Gary Magnone
December 15, 2017
We’re excited to announce that the latest version of our LA Brewery Shirt is live and available to purchase in our merch store!
This year’s version prominently features 67 independent brewery members of the Los Angeles County Brewers Guild, in a hand-drawn hop shape designed by local artist Pete Kasprzak, printed in off-white ink on heather black tri-blend cloth by local print shop Level Press. This 2017 version of the LA Brewery Shirt is truly a celebration of everything Los Angeles craft beer and we’re proud and humbled to be able to offer this to the #LAbeer community.
We first started the LA Brewery Shirt series in 2015 with just 24 breweries and the goal of having something cool to wear out at tasting rooms and beer fests to promote all the great breweries in LA. The response was so positive that we re-launched shirt the following year, that time featuring 47 breweries in a completely revamped design with another local designer. This year, we tripled down on local & independent, and the shirt has come into its own as a symbol of pride and appreciation for all of the awesome breweries making phenomenal beer in Los Angeles.
Not only did we partner with a local designer and a local print shop for this year’s shirt, we are also donating a portion of the proceeds of shirt sales to the Los Angeles County Brewers Guild, a non-profit organization that promotes and protects independent craft breweries and fosters support for the local independent craft beer industry.
The 2017 Design
With the growth of the LA beer scene, we knew that this year’s design had to grow along with it. And to be honest, we weren’t sure if the brewery name hop concept could continue. We approached our friend Pete Kasprzak, an amazing local artist and creative designer, with 67 brewery names, a rough concept, and the challenge to make it work. After just a couple passes back and forth, the 2017 LA Brewery Shirt design was born. We think Pete’s hand-drawn design turned out amazing and we can’t thank him enough for lending his creative vision to the project. Check out his work online and at galleries around town.
The 2017 Print
We’ll admit, with past runs of the LA Brewery Shirt, we opted for cost savings of an online printing company. This year, we wanted to stay true to the local roots of the project and enlisted the help of Josh Gibson of Level Press. Level Press works with all kinds of businesses and organizations, but their experience in printing merch for bands like Edward Sharpe & the Magnetic Zeros, Thirty Seconds to Mars, and more is initially what made them feel like a good fit for our beer merch. After explaining the project to Josh, he and his team got to work on helping us materialize the hop design with off-white colored ink on a unique black heather cloth backdrop, complemented by the look and feel of the Canvas 3413 tri-blend shirt. Plus, based on previous demand over the years, we’re releasing the LA Brewery Shirt design on a female cut, the Bella 8838 slouchy tank. They knocked the print out of the park and we can’t recommend Level Press enough for any of your own apparel printing needs.
The LABG Partnership
We started talking to Frances Lopez, Executive Director of the Los Angeles County Brewers Guild, during the design process of the 2016 shirt and wanted to strengthen the Guild connection in 2017. That means that this year’s shirt features exclusively active LABG members (although things change so fast that it might already be out of date!). This partnership also aligns with our personal pledge to ensure all Hopped LA coverage is dedicated 100% to independent breweries. To cap it off, we’re offering a special deal to LABG member breweries and their teams. Contact us for more details!
Buy the 2017 LA Brewery Shirt
So, if you haven’t figured it out by now, we’re super grateful to our partners on this project, so pleased with how the final product came out (it’s our best shirt yet!), and incredibly excited to be able to offer it for sale to the LA craft beer community. Everything we do at Hopped LA is to support Los Angeles beer and to help craft beer drinkers enjoy it, and this shirt is representative of that mission. Buy a shirt for yourself and maybe even a couple for your drinking buddies, and always remember to drink indie and drink local.
Cheers!
Gary & Mack
