Pale Ale, Ransack The Universe IPA and State of Mind Session IPA and have never come across the same label twice. Could be a fluke but...)
But Parniak's story tells of how GLB's graphic designer Fabian Skidmore was doing a day shift as the manager at Toronto watering hole, the Only Cafe. Skidmore had been long hoping to rebrand the GLB beers, feeling the product inside the bottles had far surpassed the labeling on the outside. He mentioned his marketing mission to Garnett, an Only regular "seldom seen without his sketchpad." One day later, Garnett showed back up with a healthy handful of sketches for GLB's various products. *Bam!* went the universe and Garnett's work has appeared on most of GLB's products since.
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| This one always cracks me up. An uppercrust British man, nose in the air, for their Pompous Ass English Pale Ale in a proper tulip glass... |
In Parniak's piece, it told of how (at least in the Summer of 2014) the GLB team of Skidmore, Sales and Community Manager Troy Burtch and GLB's Sales Rep and Branding David Bieman all used to get together over pints to try brewmaster Mike Lackey's beers and then after much deliberation (and let's assume, many pints because that's how the creative process works) come up with a name for their new beers. That name was fed to Garnett who then went to work with his sketchpad. More often than not, the artist nailed it on the first go-round.
Two Winters ago - so 2014, not long after the article - I was messaging my young friend, Mel, the Toronto Craft Beer Queen and we were raving over the very cool painted label on the Great Lake's 650-ml (22 ounces) bottle of Lake Effects IPA, as well as the dynamite beer, which has quickly become my coworker Jay-Dawg's new favourite. What Mel and I didn't know at that time was that it was a Garnett first try that hit a home run and by that I mean, Toronto Blue Jay bat-hammer Jose Bautista-style.
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| Asked to pick his favourite GLB label thus far, Garnett Gerry went with the Saison Dupump, a pumpkin-flavoured saison. Okay, cool choice. |
And even back in 2014, Garnett was getting stopped by fans in the Toronto streets. It totally blew him away. "This is something I do half-naked and drunk in my room," he jokingly told Parniak. I can scarcely imagine the reception he gets now, two years further in, with dozens of GLB labels under his graphite-stained belt.
But the artist, who hasn't even reached 30 yet, is likely to just get better and even more prominent on the Toronto arts landscape, whether it be GLB or outside work. He told Parniak, "Drawing was always something I did that mellowed me out." Apparently, he never even realized how good he was until his friends repeatedly pointed it out to him. (I love that.)
So through the magic of Facebook messaging, I tracked this gifted artist down and asked for a bit of personal background. And I got it. (To paraphrase the Joker, where were these wonderful search engine tools when I was a working journalist/editor for 25 years?)
Garnett told me he was born and raised in Windsor but when he was 19 years old, he moved to London to attend Fanshawe College "in prospects for being an actor." Okay, so the one job in Canada that pays even less than being an artist or writing a beer column. Gotcha. He now works in Toronto construction, "building high-rise condos Monday through Friday."
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| Garnett's label for The Imperial Bout, an Imperial Vanilla Bean Coffee Stout for GLB won raves from Stevil St Evil in New Zealand. "Cool label!" he crowed. I had the beer. Geez, it's as good the label! Now I knew that was a coffee bean on the right but I had NO idea how vanilla is grown. Turns out it's vanilla orchids that grow on vines... |
"(But it's) on my lunch break, after work or any free time at all, I'm drawing for GLB or just for shits and giggles." (Warning: I have had the Shits and Giggles - it's not nearly as fun as it sounds.)
But then, I went for the Sophie's Choice of all hard questions for an artist to answer. Actually, make that toughest one by far for any artist to answer. "Which GLB label that you've drawn is your favourite so far?" The Sophie's Choice aspect is it's a lot like saying, "Which label will you save and which labels will you hand over to the Nazis?" Okay, maybe a little less dramatic and Meryl Streepy than that but still a tough call for any artist to make.
While Garnett was likely reluctant, he did answer, "My favourite (label) is tough to say but maybe Saison Dupump." Okay, that label was another first draft accepted on the spot by GLB back in '14. But he had no problem naming his favourite GLB beer to drink: Thrust: An IPA, for which he also did the label. Okay, good damn choice there! It was one of my four finalists for IPA Of The Year... along with three other Great Lakes' IPAs so they were kind of a lock.
Beyond doing the GLB labels, he told me, "I have shown and sold paintings and wood burnings all over Ontario and some have ended up in other countries like Ireland." (My Irish Wexford County roots are smiling... Garnett is like one of us! But probably less drinky and punchy and Northern Ireland car bomby.)
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| Garnett's label for Swamp Juice, a concoction the brewery creates for bar taps. The beer is always a mixture of three GLB brews but as the anchor every time is their Canuck Pale Ale |
For my money, the biggest test of Garnett's skills thus far was the rebranding of the Canuck Pale Ale label more than a year ago. Previously called Crazy Canuck Pale Ale, it is the brewery's anchor beer. However, the former label was a mish-mash of Canadian iconic and somewhat cliche imagery that included a loon, a toque and many, many maple leaves. It wasn't a bad label, mind you, just a busy one. It certainly jumped out on the LCBO shelves, which is, of course, what marketers strive for.
