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Check out the label art for Surly Nein label art by artist Erica Williams. If the name doesn’t already give it away, Nein will be (you guessed it!) Surly’s ninth anniversary beer. According to the label, Nein was inspired by a trip to Bamberg, Germany. The beer is brewed with oak-smoked wheat malt, fermented with a German Hefeweizen yeast and then aged on charred oak. Surly calls it a “huge, complex, dark beer” and suggests a punch of smoked banana, vanilla and clove.

From the artist:

The inspiration for Surly’s Nein Anniversary Ale artwork mirrors that of the ale itself. Todd visited Germany and knew he wanted the beauty of traditional German aesthetic reflected in the label so I used heraldry as my main source of inspiration. Lions, black eagles, billowing scrolls, and symbolically powerful imagery are commonly found in their shields, architecture, and art so we went with that. I also used three lions, each with three eyes, because Todd and I are both cat people and I wanted to infuse the label with 3s and 9s. The oak leaves play to the process of making the beer and the spades are a symbol of good luck.

Reading “smoked bananas” immediately had me thinking about the band The Dead Milkmen. As a direct result, here’s my present to you, good or bad…