Over the previous few years, a new generation of illustrators and artists—among them Jean Goovaerts for Brasserie de la Senne, Jonas Devacht for Brouwerij Sint Bernardus, and Aykan Umut for Dust Blending—has added different colors and new styles to bottles, cans, and logos, ensuring that Belgian beer’s graphics are as diverse and engaging as its flavors. But in 2021, it was Amaury “Ammo” Dastarac who most shaped the contours of the industry’s aesthetics and added new vibrancy to its public-facing appearance.
Dastarac grew up in a rural family home in Villeneuve-sur-lot, France, later attending art school and then illustrating gig posters, flyers, and clothes for musicians in Bordeaux. When he moved to Belgium in 2009, he took a job as an art teacher with a local school, but he also secured illustration work from record labels and bands. Dastarac began meeting people who straddled both the music and beer worlds in Belgium, and he was soon being commissioned to design bottle and can artworks by Maxime Dumay of Brasserie No Science, Nino Bacelle of Brouwerij De Ranke, and Jean Van Roy of Brasserie Cantillon.
In 2021, Dastarac illustrated select labels for De Ranke, including its Hop Harvest 2021. He worked on several Cantillon labels, too, delivering its redesigned Gueuze label, with its gold leaf and 3D finish on textured cotton paper, and the stunning sunset illustration on the label for Le Plaisir, Cantillon’s grape pomace Lambic collaboration with Cascina Degli Ulivi. He even illustrated a board game about Belgian beer which was released in 2021 called The Belgian Beers Race.
Dastarac’s most notable project this year, however, and the one for which he has received the most accolades, was creating the house style and can artwork for newcomer Brasserie de la Mule, the first brewery to open in Schaerbeek in 60 years. Schaerbeek is an old but vibrant Brussels neighborhood, multicultural and architecturally diverse. “Mule” comes from Schaerbeek’s nickname (“the city of donkeys”), a reference to the donkeys once used to transport the sour cherries grown in Schaerbeek to the marketplaces of central Brussels for use in Kriek production.
Mule is owned by the former brewer at Brasserie de la Senne, Joël Galy. Dastarac gave Mule’s artwork a California gold rush vibe, with dense pencil lines and decorated Western typography. His touch has imbued the brewery’s releases with the sense of an exciting new frontier.
Words,Breandán Kearney