This content was originally published by The Hop Review, a digital magazine that joined the Hop Culture family in March 2020.
This piece was written by Jack Muldowney.
CAMBRIDGE, UK
Beer & Branding: Old Friends Brewery
The UK is fully embracing the American craft beer movement (as we documented last summer in this piece). It’s no joke, the hottest beers to get your hands on in London and beyond are APAs, and other stateside styles complimented with American hops. It’s particularly intriguing, given their longstanding beer culture, albeit with traditional styles (original IPAs, ESBs, etc).
The trend in U.S.-inspired has caught on so well, that breweries are sprouting just to honor (ahem, honour) their inspiration source. Enter Cambridge, England’s [very new] Old Friends Brewery.
“OFB was founded by two old friends who saw a gap in the UK’s burgeoning American–style craft beer scene for a Cambridge-based brewery,” proclaims their website. And to tackle the aesthetic of this new venture was fellow Cambridge-ite firm, The District.
To no one’s surprise, the OFB brand is immediately more typographic-meets-quirky than anything you’ve seen lately here in ‘Merica. Did I mention quirky? Aside from the striking bottle cap, their impressively achieved “OFB” character has been implemented across various brewery touchpoints–including almost uncomfortable to look at family portraits. You’ll see what I mean below.
This is what I’d imagine a brewery to look like, if Mr. Bean started a craft brewery. All in all, just peculiar enough to make me want to seek some out on my next trip…
Images from design firm, The District‘s project page.