About Us

 the likes of which had not been done in Wales before, we knew we had to do something new

and fresh with the visual aspect of the brand as well as the quality of the product itself. Traditionally

Real Ales have suffered from what I call, “the woolly cardigan and beard syndrome”. The way most

real ales have been promoted in the market place is like that of an old comfort blanket. Names that

express snuggled up feelings, quiet places in the country side, old lost uncles and tired innuendos

are too numerous to mention and as much as the responsible brewers think they are being witty,

they are only seeming tired, droll, over ripe and worst of all they end up alienating a large portion

of the market.

 

We had the idea to launch a brand that would appear fresh, modern, simple and a little intriguing.

You have to immerse yourself a little in the product to find out a little more about it. The simplicity

of the black and white seemed to us an obvious choice, the graphic’s potential is vast and when

stacked on a busy shelf with other numerous products it‘s simplicity screams for your attention.

The ‘O’ we use from Otley, being our family name has enabled us to compile a range of simple

names for the beers, O1, O2, OBB, OG, O8 and even a Dark O stout.

 

This was simply a way of labelling the products almost like an industrial stamp rather than a

flowery meaningless name and was to prove popular with the new young drinking scene, a sector

of the market not normally associated with Real Ales.

 

Suddenly we had a product that visually did not throw up any barriers to new drinkers, young people

and women who we knew were key to our products success.

 

The aim of producing a product with serious award winning credentials has to be and has been

backed up with a simple but professional recognisable brand that already after only three years is

being recognised on sight as an Otley product.

 

Being a Welsh product we also were very keen on using the welsh language and we did this on the

bilingual bottle labels listing the ingredients in Welsh and English and on the bottle cases where we

also use bilingual packaging without throwing the Welsh angle in people s faces. Some Welsh as

proud as they are of being Welsh can’t actually speak it, so we don’t want to alienate them either.

 

The future? Who knows? We have just launched a new website www.realbeerbox.com which we have

branded in the same style as the brewery and we hope to grow the brand further in the future.