XRAY HAZE Takes 5th Place At The 2023 GABS Can Design Awards

The GABS Can Design Awards, now into its fourth year, are held in recognition of the fine art of designing a killer craft beer can. And at this year’s awards Black Hops once again represented strongly, with XRAY Haze claiming fifth position in a hot field of over 150 entries – our fourth consecutive top ten finish!

It was a great night all-round for Queensland brewers, with Sunshine State breweries taking out three of the top five places – Aether Brewing, Lost Palms Brewing and Black Hops finished in positions 3, 4 and 5 respectively.

And congratulations to Victoria’s Temple Brewing who took out top spot with Hello, My Name Is Amber. To check out all of the top ten award winning designs, head here.

Designing The XRAY HAZE Can

XRAY HAZE was our second bi-monthly Limited Release of 2023, a thick, juicy Hazy IPA packing a citrus and resinous punch with a story deeper than what you see on the surface.

The concept behind XRAY HAZE began with the idea of unveiling every detail that goes into producing a limited release beer here at Black Hops. When the idea of XRAY HAZE started forming we knew that Aidan Howes, with his unique artistic slant, would be the perfect designer to take on the project of designing the can.

Check out our recent blog post on Aidan and his work for Black Hops as part of our Beer Can Design Spotlight series.

We decided to give Aidan full creative freedom for this release and we were stoked when he came back with the stunning final artwork that captures the concept of XRAY HAZE perfectly.

“There’s so much unseen chemistry going on in brew tanks. I loved the idea of an xray insight into the ingredients and processes happening inside – like seeing into the notes and aromas hiding away inside the humble hop.” – Aidan Howes

Watch this clip to discover more ..

A Brief History of our GABS Can Design Awards Successes

At the inaugural event in 2020 we were stoked to make the list of finalists with our limited release Moondancer Hazy IPA, with can designer Troy Cochrane creating a new character, affectionately dubbed ‘Hop Man’, dancing around a campfire under a full moon. Moondancer ended up coming in seventh.

Our 2021 entry was for our limited release Murder Hornet Black IPA can, designed for our Burleigh Taproom fourth birthday celebrations by Dave Heavyside. Once the votes were tallied we were stoked to once again finish as a top ten finalist. From there a judging panel came up with the final rankings and we managed to finish in fifth position.

Our 2022 entry was for our British India Pale Ale can, designed by legend Jamie Browne Art in collaboration with the Crafted Beer And Cider Festival and Melbourne indie-rock band British India. With over 150 breweries entering, we were rapt to achieve our best ever result of 2nd position – a silver medal podium finish! It was our third consecutive top 10 finish and put us as one of only two breweries to make the top 10 for the first three years of the competition.