QR codes on open source beer wins top honors

The Yeastie Boys brewing company in New Zealand is cutting edge in many ways.

A New Zealand brewing company called the Yeastie Boys is making waves in a number of ways, by making its recipe available to anyone who wants it, as well as by offering this information by way of QR codes printed on their bottle labels.

The Digital IPA features five different quick response barcodes that can be scanned with smartphones.

This India Pale Ale bottle label features the metallic blue QR codes that direct the smartphone user to various different locations online, include Twitter and Facebook accounts. However, the destination that is receiving the most attention is the webpage which provides the complete recipe for the beer, which makes it the first open source commercial beer product.

With the information from those QR codes, consumers could brew their own version of the ale.

This also forms a type of virtual sales force among the customers who purchase the beer and will, over time, help to better perfect the beer. This effort has not gone without a significant amount of attention. In fact, it has brought Yeastie Boys the gold award in the Packaging Class at the Sutton Group Brewers Guild of New Zealand Beer Awards.

The Digital IPA, with a robust hops flavor, has now become one of the most popular beers offered by its brewery. With the distinctive label and the QR codes that give it a more interactive and customer engaging quality, the beer has become more than a beverage. It is now an experience.

The label for Digital IPA was created by Deflux, a design company in Christchurch. The name of the beer came from a song from 1978 by Joy Division, a post punk band. The name was assigned after Yeastie Boys brewery had decided to give the beer an open source recipe.

According to the art director at Deflux, Simon Courtney, “The monotony of the phrase ‘day in day out’ from the song was what flipped the switch for this label concept.” He went on to explain that this brought them to the next step, which was the label in a single metallic blue, which brought to mind the concept of robots, which are a digital image. They felt that this brought the entire concept together quite neatly.

Courtney also stated that “The use of QR codes stems from the strong social voice of the Yeastie Boys and a feeling that the space on a label couldn’t fully say everything about this beer, or encapsulate who the Yeastie Boys are and what they stand for.”