Beer Collab!

Ah, the great Spellers Craft Beer Collaboration. For some reason my 19-year-old son is not interested in alcohol, which is fine—I get it. His body chemistry seems to be a bit different. It seems almost “pristine” given the many years of a gluten, dairy, and soy-free diet. His only daily vice is one good cup of Nespresso coffee every morning. But back to the beer! Dana Johnson of Spellers Tampa invited Luke to join her and Dawnmarie Gaivin (Spellers San Diego), along with a group of non-speaking speller young men. This included the infamous J.B. Handley of “Underestimated” book fame. The group met twice virtually and did a couple of spelling lessons about beer—how it’s made, ingredients, flavours, etc. The goal was to create and design their own “Spellers” beer. One of the parents of a speller owns a brewery in California, Goldenroad Brewery, and it was their idea to create a beer that would be a fundraiser for the Spellers organization. Super fun. We all provided name ideas, flavours, and submitted art work, thoughts and concepts. Luke’s input was to name it Stoked 2 Spell. He liked the idea of a citrus flavour (lemon beer). I believe the final consensus was an orange-flavoured beer with the name Dispelling Myths, but all the input has been submitted to the brewery marketing team for their creative compilation work. We haven’t heard about the outcome of the project, but were given a save-the-date of April 2, 2024 for the big launch in Anaheim. Wouldn’t it be cool to go? As a graphic designer, I was thrilled to play with the combination of orange flavour and orange colour (our family’s favourite colour because we are Dutch). With Luke’s love of tie-dye I created a beer can design with a California-vibe. We will see what the final visual will be, given there were many other designs submitted. The final will be a collaboration for sure! The joy of this project is “No decision about us, without us!” A week or so later during our visit to Calgary, I was able to ask Luke what he thought of the project: “I WAS SO PROUD.” And I asked him what he thought of my design submission: “MOM ROCKED IT.” He also asked “CAN JOEL TRY MY BEER?” Hmm… Joel’s underage, but maybe?!!?! Stay tuned for the reveal next spring!