The Classics

In the beer label iconography, besides the obvious subjects as barley, hops etc, and other particular ones such as Christmas and other celebrations, there are other themes that come out frequently. Before we start a serie of thematic galleries, each focused on one specific recurring theme, in this page you can see just one label for each subject

Women and Beer In label images, women are less frequent than men (beer drinkers, brewmasters and other people); this may be surprising considering the frequent comparison (also in advertisements): beer<-->woman, blonde, seduction etc.

The Animals Animals make quite a frequent subject in beer labels; sometimes the depicted animal gives its name to the beer itself (e.g. Bulldog, Giraf and many other) or is a (trade)mark related to the brewery, such as Carlsberg's Elephant.

A Devil of a beer!! Another recurring subject is the devil. Its image, sometimes correspomding to the name of the beer, is often related to the character of the beers which are apparently drinkable or even light but actually quite strong and so "dangerous" (albeit the Old Nick satisfies more the second feature than the first one)

S. George and the Dragon Actually this is not a frequent subject, but appears at least in three or four labels, sometimes in the foreground and other times almost hidden in the ornamental parts of the label.

Breweries The image of a brewery - often (more or less accurately) the actual brewery producing the beer - is of course a frequent sublect.

Beer Travels! In the labels we can also find a few means of transport (from ships to horse-carriages to... trucks) often but not always in relation to the shipping of beer.

The landscapes of the beer Sometimes, labels are showing us views and landscapes of the places where the beer come from, such as the case of the Abbey in Austria where this rare rye beer is produced.

Created by Massimo Faraggi