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The Thirsty Farmer hop yard, engraved in deep green
All five Thirsty Farmer cans: Amber Lager, Apple Graff, NEIPA, Hefeweizen and Oktoberfest
Packaging · Label system

Thirsty Farmer

A farm brewery’s first cans. Five beers, one identity.

The brief

Thirsty Farmer is the Knouse family’s brewery, on a working farm in Pennsylvania apple country. For eight years it was draft only. Canning meant labels for the first time, and the family wanted them to look like the farm, not like anybody else’s beer.

In Kevin’s words
“Old School 1960’s Farming vibe.” “True to our Roots.”
The ask
One design for every beer, small changes from can to can, no crazy artwork, no weird beer names.
On the line
Blank 16 oz cans and a manual label applicator, so everything rides on one 8 × 5 inch label.
My part
Strategy, concepts, a label system for five beers, label approval revisions and print files.
The idea

Good beer grows here.

The place

Cashtown Road, Biglerville.

Eight miles west of Gettysburg, in Adams County’s apple country. The brewery sits across the road from the Round Barn, which the family has run as a farm market since 1993.

Biglerville, PA8 miles west of Gettysburg
The barn
Built in 1914 for the Sheely family, from timber cut on the farm
Around
282 feet
The Knouses
Farming it since 1985
The brewery
Opened in 2018, in an old orchard storage shed
Pen-and-ink drawing of the Round Barn in front of a green sun
Four generations

The farm keeps a ledger.

The story so far, written the way a farm keeps its books.

Round Barn Farm · Cashtown Road

  1. 1914The Sheely family raises the Round Barn.
  2. 1926M.E. Knouse starts the family in the fruit business.
  3. 1972Kevin’s grandfather tallies the orchard by hand.
  4. 1985The Knouses buy the Round Barn farm.
  5. 1993The barn opens as a farm market.
  6. 2015An acre of hops goes in behind an old storage shed.
  7. 2018The shed opens as Thirsty Farmer Brew Works.
  8. 2026First cans.
The brand

Kept, not replaced.

The tractor logo and the script were already theirs, and both are on every can. Along the way, I drew a few more pieces.

Theirs

  • Thirsty Farmer tractor logo, a beer bottle on its side with bottle-cap wheels
  • Thirsty Farmer Brew Works script wordmark

Drawn along the way

  • Thirsty Farmer Brew Works round seal
  • The Round Barn inside a Pennsylvania keystone
  • A keystone-shaped pint glass reading Drink Thirsty, Support Local
  • Stacked Thirsty Farmer Brew Works wordmark
  • Pen-and-ink wagon stage
From the farm

Every picture came from the farm.

Kevin sent photos and family records. I turned each one into a black-and-white engraving, gave it the beer’s color and built the label around it.

  1. A handwritten 1972 orchard ledger page
    What Kevin sent
    The ledger page prepared as label artwork
    The engraving
    The Amber Lager label, the ledger printed in red behind the hang tag
    On the label

    No. 01 · Amber Lager

    His grandfather’s orchard ledger, 1972.

  2. Orchard rows with a wooden picking bin
    What Kevin sent
    The orchard engraved in black and white
    The engraving
    The Apple Graff label, the orchard in green
    On the label

    No. 02 · Apple Graff

    Orchard rows and a picking bin. In Kevin’s words, the beer is a blend of the family’s two passions: apple growing and craft beer.

  3. The hop yard seen from the back of a tractor wagon
    What Kevin sent
    The hop yard engraved in black and white
    The engraving
    The NEIPA label, the hop yard in orange
    On the label

    No. 03 · NEIPA

    The hop yard, from the back of the wagon.

  4. A pile of malted grain
    What Kevin sent
    The malt engraved in black and white
    The engraving
    The Hefeweizen label, the malt in gold
    On the label

    No. 04 · Hefeweizen

    A pile of malt.

  5. The Knouse family crest
    What Kevin sent
    The crest engraved among hops and apples
    The engraving
    The Oktoberfest label, the crest in brown
    On the label

    No. 05 · Oktoberfest

    The Knouse family crest.

