Café au lager: Coffee beer brewed for charity

The elegant packaging by Japanese designer Oki Sato’s Tokyo studio Nendo borrows the amber, gold and chocolate hues associated with craft beer to evoke a look that is simple yet sumptuous.

Nendo notes that coffee and beer aficionados are beginning to experiment, as coffee bean brews afford ‘the resulting beer a rich, deep taste, thanks to the beans’ bitterness and aroma.’

The beer was developed as a charity project, raising funds for the northern Japanese regions of Kesennuma and Ichinoseki in which Anchor Coffee and Sekinoichi brewery are based, an area devastated by the 2011 tsunami.

Existing bottles were recycled for the project, while the coffee bean labels were applied by hand, giving each object a unique pattern.

For more on coffee innovators across the globe, read our Coffee Futures microtrend.