A drawing of a koala on a can has scored Five Barrel Brewing a nod for one of the best examples of can design in Australia.
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The koala, which featured on the brewery's Flipside Australian IPA, made the top 20 of the GABS Can Design Awards.
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Five Barrel's owner Phil O'Shea said the recognition was validation of the brewery's recent rebranding, which saw them move out of bottles and into cans.
"It's a bit of a feather in the cap for the new brand direction and the artwork is being loved by lot of people outside the area," Mr O'Shea said.
That the Melbourne-based competition selected a Five Barrel beer was also a bit of a surprise, given that for the most part, the brewery's cans aren't distributed outside the Illawarra.
"Because we're not really a brand-focused brewery I've never really anticipated that we'd ever actually come close to winning anything like the popular vote because we just don't distribute our beers very far and wide," he said.
The drawing of the koala - and all the artwork on the rest of the Five Barrel's range - comes from family friend Shannon Dyson, who lives in the Southern Highlands.
"He's a designer and he does illustrations on the side," he said.
"We reached out to him and asked if he'd like to do some illustrations for us. He's been doing all of our designs and some of them are just absolutely stunning. It's a bit of a side project for him and he's loving it."
Most of the time Mr Dyson will be given just a small brief on a new beer and be left to come up with his own ideas.
"For the vast majority of the beers that we do it's artwork first and then we find an appropriate way of framing that artwork on the can," Mr O'Shea said.
"With the cans it's all about that design being the prominent portion instead of the name or anything else."
As part of hitting the top 20, Flipside will make it into a mixed case of beer selected as having some of the best can art.
That case is expected to hit the shelves some time in mid-November, which means people from outside the Illawarra will be able enjoy both the Five Barrel can art and the beer.
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Glen Humphries
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
I'm an award-winning senior journalist with the Illawarra Mercury and have well over two decades' worth of experience in newspapers. I cover the three local councils in the Illawarra for the Mercury, state and federal politics, as well as writing for the TV guide. If I'm not writing, I'm reading.
