Posted on 01.11.09

99 Bottles of Beer in the Fridge

by Tim Frick

In addition to 2008 being a banner year for business at Mightybytes, it also marked a possibly more important milestone: we learned how to brew our own beer. Thanks to the brewing prowess and educational wisdom of Jared Saunders from Little Green Cube, we have made four successful batches so far, three of which were so well received by clients and friends at our ‘08 holiday party that the supply barely lasted an hour.

Our foray into beer-brewing started over a year ago when we suffered a rare and unfortunate bout of creative blockage while brainstorming a 2007 holiday card idea that ultimately never saw the light of day. “It would be so much easier if we could just give our clients beer,” Travis said during the session and that was all the inspiration we needed. Though the card never came to fruition, the beer did. Less than a year later we had four batches of Mightybrew under our belt with packaging and brand identity developed for three of them (we just drank the first one as soon as it was ready):

Evil Tween Ale: A rich and full-bodied red ale. Check out the label »
Ale Type=Pale: An American micro-brewed pale ale with a hoppy finish. Check out the label »
After FX Ale: A tasty malt-forwad amber ale. Check out the label »

Since web, video and Flash make up our primary service offerings we used those as the impetus for naming and individual brand development of each brew, from the body copy to the imagery that graces each label. Custom-designed six packs made great holiday gifts (though we drastically underestimated how many we needed) and the overall process served as a great creative outlet and a fun, albeit somewhat messy team-building exercise for all of us. Note to self: make sure there’s a mop on hand for batch number five.

With the warm reception that our inaugural batches inspired, there will no doubt be more signature batches of Mightybrew coming in 2009. To watch the beer-brewing process in action, check out the Brew Camp set on our Flickr account.

Tim Frick prefers conjugating verbs to concatenating variables, but will do either in a pinch. Mightybytes is a Chicago-based web design and digital marketing firm and a certified B Corporation. Connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Pinterest or fill out our contact form.