...And We're Back, With Art by Wynkoop and Golden Road

Happy 2012, beerfriends.

I've settled (back) in the Lehigh Valley, still safely nestled within the soft bosom of the Philadelphia beer market, and I'll be back posting. I know you're all waiting with bated breath on the Best Beer Art of 2011, and that is coming shortly.

But first:

• Men's Health ran a list of beers for all 32 football teams. I contributed to a bunch of them, and it's a fun list to argue over.
• New Jersey finally got rid of a homebrew permit law that basically no one obeyed.
• Art of the Menu took a look at the great menu of Denver's Wynkoop Brewing. Wynkoop also got in on Tebowmania with a Shepard Fairey-esque poster.
• For you sports fans, particularly in the Bay Area, check out the DieLine's look at Fear the Beer, a student design project honoring the SF Giants' World Series team. Now if only they could stop sending fans of other teams to the hospital.=
• Jack Curtin has news from the Obama administration that the FDA may take over labeling responsibilities from the TTB. That could be very annoying, if beers have to do all sorts of listing like other FDA-overseen items, because everyone would have to overhaul every label.
• On the other hand, listing ingredients could be helpful to some consumers, especially now that beers have lots of ingredients. Yes, I know they already have to list some according to TTB rulings, but not everyone knows that, and beer processes are getting increasingly complex. This has led some dietarily restricted folks to undertake their own efforts, like Rabbi Jonathan Powers' entreaty to ask our local breweries to have their beers certified as kosher for Orthodox and Conservative Jews. It's something to share with brewers you may know, since it can be tough for those not steeped in beer geekery to understand what is and isn't consumable for them... and everyone deserves good beer. Also, for those of you interested, check out the Kosher Beers Blog.
• This Freetail communique is the single best response to a threatening legal letter I have ever seen, save maybe the famed Cleveland Browns response.

Okay, some quick art, from LA's Golden Road:

Both can designs use a the full 360 degrees of surface area, and make nice use of a color filter to make the images look a bit more historic/nostalgic. Also, we can see there's a common theme of roads converging in a two-point perspective way into the distance. These cans manage to make use of photography, create a mood, and be different and varied, all while maintaining a brand identity that could expand to future  products and packages. Good show.