Founded in 1983, Matilda Bay is Australia’s first craft brewery. Its founder and master brewer Phil Sexton, is widely known as the godfather of craft beer. His commitment to perfection at all costs is legendary.

It took the Matilda Bay brewers 27 batches to create a beer that met their master brewer’s standards. They called it Original Ale. To promote this perfect brew, we released the almost perfect rejects. Rejected Ales, the best beers you were never meant to taste.

Designed with a minimal R&D aesthetic, the packaging appears as though made by brewers with pure function in mind, as if they came straight from the brewery floor. This stood out in the colourful craft market without competing with the Original Ale beer they were promoting.

Sans-serif offset text gave the cans a WIP feel. Each can was given a batch number and a name that referenced how close to perfection the beer was, e.g.‘Yeah…nah’, ‘Keep dreaming’ and ‘Ballpark’. The back of each can was emblazoned with the story of its batch’s rejection by their meticulous master brewer.