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The box design for the beer.
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He also brought initial layouts and trials for the comic book.
What happens when you mix marketing mavens, brewmasters, and one lone comic artist at Schlafly, the St. Louis Brewery? Walking Tree Wheat, a special release mango beer developed for the 2016 Art Outside festival, that’s what.
The unique 750 ml bottle packaging and label (above) is the third in a yearly series of art-and-brew collaborations that celebrate the festival. This year’s label comes from the fertile mind of artist, illustrator and screen printer Dan Zettwoch. To make the deal even sweeter, Schlafly asked Zettwoch (right) to develop a comic book which is included with each purchase.
The beer, a fruity take on Schlafly’s signature Hefeweizen, features a delicate puree of the Totapuri mango according to Emily Parker, Head of Brewing Operations.
“We sampled three mango purees," she said. "It’s important to us to use all-natural products, like a mango puree as opposed to a concentrate. One had an undertone of coconut, and another had a mango flavor, but when we tried the Totapuri puree, an Indian mango, it tasted like mango on steroids with undertones of tropical fruits. We knew that was the one.”
After Schlafly chose the Indian mango Zettwoch discovered stories of a single tree in the Sanjan Bandar, a village in Bulsar district of south Gujarat, India. Over a period of two hundred years, this lone tree has ‘traveled’ over 100 yards from its original site due to its unusual growth habit. The comic chapter Legend of the Walking Tree, opens with these lines Zettwoch wrote:
“RIPLEY’S BELIEVE IT OR NOT! MENTIONS A TREE ABLE TO UPROOT ITSELF AND USE LOW-SLUNG BRANCHES TO ESTABLISH NEW ROOTS, TRAVELLING UP TO 100 YARDS.”
“Early on, Mad Magazine had a big influence on me,” Zettwoch says. “Ripley’s Believe it or Not and newspaper comics were my inspirations. I wasn’t into super-heroes too much.”
Density, information and history fill the pages of his comics. He also creates elaborate screen-printed posters (above). “When I do color, I think like a screen-printer,” he says. The colors flat and broad within a limited color palette in differing opacities of each enhance the precisely inked and detailed lines reference in his comic art. The combination adds depth and definition to each illustration.
At a special meet the artist event, Zettwoch showed his initial roughs and sketches.
Zettwoch admits he sometimes needs to rein in his ideas. “My biggest challenge is I have so much information, so many jokes and so many facts I want to put into everything it’s hard to condense,” he says. “The easiest part of this project was working with the Schlafly people who allowed me freedom to create. This is my first beer comic although I have done a map of the local breweries (below) for the St. Louis Brewers Guild.”
The Schlafly people were equally creative with the beer. “We introduced the mango puree at the beginning of fermentation when the yeast converts the sugars to alcohol. We added hops in the full-kettle boil, then in the whirlpool we added Magnum and Lemon Drop hops to give the beer its aromatics,” Emily Parker says.
Fruit beers have gained in popularity in the craft market and not just with women. “The success of the Stiegl grapefruit radler brought fruit beers to brewer’s attention,” she says. Walking Tree doesn’t come in at the wimpy end of the scale, though. It’s a solid 4.4 ABV with a mellow 16 IBU rating. Parker and her team didn’t filter this beer, either, so the full grain character shines through.
The raison d’etre for the imaginative art and beer creation, Art Outside, will be held over Memorial day weekend, beginning Friday, May 27th and ending on Sunday, May 29th at the Schlafly Bottleworks in Maplewood.
“This year, we will have 66 local artists,” says Lo Dugan, Schlafly’s annual events coordinator. “We’ll have interactive Walking Tree Wheat events and screen-printed tee shirts by Art Farm. There will be a kid’s crafts section with ArtScope and Artists First as well as music, local welders, flame-workers from Third Degree Glass Factory –food and beer, of course.”
Prior to the festival, Walking Tree Wheat beer will be available on tap at the Schlafly Tap Room and Bottleworks locations for a limited time, the brewery’s Art Outside Festival over Memorial Day weekend, as well as in select St. Louis-area retail stores.
Emily Parker also noted another creative happening in the works at Schlafly “We will be showcasing new developments with PilotWorks on Wednesdays at the Bottleworks to taste the pilot brews and vote on their favorites. We now have a 22-gallon system to trial out recipes. If we like something, we’ll brew it,” she says. Stay tuned for details. “We are trying new things in beer constantly. At the end of the day, we feel rewarded.”
Lo Dugan, left, Annual Events Director and Emily Parker, Head of Brewing Operations at Schlafly. Note the beautiful color of Walking Tree Wheat, an unfiltered hefeweizen with mango flavor.
