For Finland • Nordic Summer Ale

Designer: Santeri Lohi
Location: United Kingdom
Project Type: Produced
Client: 5 o’c Brewing
Head Brewer: Yann Green
Product Photography: Santeri Lohi
Landscape Photography: Santeri Lohi, Alex Inkiläinen, Narahari K R, Chandana Ban 
Product Launch Location: United Kingdom
Packaging Contents: Beer
Packaging Substrate / Materials: Glass bottle, paper
Printing Process: Digital printing

For Finland is a home-brewed small-batch Nordic Summer Ale infused with, inspired by, and dedicated to the Finnish summer.

Yann Green (head brewer) and Santeri Lohi (designer & assistant brewer) teamed up to create the ultimate Finnish sauna beer. Though brewed in London, it features birch water, birch wood, birch leaves, pine, juniper, blueberries—even a splash of lake water—all collected by hand in the great outdoors of Finland.

“We’ve spent epic summers in Finland by a lakeside cabin (or “mökki”) with friends and family. Our goal was to take that experience and bottle it in a rich and refreshing beer. A tall order, but I dare say we did it justice.” – Yann Green

A simple label design takes you to different Finnish summer scenes and enhances the fresh taste of the beer. In true home-brewing fashion, it is bottled into a variety of different kinds of recycled glass bottles with each receiving a slightly different design treatment.

“Less is more. The labels are deliberately under-designed to set the right tone for the beer. It needed to be modest, light, refreshing, and to take you straight to the Finnish summer. Consistency has its place in design but sameness is boring, so there is a nice bit of variety among the bottles and labels.” – Santeri Lohi

For Finland is a labor of love through and through, inside and out.

What’s Unique?
Only 40 bottles were produced and everything was done carefully at home by hand: the brewing, the bottling, the printing, the label trimming & sticking, and product photography. Many ingredients were collected by the designer, Santeri, himself in the Finnish forest and flown back to London for brewing.