Okay so these guys knocked it right out of the ballpark with some fantastic elephants. I’ll get the cart way before the horse on this one and say that I wrote these guys what felt like quite awhile ago and in the course of decoding that mystery determined it was over 10 weeks ago as there was an Instagram Post saying as much.
Each of these came on what feels like over 350 GSM card stock with some fancy edge to the paper. Not sure what the home was to the paper, but it was really thicc and nice stuff with pieces in between so the pencil didn’t rub off onto the other elephants, which was a nice touch. Each had a little note/letter on the back explaining the rationale behind the elephant and whatnot. I’ll maybe include the backs but I tend to get these really rambly and long with my own bullshit and not so much about the brewery so that may be not the case.
Garrett’s Elephant
Garrett had a full explanation of the elephant and I feel like if he’s not in marketing for the company he may need to get into a marketing role. I wasn’t totally sold on the elephant from the get go but when I took a peer into its mind’s eye I’m pretty sure I’m sold even though the back of my mind says you could remove this elephant’s tusks and probably piss off a lot of people who don’t like elephant’s tusks being removed and have an armadillo.
You’d probably want to inform them that it is just a drawing of an elephant and it’s just graphite being removed from paper. People get really bent out of shape over elephants and in retrospect my choice of elephants may have been poor as on a both political symbol end as well as the conservation end it can be a bit of a prickly situation.
rhoxrose’s Elephant
Okay so @rhoxrose drew this one and did a fantastic job. I went to the trouble of googleing this one and found the instagram and didn’t go too much deeper than that. Absolutely fine combination of all the brewery logo stuff along with cuteness. She did a really great job on it and immediately all I could think was that the elephant is totally out of my league with the amount of effort in the eyeliner. If I was a drawn elephant at the bar I’d definitely not have the confidence to approach this elephant and that may be because with the monkey on her back drinking wine I’m getting some strong feelings that with that many wingmen it’s best to find an easier target, like maybe the elephant from Magic Hat earlier this week (not the thicc bootied one).
The back of this one I’m not sure if it’s going for a backstory or explanation. It’s pretty tremendous on its own and in the amount of space there is really no way to explain the awesomeness of the scene and I think the bit of concept about staying dry was enough. I have to assume they got some free beer for the elephant so that’s a good move to put some concept in there. Totally nailed it. Their Instagram said I requested something clever, which I don’t recall. I think the other guy was a bit more honest there and in general maybe people do read the call to action area a bit more closely than I intended. I generally am happy with whatever I get, but the back of Garrett’s gave the indication that I was trying to limit this to just elephants.
I had to look up the letter and holy hell. Low effort on my part.
So this set is coming back to me. Did a whole ton of California breweries at this time and got ones back from Yolo and Tower Brewing. I don’t think I wrote articles on those, but this was an absurdly successful haul for writing and actually getting elephants back. Rereading this one makes me think I should probably read them before I send them as I really didn’t stress the elephant thing very much. If this is any indication of what I wrote to get other elephants it’s a small wonder how I have as many as I do. I think I was pretty spent at that point and this was one of the later ones I wrote. It looks like I used a BB stub Kanwrite Heritage pen for this. I’d link more stuff for that but it’s Indian and I think I’m like the only person I’ve seen with one in the United States, so maybe another day for that. I did quite a few of them with a Fude nib in the same ink, but that looks like not it. Had a guy from some really fancy part of New York send me in the ink, which is an Athena Ink exclusive for the Japanese Store Maruzen. Writes a bit on the dry side and I ended up buying one of their inks at $35 a bottle that is more of a brick shade that I can’t remember.
I’m pretty sure this was fairly early into my writing of breweries and I was kind of surprised to see this one show up having been this long since I sent the letter. The Combustion Brewing letter I got back a couple weeks ago was just a hair older, but not much. Kind of gives me hope that my rate of return will end up better in time. Either way, California really has had a fantastic rate of elephants back.
Aaron’s Elephant
I used this guy for the first elephant but then got into the others as their own by people. Rather than try to structure the article to make sense I figured I’d also do Aaron’s elephant as I did the others. Aaron really just nailed it on this one and it’s really hard be critical of it. I feel like when given the prospect of drawing an elephant the gloves came off and short work was made of it. I’m going to assume the gloves were off. I would not want to draw this with boxing gloves on and it really begs the question why one would have boxing gloves on in the first place. Maybe not my finest choice of idioms.
Okay so the back note really drove it home for me and I really think, especially after digging up my letter to them, that Aaron has to have been the mastermind behind this and I can’t thank him enough for that. Well, I mean I could have put in a much more solid effort on my thank you note that I wrote a couple hours ago, but when I say I can’t thank someone enough I really mean that I’m not going to thank them enough. It’s just one of those expressions people say. “I can’t thank you enough, Bob.” really means that you won’t thank Bob enough, or really at all. You’re just going to say that you are thanking someone when in fact you’re talking about the very opposite and no thanks are being exchanged. I have to assume Aaron was putting in the bulk of the effort, though it’s possible Garrett was more keen on it.
I really liked the bit about how we all hoping to catch a glimpse outside our own confines into something more. It was really super deep and it really made me think about the time in the movie Peewee’s Big Adventure in the scene before Randy starts chasing Peewee around angrily after mishearing Simone talking about her dreams of going to Paris. “Everyone walks around with a big but. Let’s talk about your big but.” Just a classic.
Sort of intrigured here.
I think I probably am about 16 times over what my limit should be on one of these breweries, but Dry River was the brewery that showed up today and it was pretty good and I actually went to their website for a minute. Looks like one of those image heavy jobbies, but the beer looked kind of intriguing and I’ve always kind of had a fondness for beers brewed with wild yeast rather than lab yeast. I always thought it would be fun to do an open fermentation but my patience and skill level never rose to the occassion and a few all-grain batches is nothing close to the amount of wackiness that goes on with what they have going.
Looks to be kind of interesting on the beer end of things. I’m a sucker for sour beers and I don’t know why. I feel like there should be a lot more of them out there but it gets into being maybe commercially viable or just expensive to produce that I don’t know. Doesn’t happen too much. I like a sour beer that’s light on alcohol and a good clean slightly sweet taste to them. I think most of the Belgian Lambic blenders these days don’t even brew their own beer. It’s a weird thing with sour beers that most of the new school ones I’ve had have been downright awful and I have no clue who thought they would be a good idea. Dry River appears to do the old school style of making beers that look like they would taste good. Curious if they do syrups or what with the beer there. So many questions.