Happy Friday, beer lovers! Here we are again.
to misquote T.S. Eliot:
The Naming of Beers is a difficult matter,
It isn't just one of your holiday games;
The other night I was drinking out of my Sculpin souvenir glass, and thought, again, that it wasn't a very pretty sea creature, nor a very well known one. And yet the people at Ballast Point thought it was the right name for an excellent IPA. How do they think these things up?
Which of course got me thinking of other interesting names. Other fish I can think of are Steelhead (a brewery and a pale ale) and Great White; Pacific Coast brewing has Gray Whale.
Just staying within the animal kingdom there are:
Black Dog, Black Crow, Black Cat, Black Panther, Black Sheep, Black Hawk and Black Tiger;
Red Dog, Old Brown Dog, Flying Dog, Bulldog and Turbo Dog;
Bluebird, Blue Heron, Swan, Emu, Kingfisher and Red Tail;
Cobra and Rattlesnake.
(thanks to Lindsay's Beer Pages for most of those)
I'm not the only one to have found the names amusing, a quick search found several "beer names" pages, including "best" 1 2 and "most ridiculous" 1 2. There's a lot of overlap among those lists. I'll mention just a couple of the most popular ones:
Wasatch brewing in Utah decided to tweak their Mormon neighbors with "Polygamy Porter" (slogan "Why have just one?")
to answer the question "Why have just one?", Buffalo Bill's in Hayward CA has "Alimony Ale -- the bitterest brew in America".
and to answer my question "How do they think these things up?", here's the Random Beer Name Generator.
I've got Mirror Pond pale ale. Might walk down to the corner where the store has Hop Stoopid. What are you drinking? And what are your favorite names?