Beer Face Review: Magic Hat’s Circus Boy
Magic Hat is a happy-go-lucky brewery based in South Burlington, Vermont and those hippies up there really love to mess around with their Beer Faces! Their Faces are all over the map as far as design, color, type and style. If you look at a Face and ask “What the hell am I drinking?”, it’s probably a Magic Hat brew. This adventurous design approach is admirable, whether a noble conscious effort or unconscious acid-tripped night on the ol’ Flower Power iMac. As you can imagine, the results are often disastrous.
A friend brought over a sampler the other week and I was immediately drawn to the Face of their Hefeweizen, Circus Boy. The bottle has 3 labels, two ovular ones one the body and a Magic Hat promo choker on the neck. The face is largely an illustration, with a warm yellow color palette which looks great against the dark brown bottle. The hand-drawn treatment of the beer’s name works well, the near white letters are clear and their strong contrast from the textured background give the title a high level of prominence. The title’s typography is uneven and organic, flowing from the top down around to the right side of the label and illustration. Below we find a ornate circus carriage dubbed “The Hefeweizen!”, wow, what showmanship! This provides the focal point of the label, which is the dark rectangular shape of the hull of the carriage, barred for transporting animals. Kinda looks like a dark bar code though. Hey, something’s reaching out and grabbing the letter “y” in the title! OMG!
Upon closer inspection, we’ve found Circus Boy! His beady white eye are dotted in darkness as he reaches out for help from a life on the road with smelly animals. Nice touch Magic Hat, a subtle clever interpretation of the name. Fun typography, a great color pallette, appropriate illustration and a drugged-out game of “Where’s Weird Waldo?” make this Face a winner. So get yourself out the circus (er, bar) and save this freak (uh, boy) today!
on November 15th, 2006 at 7:10 pm
how does it taste though?
on November 15th, 2006 at 8:50 pm
Dan,
I enjoyed the taste of Circus Boy. Sharing a sampler with friends, I only had one though, and would like to have it again to make a better judgement.
You will find Beer Face Reviews mainly concentrate on the aesthetics of the bottle. For another example and more of an explanation about the reveiws, see last month’s take on Hofbräu Oktoberfest.
on November 17th, 2006 at 9:41 am
Out of a bottle I didn’t much like it, I don’t quite remember why. Draught, it was imminently quaffable. Light, refreshing, with a decent crisp hops bite. Not much of a review, but I am not working off a fresh memory, and could in fact, be entirely off in my recollection.