Those of you who know me, know much I love beer. Well this month has been a good month for beer. My close friend Nick Wilson gave a talk the other week alongside a very talented home brewer from the upstate, Brian Cendrowski. The two discussed the art of craft in design and beer, it was basically the perfect event for me. The talks were followed by a guided beer tasting led by Brian. Brian also has a great beer blog called UNTAMED BEER. Since then I’ve been working with Nick on a project for The Half and Half. The project was a poster created for LOVELIKEBEER, a great beer blog based in San Diego, who commissioned the posters for a craft beer dinner featuring Jolly Pumpkin Ales to benefit Engineers Without Borders. This is the final result. Enjoy!
LOVELIKEBEER from Forrest Clonts on Vimeo.
And since you’re already thinking about beer, allow me to tell you about some of my favorite fall beers. Among the fall seasonals there are two big categories, Oktoberfest and Pumpkin Ales. Pumpkin Ales are the ones I gravitate towards. A great one for any beer drinker is Shipyard’s Pumpkin Head Ale. It’s always good out of the bottle and now it’s even better thanks to food memories from Tim and Joey’s wedding in New Hampshire last year. Shipyard Brewery is in Portland, Maine and could be found on tap at just about every venue we went to for the wedding weekend. The Wolfeboro Inn (The location of Tim and Joey’s wedding) had a fantastic bar that put this beer over the top for me. It was served in a pint glass rimmed with brown sugar, cinnamon, and nutmeg. The perfect extra punch of spice and sweetness to really set this beer apart. So now when I drink one, I drink to good friends in far off places.
My favorite fall seasonal has to be Southern Tier’s Pumking Imperial Pumpkin Ale. This Imperial Ale walks a fine line between a serious Ale and everything you love about pumpkin pie. Just enough hops to let you know they are there with a subtle bitter bite on the front and then it quickly mellows to the sweet and spice of pumpkin pie without being sticky sweet. It can only be found in 22 oz Bombers and is 9% abv, so enjoy one with a friend. This beer is always hard to track down and seems to come in later than the rest of the fall seasonals, but it’s worth the wait, and last time I checked, was still on the shelves at a few places around town. And to give you an idea of how much I like this beer, I may or may not have purchased a case this year.
~ F
Domesticated Artists 