Jackie O’s Pub & Brewery’s Razz Wheat is now available in cans.
Among a sea of dark brown beer bottles on the shelves at Kroger, all looking like one another, Jackie O’s Pub & Brewery’s cans stand out.
With bright tribal prints contrasting with the black can, each of Jackie O’s four canned beers has a unique color and design. West Virginia artist Bryn Perrott creates the one-of-a-kind art, and she recently sketched one more design for the brewery’s newest can – Razz Wheat.
Premiering Monday, popular craft brew Razz Wheat, a raspberry wheat ale made with natural raspberry puree, is the latest addition to its canning line. The Razz Wheat can features a pink deer with vines of raspberries running throughout its antlers.
Art Oestrike, owner of Jackie O's, said the announcement of the new can “exploded on social media.” He added Razz Wheat has been a best-selling beer at the BrewPub for years.
Jackie O’s has been working for a while to reformulate the Razz Wheat recipe to make it ready for cans. Clark Benson, a pub brewer for Jackie O’s, said they had to work to get residual sugars out of the beer otherwise the yeast would continue to ferment and the can could explode.
However, the sugars are out, and patrons are excited.
“It’s got the perfect hops in it. It’s hoppy but still sweet, so it’s not overpowering,” said Nick Scruggs, a senior studying nursing said after his first time drinking the beer. “It’s a beer I can actually sit down and drink.”
Benson said the brew’s lighter taste is what makes it so popular, especially with Ohio University students.
“Not everyone can drink IPAs because they’re too bitter or too aggressive, but Razz Wheat is easy to drink for any beer drinker or someone who wants to get into the craft beer scene,” he said. “We waited longer (to premiere it) because we wanted to make sure we can keep up with demand, so we can rock and roll when they go on sale.”
The design of the cans is simply an extension of the brewery’s mission of local sourcing, Oestrike said.
Oestrike knows Perrott’s uncle and reached out to her when they began their canning line. Perrott does these designs as woodcuts and then her uncle digitizes them and gets them ready for the can. This might include some manipulation to make it print correctly on the beer.
Perrott paints the wood black and, through a reduction process, carves away the parts she doesn’t want to be black to create the relief carving. She makes a series of drawings and then enlarges it to create a stencil for the carving.
“From there, it’s weird to say, but I don’t always know what I’m going to do with it,” Perrott said. “I have a structure, but a lot of it just comes when I’m carving. … There’s no formula.”
She said she never expected to have her work on commercial products or that she could make a living from her art.
“It’s awesome. People say nothing but good stuff (about her work on the canned beer),” she said. “Everybody at Jackie O’s is great to work with, and I get to work with my uncle. … They’re really good business owners. … It works really well. … It’s really striking. Even with the level of complexity, it’s simple because it’s two colors and that’s super smart.”
Oestrike said patrons should be able to purchase the Razz Wheat cans at Jackie O’s Taproom, 25 Campbell St., Tuesday. He added it should be available at other locations within a few days.
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