Drawing of the 1972 orchard ledger page, apple varieties and tallies
In his hand

Kevin’s grandfather kept the books.

The Amber Lager’s picture is a page from his 1972 orchard ledger, the varieties and tallies in his hand. The style notes on every can are set in handwriting too, like the next entries in the same book.

No. 01’s style notes, as they appear on the can.
The system

Every beer gets its own page in the same field ledger.

Three ideas hold the five cans together. Here’s the NEIPA, up close.

01 · A system rooted in the farm

The grid came first.

A ruled grid, like the books a farm keeps, organizes the whole page: logo, ledger number, name, numbers, notes and barn. It reads like a record, not a notebook.

The cream panel of the NEIPA label, with everything set on the grid
The NEIPA label’s ledger grid on its own
The gridThe page
Reading the page

Industrial type, a personal hand.

Five kinds of type, each with one job.

The cream panel of the NEIPA label

  1. Theirs

    The Thirsty Farmer script

    Their wordmark, kept as is. The brand they built gets top billing.

  2. For the shelf

    NEIPA

    Big and bold, so it reads across a cooler. Kevin didn’t want it read as just another IPA.

  3. For the record

    The style, spelled out

    New England-Style India Pale Ale, set plain: the official name label approval asks for.

  4. For the archive

    Field Ledger No. 03

    Every beer gets a ledger number, so five cans read as one collectible set.

  5. For the data

    6.2% and 47

    ABV and IBU, logged like an entry in the book. Information first, decoration second.

  6. A human voice

    Style notes, by hand

    The brewery’s description, in handwriting. The hop list is what’s actually in the tank: Citra, Simcoe and Mosaic.

  7. Kevin’s pick

    Good Beer Grows Here

    Chosen from four lines I drew up. It sits a little differently on each can, like a hand stamp.

The hop-yard picture from the NEIPA label, inside its border
The hang tag: Crafted on our Round Barn Farm. Rooted in tradition, brewed for connection. The Knouse Family
02 · History you can hold

The tag carries the family’s voice.

“Crafted on our Round Barn Farm. Rooted in tradition, brewed for connection.” Kevin wrote it, and the Knouse family signs it. String, reinforced hole, worn paper: it could be tied to a harvest bin.

03 · Built to grow

Same page, five beers.

The architecture holds. The color, the picture and the ledger number change. Muted colors, agreed with the family, leave room for the next beer.

Oktoberfest, Apple Graff, NEIPA, Hefeweizen, Amber Lager, each shown as a slice of the same frame
  1. Oktoberfest
  2. Apple Graff
  3. NEIPA
  4. Hefeweizen
  5. Amber Lager
First run

Canned on the farm.

Blank 16 oz cans, their own canning machine and a manual label applicator.

  • No. 01 · Amber LagerNo. 01 · Amber Lager
  • No. 02 · Apple GraffNo. 02 · Apple Graff
  • No. 03 · NEIPANo. 03 · NEIPA
  • No. 04 · HefeweizenNo. 04 · Hefeweizen
  • No. 05 · OktoberfestNo. 05 · Oktoberfest
On the farm

Grown here, brewed here.

Hops behind the taproom, apples in the bins, a pint in the hop yard. Photos: Thirsty Farmer.

  • A Thirsty Farmer beer held up in the hop yard
  • Harvesting hop bines from a lift
  • Wooden apple bins stacked high
  • The view from the covered deck
  • A lager in front of the Round Barn
  • A beer on a table under apple blossoms
  • A hop bine climbing its string
  • A tractor with a bin lift
  • Freshly picked hops in a bin
Kevin Knouse at Thirsty Farmer with two NEIPA cans, the hop yard behind him
The result

All five labels cleared federal label approval, and the brewery is filling its own cans.

Nate was a pleasure to work with. He really listened to what makes Thirsty Farmer unique and translated our story into label designs that felt authentically us. We couldn’t be happier with how our 5 can lineup turned out.
Kevin Knouse
Business ManagerThirsty Farmer Brew Works
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