New Zealand brewing company Yeastie Boys added a gold medal for
design to the growing swag of international gongs they have
recently won for their leftfield ales, when they were awarded gold
for their open source Digital IPA in the Packaging Class at the
Sutton Group Brewers Guild of New Zealand Beer Awards last week.

Digital IPA, a robustly hopped India Pale Ale that has fast become
one of Yeastie Boys’ most popular beers, features five Quick
Response (QR) codes on the distinctive metallic-blue label. The QR
codes link to various web pages including one containing the full
recipe of the beer, making Digital IPA one of the world’s
first open source beers.

Christchurch design company Deflux worked on the label for Digital
IPA - a beer named after a 1978 song by post punk band Joy Division
- after the Yeastie Boys mentioned they wanted to make the recipe
open source. "The monotony of the phrase 'day in day out' from the
song was what flipped the switch for this label concept" said Simon
Courtney, Deflux Art Director. "That led us into the mono-colour
metallic blue print, metallic blue reminded us of robots and robots
are digital… so it all tied in nicely. The use of QR codes
stems from the strong social voice of the Yeastie Boys and a
feeling that the space on a label couldn't fully say everything
about this beer, or encapsulate who the Yeastie Boys are and what
they stand for."

Yeastie Boys' founder and Creative Director Stu McKinlay says the
name has confused quite a few consumers. "Digital really amused me
as a beer name because of the fact that a beer - unlike the music
that inspires much of our work - cannot be downloaded for free. It
has be purchased from a commercial brewery or brewed at home with
your own sweat and tears. But giving people a link to the recipe
almost makes it digital" McKinlay said. "In regards to giving the
recipe away via the QR code, we get asked all the time about
whether it is a good idea to give away our intellectual property.
Our belief is that education is one of the keys to keeping people
engaged in the process of making and drinking great beer. Chefs do
it all the time, so why shouldn’t we? Perhaps this label will
be the first step to New Zealand’s first craft brewing recipe
book."

The packaging for Digital IPA wasn’t rewarded for the use of
new physical materials in the container itself, or in the label,
nor does it contain any sort of gimmicky pouring mechanism found in
some better known products. It was rewarded for doing something far
more important for craft beer - a sub-sector of the brewing
industry that sometimes focuses too introspectively, on simply
making great beer, and not enough on getting that beer to market
and keeping it there. The label opens a link between Yeastie Boys
and their customers, engaging them in a two-way conversation via
social media and giving them the opportunity to brew the beer
themselves. The consumer then becomes the producer and, as such, a
virtual sales force for better beer in general. Of course, once the
packaging has been scanned and the bottle has been opened, it is
only the quality of the beer that resells the product and Digital
IPA is receiving rave reviews.

"The proudest moment I have experienced with this label was not the
feedback from happy homebrewers who had used the recipe, or excited
open source geeks who had seen their digital ideas in the beer
world, but a few minutes spent in a bottle store watching a mum and
dad eagerly showing their children how the QR codes worked." said
McKinlay. "It wasn’t some weird thing where we were engaging
with a potential future customer that excited me but the fact that
our label had transcended its traditional form. It was no longer a
simple means of explaining what the beer tasted like and what its
vital regulatory statistics were. It was a means of engaging people
deeper into the world of craft beer - a very good place to be."

Yeastie Boys Digital IPA is distributed exclusively in New Zealand
via BeerNZ Ltd and is also exported to Australia, Europe, Singapore
and USA. It was recently selected as the official beer of the
Fab8NZ Conference at Wellington's Massey University later this
month. Fab8NZ is a conference about open design in digital
fabrication, which will also see the opening of the southern
hemisphere’s first Fab Lab, and brings together participants
from 30 countries.