Picture a shelf crowded with cans of craft beer, the labels emblazoned with bold colors and graphics, a Liberace with a piano covered in nachos here, a death metal warrior skeleton there. Amid the noise, a strikingly simple yellow label that reads: “Postmodern Beer.”
This beer, Premium, from Stillwater Artisanal, defines what could indeed be described as “postmodernism” in beer. The can strips away the cartoon clutter we’ve become accustomed to on craft beer labels, vaguely nodding to the nostalgic lagers of yore but also presenting something new, stripped back. Noticeably absent are the details of the brew, like style distinction (lager or IPA? Saison or blonde ale?) or the hops used. Its listed ingredients are need-to-know basic: “quality malts, choice hops and wild yeast.” Brewing for a lager flavor profile with wild yeast more associated with funky Belgian styles is rule-breaking enough. But then consider severing all ties with those stylistic reference points in favor of simply offering the flavors consumers can expect.
“When I first started in 2010, and even before that when I was homebrewing, I was trying to pioneer new profiles in beer,” says Stillwater founder Brian Strumke. “Not necessarily new styles—I kind of wanted to remove style guidelines and create new works based on traditional brewing techniques, studying the old world of beer and bringing it into the future.”
While Strumke sees Stillwater’s entire portfolio as postmodern and the brand predates more recent examinations of the concept in beer, Stillwater beers capture everything that makes craft beer in 2024 feel postmodern. They’re a rejection of tight restrictions around categories, an argument that beer can be brewed in pursuit of flavor goals rather than style definitions. Subsequently, they’re labeled as such, poking holes in the elitist gatekeeping that craft beer has held dear: No, you don’t have to understand how many IBUs an EBS has or what ester characteristics to look for in a saison in order to drink and enjoy beer. Consumers today are driven by flavor, not category.
“If we’re going to save beer, we need to re-market it,” says Strumke. “A lot of the younger generation, they don’t know what a kölsch is. I don’t think they’re going down the same rabbit hole we did a decade ago. … If you can get the younger generation into beer, that’s cool, but they’re not going to go study for their Cicerone [certification] after having their first ‘aha!’ moment drinking it.”
“As craft beer’s punk spirit grew and formalized into a major industry, it created its own rules, its own modernist period prompting today’s fresh dismantling.”
As it is in any other arena, postmodernism has been a bit of a moving target in beer. There is no postmodernism without modernism to react to, after all, and what truly defines beer’s modern period? It could be argued that craft beer itself is an expression of postmodernism: The progressing technologies of modernism streamlined beer-brewing traditions into a sleek American-light-lager machine, and craft beer dismantled all of that efficient homogeneity in pursuit of variety. Irreverent label designs have strengthened the postmodernist approach, as have substyles that mock self-serious valuing of set style parameters, like pastry stouts, milkshake IPAs and smoothie sours. Modern beer was all about restrictions to ensure consistency, but at the expense of creativity. Craft beer dared to question that modernism, and serve up the results with irony-laced adjuncts and can art.
But as craft beer’s punk spirit grew and formalized into a major industry, it created its own rules, its own modernist period prompting today’s fresh dismantling. As Dr. J. Nikol Jackson-Beckham, director of social impact for the Brewers Association, explains in Lily Waite’s 2020 Good Beer Hunting story on these concepts in beer, craft beer was built on many of the same principles as modernist America, framing white men as industry heroes and obsessing over “authenticity” and “purity.” Craft beer in 2024 is a postmodern rejection of all of this, and the proof is in the liquid: Now, in a move akin to Empirical’s in spirits, brewers aim for flavors, experiences and vibes to engage consumers driven by those things.
Take the new series from Bend, Oregon’s 10 Barrel Brewing Co., called Crush. They’re technically fruited kettle sour ales, but they’re marketed less as beer and more as “a better choice for summer drinking,” according to 10 Barrel’s press release, which goes on to suggest Crush varieties are for when you’re thirsty on a hot day but seltzer is too boring, kombucha is too “hardy” and cocktails are too intense for the afternoon. Accordingly, keeping the focus on flavor rather than beer-style details, Crush cans hint at nostalgia in a minimalist fashion, stamping white cans simply with “Crush” and each variety’s flavor in a coordinating color: blue for huckleberry, peach for peach, green for cucumber.
The postmodern beer hallmarks, in addition to this flavor emphasis, almost always include a lean toward lower-ABV styles, from those session sours to light lagers or lager-inspired ales. Packaging tends to play on nostalgia around that “beer-flavored beer,” too—a tongue-in-cheek send-up of modernist beers. See also: Garage Beer, Sunday Beer, Gay Beer and Tennessee Sipper.
There’s also Carl, a flagship brand for Austin, Texas’ St. Elmo Brewing Co., whose can looks as simple as that sounds: It’s labeled “Carl,” in a subtly updated take on all-American lager cans like Schlitz, Hamm’s and PBR. The beer is a kölsch, but all consumers really need to know is that it’s a light, crushable beer; it tastes good; and it’s a craft spin on a beer-flavored beer from a brewery they know, signaled by the branding. “There is something steadfast and classic about Carl while still feeling fresh and relevant,” says Drew Genitempo, St. Elmo’s creative director and director of brewing operations.
Emergency Drinking Beer smacks of postmodernism, too, even if the intention of its brewery, Wild Heaven Beer in Atlanta, is just to make a good beer. There’s irony in the name as well as the can design, reminiscent of something you might find on a midcentury grocery store shelf. It is indeed more beer-flavored beer, but with a twist, says Wild Heaven executive vice president and owner Sarah Young. The twist, in the case of Emergency Drinking Beer, is a “pils-style ale” brewed with lemongrass and sea salt that’s as light as a lager, but not actually lagered. On the label, it’s referred to simply as “All Purpose Blend.”
In the flavor-driven market growing across spirits and beer, we can expect to see more brewers challenging strict styles and conveying more essentially what drinkers can expect in cans: “This tastes like a tropical fruit smoothie,” “This is good for the beach,” “This is a lager with retro vibes.” Selling flavors, moods and occasions is more accessible to a wider audience than speaking only to those who know what Riwaka hops taste like, or what exactly a saison even is. It also frees brewers up—if they don’t have to list an exact style with its characteristic ingredients on the label, they don’t have to brew it exactly according to that blueprint, either. They can borrow different elements from different styles, add in their own innovations and label cans with what the result tastes like.
“I was just updating a label for one of my IPAs, Superhop,” Strumke says. “I originally had all the hops listed, and I was looking at it thinking, ‘You know what, that’s useless information to 99 percent of people who are going to come across this.’ I removed it all and listed ‘extraordinarily hopped, unfiltered West Coast IPA.” Less is more, he adds. Whether beer in 2024 is a reaction to craft beer’s pious value of knowledge around style guidelines or not, it’s refreshingly irreverent and gets right to the point: what you can expect in the can.