Client Stories

Beer website leads to fresh hops brew

The Daylight team finished the website project for craft beer startup, ExNovo Brewing, last summer.  As a non-profit brewing project, ExNovo was created to teach the craft of brewing beer.  It’s common practice to hold brew nights, where the beer-curious can sample their latest beers on tap and enjoy a hands-on brewing demonstration.  After site launch, ExNovo invited Daylight to attend one of these brew nights, which was an offer that the Daylight staff was not about to pass on.

We were lucky enough to attend a fresh hops brew night.  Fresh hops beers are unique to the harvest season.  Along with dried hops that are added to all beer during the boil phase, fresh hops beers receive an additional dose of freshly picked hops at the end of the boil.  This late add of full bodied hops gives the beer a very unique flavor, often associated with IPAs and craft brewing.  Joel of ExNovo has hops vines growing around his property and neighborhood.  On this special brew night, the event attendees roved the neighborhood, filling baskets with freshly picked hops which were donated by supportive neighbors.

For any beer lover, brewing is a rewarding experience.  From the Mush Tun to the boil, cooling cycle to fermenting, seeing the process in person gives one respect for the quality of the ingredients used and labor involved.  The smells of the brew reflect the beer variety the brewer is aiming for.  When added, the fresh hops create a distinct, hoppy smell that I can now clearly identify in the taste of a fresh hops beer.
 
As excited as I was to be a part of brew night, I was equally pleased to help ExNovo with their website.  Daylight gave ExNovo a professional face for their project to evolve from a hobby to a business.
 

The Brewing Website Project

The goal for the ExNovo website was to create a quality online presence that would help this young brand be viewed as a trustworthy name in the Portland brew scene.  They needed a quickly built site that conveyed a professional feel and inspired the interest of investors and curious brewers.

 
For the site design, Daylight used a yellow, earth toned color palette in large, color blocked sections.  The single-page layered layout walks the reader through a headline, branding message, blog feed, board of directors and contact form.  We used the existing WordPress blog to pull in posts as a main feature for the new site.  The blog feed received a makeover with the incorporation of attractive web fonts and the new site’s color palette for text and custom CSS buttons. 

 
Even as a smaller project with a tight deadline, the ExNovo site still includes features that give it the polished look we initially set out to accomplish.  My top three favorite features that make this project successful are:

  1. Traveling fixed header menu
  2. Board of directors layout
  3. Custom styled contact form

Daylight was thrilled to create a beer focused website and even more pleased to celebrate the site launch with a brew night.  For that, we send thanks back to ExNovo for showing us their business: craft beer education.

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