The name game
Would a beer by any other name smell as sweet?
It’s not just wine makers that can come up with evocative or silly names for their products; brewers have been getting in on the act for years. But what’s in a name? Just how do breweries think up the names for their latest brew, from the cheeky (Mother In Laws Tongue Tied), the scary (Skull Splitter), the celestial (Lemon Dream), and the downright rude (Dog Bollocks, Jack’s Nasty Face)?
DOES WHAT IS SAYS ON THE TIN
Commonly, beer names give an indication of what’s going on, on the inside – Batemans’ Dark Mild, the Meantime Brewery’s Chocolate and Coffee Beers (which do in fact contain these ingredients) and MacQueen’s Nessie, from Austria’s Schloss Eggenberg brewery, made using malt imported from Scotland.
Just as winemakers display grape varieties, beermakers use their chosen hop variety as a starting point – Whitbread’s Fuggles Imperial and Young’s First Gold Wood. Cascade Premium Lager, brewed in Australia, is also named after the hop variety, and, Long Leg, the newest brew from Cameron’s, in Hartlepool, takes its name from the stilts formerly used by hop pickers.
The Brooklyn Brewery, in New York, has opted for comic book style beer names to reflect the ingredients in its heavily hopped BLAST! and its malty Monster Ale. Brewmaster Garrett Oliver says: “I enjoy the whimsical names of many of England’s beers so we called this beer ‘Monster’ because it was big, strong, a bit dangerous if treated disrespectfully, and rather difficult to brew. We always played Bach’s haun.....
To read the rest of this article you can buy this issue
or subscribe to Beers of the World to have every issue delivered direct to your door.
By Alice Whitehead
Section : Beer Trends
Page number : 22
