If you’ve been paying attention to the journey that is Short Finger 2023, thanks. I won’t lie, the past 12 months have been tough. The reels and images that go out through our social media feeds sometimes feel like bullshit, if I’m being totally honest, but I don’t think many people want to watch a grown man cry while telling you how exciting it is to completely overhaul his business. I guess there’s probably a few people who’d like to see it, but I’ve been advised that it’s better to post reels that show me sawing things and drinking that same beer. But I digress.
The rebranding process has been fun because it meant taking the time to step back and consciously reinvent what Short Finger is. To clean up our image and line it up with the new direction that 2022 - 2023 has shot us towards. The homebrew shop and the warehouse tasting room have wrapped up. I am sad to see the homebrew shop go, but the hobby has changed a lot since we opened in 2015 and the reality is that there are fewer people homebrewing these days and even fewer shopping locally. That part of the business just never recovered from the pandemic. It was a tough decision to close the shop down, but the change will let me focus fully on the brewery and take it to the level I think it can achieve. It was over a year ago that I made the decision to shut down the homebrew side and around the same time that I started changing our merch. Skeleton hands, mixed ferm or death etc. In hindsight, I know it’s because this was the first time I was actually concerned that Short Finger might die. Bleak, but true.
The OG hop and hand logo is so rooted in the homebrew side of things that I couldn’t move forward with it as the main logo (though I do love it). It was also created in 2014, which was almost 10 years ago now… hard to believe. Time to refresh and rebrand. Our new logo is spaced themed - surprise surprise. It was worked on by Emily Cunningham (Hush Puppy Designs) and Jon Johnson (Bearface Designs). It is meant to be two supermassive black holes colliding. Whether you picked up on that or not doesn’t matter because it honestly just looks really cool. We also dropped the greens and are moving to a much less obnoxious colour palette. The new tasting room doesn’t feel like hanging out in a homebrewer’s garage, despite the fact that it’s in a literal garage. I did love the old warehouse space, but it never felt like a cozy place to hang out. My hope is that the changes reflect how we have changed and matured as a company. It’s still Short Finger, and I am still Rob, so there will be easter eggs tucked in along the journey, but the overall messaging may be a little less silly and off the cuff. No promises.
If you’ve made it this far into the post, here’s the gift: We will be celebrating Lando Day on Saturday, June 24th. It’s going to be an all-day affair with lots of Lando variations available. We will also be releasing Cloud City, our Double Dry Hopped Oat Pale Ale that only comes out on Lando Day. We’ve also got two other events on deck, so please save the dates:
- July 15, 2023- SFBC Official Grand Re-reopening Party
- Aug 12, 2023 - SFBC and Pink Lemonade present SUMMER SHORT CAN