In a few short days, we’ll be brewing beer for the very first time out of 11230 N SR 67, Mooresville – “Flagtown” Indiana, home of Black Dog Brewing Company.  As I am typing this, Shawn and Trent are giving the equipment a dry run, dialing in their numbers, making sure the new boiler is firing, and getting prepared to make world class beer.  It’s been a long road to get to this point, so to celebrate the commencement of brewing operations here at Black Dog Brewing Company, over the course of the next couple of weeks we’ll take an in depth look at our flagship beers, from recipe conception to artwork design.  That being said, it’s only fitting we kick it off with Shelby Dog IPA.

Shelby was not only our best friend and the inspiration for our brewery name, she embodied the spirit in which we’ve approached this IPA.  In early discussions, we knew Shelby Dog had to be lively, playful, and bold, yet not so intense that it created a “one and done” scenario.  The IPA style has gone through some changes over the years and there are countless variations, including East Coast style, West Coast Style, Hazy, Imperial, Brut, etc.  In fact, some of those late 1990’s to early 2000’s editions of IPA’s were so malty by today’s standards it would be hard to call them IPA’s.  We had a lot of late night, beery-eyed discussions on all of this, but in the end, Shawn had a plan.  Shelby Dog IPA would have a light malt profile that would support and showcase the perfect blend of hops.  But which hops should we use?  Now the real work began.

Over the past two years, I’ve continued to share pictures and stories from our R&D small batch process.  Although we did a number of different beers, this allowed us to play around with different hop combo’s and dial in the flavors we were looking for.  Ultimately, we decided on the following four hops for Shelby Dog IPA:

• Centennial – prized for it’s versatility, the Centennial hop is earthy and floral with notes of citrus
• Chinook –  similar to Centennial but also adds elements of pine and spice
• Huell Melon – intensely fruity with notes of honey dew and strawberry
• Amarillo – one of our favorites, the Amarillo hop has major citrus aromas and flavors

Makes your mouth water, doesn’t it?  Add all of these to a brilliantly light malt profile with a soft mouthfeel and we have what we set out to create – an IPA that’s lively, playful, and bold with hop flavor, but easy to drink more than one.  

Now, with Shawn’s master plan in place, it was time to design the artwork.

Let me start by saying that the message sent by label artwork and branding is highly undervalued and overlooked way too often in the beer business.  Make no mistake, the time and effort that goes into each handcrafted beer is nothing short of a highly scientific, creatively balanced art form.  Whether it’s the delicate touch of a brewmaster’s inspiration or the story behind a beer’s reason for being, there is tremendous artful expression in every handcrafted beer.  Why would we disrespect that art form with more half-baked, or even worse – goofy looking, art?  That. Drives. Me. Nuts.  Just like the recipe, we knew Shelby Dog’s label had to draw you in and make you want more while still respecting the recipe that Shawn had spent so much time in perfecting.

We started with the version you see here, which became the inspiration for all of our labels.  We like the painted look, again calling out to the art form of craft beer, but it wasn’t the perfect picture of Shelby and it didn’t really do anything to call out the hops.  It is an IPA, after all.  Tiffany and I did some digging and found a much better picture of Shelby and added it to the wood background which has become a staple of our brand.  With the hops painted in on the right side, we felt this final artwork (pictured) did a much better job of representing the art as well as the actual beer.

Here in a few short weeks, when you have your very first Shelby Dog IPA, after your taste buds recover from the sheer undeniable deliciousness of our flagship beer, take a minute to reflect on the craft and all the hard work and thought that went into making the perfect IPA.

We absolutely cannot wait until we can share this amazing beer with you!

Cheers!      

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