Craft Beer UK: 8 Breweries with Outstanding Merchandise Design

The UK’s craft beer scene isn’t just known for great beer. It’s also become a source of some of the country’s best merchandise and branding. From embroidered beanies and printed t-shirts to illustrated cans and premium workwear, breweries are using apparel to build stronger communities around their brands.

Whether you’re running an independent brewery, taproom or bottle shop, great merchandise helps customers take a piece of the experience home. If you’re looking for inspiration, explore our blog “Top Branded Merchandise Trends: What’s Hot in London and Beyond” to take a peek into current trends sweeping over the UK.

Here are eight breweries whose apparel and branding stand out for all the right reasons.

8 Craft Beer Brands Serving Great Merchandise

The strongest brewery merchandise doesn’t simply display a logo. It reflects the personality of the brewery, tells a story and gives customers something they’d genuinely wear beyond the taproom.

Pillars

Pillars eschew the usual ale-obsession of independent breweries, and are instead passionate champions of the perfect lager. Based in Walthamstow, Pillars bill their brewery and taproom experience as a ‘love letter to craft lager and its drinkers’. Pillars’ brand identity is built around a kind of psychedelic steampunk aesthetic that is instantly eye-catching, and their distinctive ICON tees are cleverly designed to reveal a bold graphic when the bartender turns around to pull pints. It’s a great example of how branded workwear can become merchandise customers want to buy as well.

Cloudwater

The Manchester-founded Cloudwater brewery have built their business around the value of drinking beer at its source, emphasising the quality that only a taproom drinking experience can offer. Their friendly rain cloud logo is distinctive and simple, making it perfect for stamping across pint glasses and the breast of their tees. Cloudwater, as the name might suggest, also educate people about the way that beer changes with the seasons, and accordingly commission a different artist every season to create new designs for their brews.

Camden Town 

Camden Town Brewery is perhaps one of London’s most prolific craft breweries, and you can spot their castle logo on taps across the city. Another brewer that champions the oft overlooked lager, they have taken their red and black branding and run with it. Not only do they dress their staff in a range of Camden Town branded apparel, but they have created their own distinctive pint glasses, so that drinkers in any pub still enjoy a slice of the brewery experience. 

Brick 

At the Brick taproom in Peckham you will find all of their core and seasonal offerings, as well as a number of taproom exclusives and guest drafts to sweeten the deal. Brick brewery live up to the reputation of their trendy home, with a simple but effective logo logo that looks, well, like bricks. This is carried a little further on the design of their cans, which feature a brick-wall pattern as their base.

Mother Kelly’s

Mother Kelly’s is an American-style bottle shop and tap room with mind-boggling array of beer on offer, as well as specially selected wine and spirits for your ale-averse friends. Now with five locations across London, they have cemented their reputation as the go-to place for adventurous and nerdy beer drinkers alike. Their high-quality ICON-printed totes reflect the vibrant and varied offering of the business. They also offer hoodies and embroidered beanies, for the cold-weather drinker, which are also a good reminder that merchandise doesn’t have to stop at t-shirts. Check out our blog “Custom Beanies: Everything You Need to Know Before Designing Your Own” for more information on creating custom beanies.

Crate

Any regular visitor to Hackney Wick has probably found themselves sitting by the canal, enjoying a pint of Crate Brewery beer and a slice of their equally delicious pizza. One of the first new businesses to open in what is now a thriving island of clubs, bars and venues, Crate have cemented themselves as Hackney Wick institution. Their ‘C’ logo and all of their beer labels cleverly distort a cube design, nodding to the shape of their namesake crate.

Beavertown

Beavertown are another London brewery with a rather trippy visual identity. Their bright and brash cans stand out on taps and in fridges, reeling in curious customers who want to try something new. Designer Nick Dwyer has worked with Beavertown from the start, and his hallucinogenic, skeleton-heavy designs are probably just as beloved as the beers they decorate. Having such a unique designer on-hand means that Beavertown can create and sell merchandise that feels truly in-step with their brand – a little out-there, but always great quality.

Canopy

Canopy have a very spiritual approach to their beer, celebrating it as a reflection of life’s journey and the mistakes that get you where you need to be. The designs for their beer reflect this, each featuring a chopped up animal spliced together consequences-style from a series of designs by a varied pool of illustrators. The tees, totes and posters available from their taproom and e-store also feature this playful design.

Create Brewery Merchandise Worth Wearing

Although every brewery has its own visual identity, they all share one thing in common: consistent branding across products, apparel and customer experience. Great merchandise reinforces the same story people experience when they drink the beer.

Here at ICON we’re pleased to have worked with some of the capital’s most exciting breweries and bottle shops, helping them create custom merch to celebrate their distinct brands. Whether that be embroidered caps or screen printed t-shirts, for newer, independent breweries, creating distinctive merch is a great way to advertise what makes your beer special, and offers customers a way to feel more attached to what you do. 

Whether you’re launching a new brewery, opening a taproom or refreshing your brand, thoughtfully designed merchandise helps build stronger connections with customers. From premium t-shirts and embroidered caps to hoodies and beanies, ICON Printing helps breweries create apparel people genuinely want to wear.

Get a Quick Quote online or speak to our team at sales@iconprinting.com about your upcoming brewery merchandise project.