So Garnett got the call for something new and in return, he dipped into his artistic well for something old - Gordie Levesque, a lumberjack that he had been doodling for years. Yes, still a Canadian cliche but one that gave the cans a cleaner look and, in turn, created a new character for the brewery that already had Garnett-created characters such as Harry Porter, Audrey Hopburn and Robohop. Because the marketing squad infuses tons of humour on the back of their labels in an effort to match the imagery on the front, the Harry Porter and the Bourbon-Soaked Vanilla Bean threw this plea on the back of the label. "To Whom It May Concern: Please don't sue us! Cheers! ~ Team GLB." On the front is a very Dumbledore-looking character stirring a cauldron. (Spoiler Alert: Professor Snape kills him but according to my young son, "It's not Snape's fault.")
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| In order to rebrand their signature pale ale, GLB called upon Garnett who created rugged lumberjack Gordie Levesque earlier but repurposed him for the new GLB Canuck Pale Ale cans. We like Gordie... |
Okay, we'll get back to Garnett in a minute but let's look at some of GLB's latest suds and give them a shout-out too. For Christmas, my buddy, Rib Eye Jack's Ale House's general manager Steve gave me a couple of Life Sentences Triple IPA (a truly fantastic collaboration between GLB and Amsterdam Brewing that I had gushed over in this space several times like a British school-girl meeting One Direction) but he also tossed The Imperial Bout, an Imperial Vanilla Bean Coffee Stout into the gift-bag. I had it yesterday and good gawd, was it dynamite. This 11.9%, 60 IBU (international bitterness units) blockbuster was hugely vanilla on the nose, richly coffee and bittersweet chocolate on the tongue. Pouring with a dark mocha head, the hoppiness is pretty much muted by the rich taste in the beer. You do not start with this beer. You finish with this beer because it will likely finish you first. Granted, I had to chip away at the wax over the cap for about 10 minutes before I could even open it. I think Beer Bro Glenn had the same issue. Ease up on the crockpot wax, guys - it's classy and all but you're not sending a sealed royal decree to King Arthur here. From there, let's look at GLB's Winter Ale, the spiced seasonal classic cranked out by the brewery.
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| When GLB put the call out on Twitter for their fans to show their dedication to the brewery, GLB fan Cecilia McKnight send them a pic of her Karma Citra IPA tattoo, another Garnett classic. I will say this for the young artist, his work is turning up in very cool places. |
Despite having two bottles of it in the fridge at Donny's Bar and Grill, my first taste was actually off the GLB tap at Rib Eye Jack's where it's holding the brewery's place until Swamp Juice #21 arrives. The dark brew has some lovely spices on the nose and tongue but I couldn't tell which. That's probably due to my spice proficiency being limited to salt, pepper, garlic salt, onion salt and steak seasoning. Go beyond that and I'm screwed. Turns out, according to the commercial description, it's cinnamon and ginger with a touch of honey (didn't get that at all) and orange peel. Knowing this when I opened the bottle at home, I could sense them a little better. Not nearly as heavy as The Imperial Bout, this 6.2% ale certainly has its charms. Beyond the spices, there is a caramel backbone to this beer. Now granted, we are a little eager to go through the 20-litre (5.28 US gallons) keg as quickly as possible at Rib Eye Jack's. Why? Because Steve collected a Swamp Juice #21 late last week and this time, it's a mixture of Canuck, Lake Effects and, be still, my heart, Life Sentence IIIPA. Although it will be extremely difficult to top Swamp Juice #19 that combined Canuck, Lake Effects and Thrust, anticipate a "best Swamp Juice ever!" story in this space soon. I gotta keg of Winter Ale to drain first, single-handedly if I must. (Not exactly torture as it's a damn tasty ale.)
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| Garnett Gerry poses with GLB Graphic Designer Fabian Skidmore for that July 2014 piece in NOW magazine, skillfully penned by Sarah Parniak. |
But I'm gonna leave the final word on Garnett to writer Sarah Parniak since I've already liberally poached from her piece (in rap, that's called "sampling") and frankly, she says it better and far more eloquently than I could. Wrote Sarah: "GLB's beers run the gamut of styles but playfulness is the common ingredient in all its label art. Gerry helps bring the beers to life, giving them faces, personalities and, most importantly, a sense of humour." Amen, sistah! I would have just said that he is the best beer label artist in this country and that I worship at his cartoon beer label altar. Her prose is better.
Okay, folks, just 11 days before the Burlington Winter Beer Fest at the Burlington Holiday Inn on January 29-30. I'll be bringing a sharpie on the Saturday to sign the casts of the feet I trample on and break to get to the breweries first on Friday. (It's a service I provide.) There's 23 great craft breweries there, as well as five wineries and four cider houses, all for just $20!! Wayne Brown and his merry gang of outlaws had been working hard on this baby, which will warm of the coldest of appendages now that Winter has come to Westeros... and, by extension, Burlington. You can find your online tickets right at: This Link Here!!! But guys and dolls, that's it, that's all and I am outta here! Until next time, I remain...
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