“We are big on can art. Can art definitely helps sell the beer when it’s just the beer speaking for itself on the shelf,” says CraftHaus Brewery co-owner Wyndee Forrest. “We love people to visit our brewery; that’s where they can get the face, place and story. However, we can’t be everywhere all the time, so the can has to do the talking for us.”

They’ve got nothing but good things to say. CraftHaus’ cans are beautiful. I can easily pick out CraftHaus’ year-round beers in a crowded cooler, especially the Silver State blonde ale, with its silver-on-black silhouette of Sunrise Mountain and Steve Brockman’s swooping cursive logo. Local designer Victoria Hart—creator of the “City of Las Vegas” logo that adorns Downtown’s entryway arch—has some real fun with CraftHaus’ seasonal beers, putting a bespectacled ursine on their Urban Panda Schwarzbier and dressing up their Sugoi Strawberry Mochi Milkshake IPA in irresistible pink kawaii.

CraftHaus’ cans have to look good, because that aforementioned cooler is rapidly filling up with Valley-made craft beers, nearly all of which are telling their maker’s stories through mirthful, colorful and sometimes even provocative can art. Able Baker’s cans evoke mid-century Americana, wholly appropriate for a brewery named for the first two bombs detonated at the Nevada Test Site. Bad Beat Brewing’s cans tell archetypal Vegas stories in miniature. (My favorite is the sad sack watching two hands scooping away his chips and wristwatch, with a banner underneath that reads “Bluffing isn’t Weisse.” Naturally, it’s a hefeweizen.)

Tenaya Creek Brewery looks to the nature right outside our window. “We just want to pay homage to the southwest region … to give you a feel for the state of Nevada,” says Mike Majano, Tenaya Creek’s director of sales.

Their cans, designed by artist Kendrick Kidd, sport a deep blue band at the top that represents the desert sky, and a deep brown band at the bottom standing in for the desert floor. Framed between them are assorted specimens of Mojave wildlife, illustrated in a style reminiscent of Charley Harper—a howling coyote (Gypsy Fade IPA), a desert tortoise in an oompah outfit (Oktoberfest lager) and so on.

Beer Zombies, on the other hand, illustrates their cans with characters you probably hope never to meet on a beer run: grotesque, rotting ghouls, just going about their day. “Every once in a while, someone will say something like, ‘Oh, that label’s a little aggressive,’ but it doesn’t stop anybody from drinking it or buying it,” says founder Chris Jacobs, who until recently illustrated the can art himself. He now assigns the illustrations to other artists, though they’re still his concepts: “I probably have a couple hundred beer can ideas,” he says.

Like Forrest and Majano, Jacobs is all about the stories his cans tell. But at the same time, he says, it’s OK for a beer can to just … be.

“I think you’re gonna see [beer can art] in museums in the future, you know, as a peek into the artistic landscape of the 2020s,” he says. “You have professional, world-renowned artists that are working on these things now. They’re just like a little miniature canvas, but the fact that they’re disposable makes it interesting, because you only get it for a quick time.”

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