The Paso Pioneer Ale Is Coming Together

I’ve been working on the label design for the upcoming Paso Pioneer Ale, a beer that pays homage to the Paso Robles Pioneer Days, which takes place every October. I’m especially excited to be part of this year’s celebration through my affiliation with California Coast Beer Company.

There have been a few different directions I could take with the label. Each has its own unique look, but I created another version this morning that I think might be the one.

The labels will be printed by GrogTag and designed to fit a 4.25″ x 3″ landscape layout around the bottle. When I tried reversing those dimensions on the Inspired Paso Ale labels, the design just didn’t work as well. This new orientation should make for a much better-looking label once it’s wrapped around the bottle.

So, for now, I have four labels to consider. Each one has something I like about it, which makes choosing one a little more difficult.

Brew Day Is Almost Here

Brew day is Friday, September 4, and I’ll be starting early.

The first order of business will be cleaning and sanitizing all the equipment before setting up the “brewhouse”—otherwise known as my garage. Once everything is clean, sanitized and ready to go, it’ll be time to start brewing.

This will be another step forward for Contributing Factor Brewing, and I’m looking forward to seeing how the Paso Pioneer Ale comes together.

Bottles or Keg?

There’s another decision I’m kicking around as well: bottling versus kegging.

I’ve been looking at a used EdgeStar KC2000SSTWIN Dual Tap Kegerator on Facebook Marketplace. It would need a few modifications, but at $160, I think it could be a pretty inexpensive way to make the jump into kegging my homebrew.

More importantly, it would eliminate the bottling process.

If you’ve bottled homebrew, you know what that means: cleaning bottles, sanitizing bottles, filling bottles, adding caps, cleaning up bottles… and then finding somewhere to store all those bottles.

Kegging would certainly make the process easier.

For now, though, I have a little time before making that decision. I still need to decide which of the four labels will make the cut, and whether the Paso Pioneer Ale ends up in bottles or a keg.

Either way, brew day is coming.

Cheers!