Art vs. Commerce
Discussed in this post:
Beer names and label information, with examples from
A couple friends (who will go nameless since they spoke casually, not for publication) have a financial stake in one of the local breweries. In discussion they complained about the owner-brewer neglecting commerce in favor of art. “He thinks if he brews good original beer people will just find it, drink it, and like it,” said one. The other called the investment “a silly way to waste a quarter-million dollars.”
Since the brewery is still operating after about a decade, I’m guessing that everyone is making their investment back, just that they’re sweating it all the time.
But that, as far as I can tell, is not my point.
The brewer has local artists, friends I bet, design the cans. They’re crazy and arty and fun, like a lot of craft beer cans. But you can’t really tell what’s in them or who brewed it by looking at them. One of the investor friends commented, “I should be able to look at a beer label or can and tell right away who makes it and what style beer it is.”
Now I think we’re approaching my point. This is my beer name and label manifesto. Just as we earlier opined about beer server helpfulness or lack thereof, I now want to make some requests about beer names and labels.
It makes sense, both as a service to customers and for branding, to practice naming conventions that align with the brewery name and each other and the beer style. Here in Portland, Rising Tide has done a good job with at least the first two on most of their products: Maine Island Trail Ale, Zephyr, Daymark, Waypoint, Spinnaker, Soundings, Pisces, etc. all are related to sailing, the ocean, navigation. Okay, they don’t evoke the style, but Rising Tide makes up for it by clearly and briefly identifying style on their labels.
Nearby Mast Landing is nearly as consistent and effective, though they seem to favor wit over clarity: Their earliest beers were Dash, Tell Tale, and Gunner’s Daughter. New names like Neon Sails fit, but Paper Plates doesn’t. When they collaborate with other breweries, the names get stupid: How’s Yer Capacity? Or It’s Too Damn Hot for A Penguin to be Walking Around Here.
I like the beer at Goodfire a lot, but every time I go I have to check the ABV on Prime and Waves to remember which I prefer. And what do those names have in common with CMYK or Tiny Wrist Circles? Then go compare the labels. What says they come from the same brewery?
It’s a good thing Bissell Brothers brews so well. And the logo with the three B’s is distinctive and prominent on all their cans. They seem to have a penchant for the one-word name: The Substance, Swish, Lux, Reciprocal. Until they don’t: Industry vs. Inferiority, Preserve and Protect. I do get a kick out of literary pun names like Nothing Gold and These Caramel DeLites have Caramel Ends.
In New Mexico I had a terrific beer from Rowley Farmhouse Ales. It was called Agent Scully, Season 2 Episode 7. How am I supposed to remember that, when they have brewed 21 different Agent Scullys? On the other hand, most of their beers are saisons or farmhouses with one-word names and a label featuring a block-print looking rose.
It might be too much to ask that the beers actually be named “... Saison,” “...Gose,” “...New England IPA,” but there’s room for those words on a label or can.
It would be nice if the styles had some clarity, but just where is the line between Pale Ale and India Pale Ale? How’s a Double IPA different from an Imperial IPA? When does a Gose become a Sour? Out in the gold country of California I tried a Grateful Haze from Grass Valley Brewing Company and described it on Untappd as a “West coast idea of hazy.” Someone from the brewery corrected me: “a Nor Cal Hazy Sir.” Likewise, I noted in an earlier entry that Marble Brewery simply decided to call their Hazy dry-hopped IPA “Southwestern Style,” when most aficionados would call it New England. Speaking of which, it hasn’t been that long since I realized DDH is a world different from DIPA.
In this age of experimentation, it’s too much to expect clear lines between styles. We’re bound to get “Our take on a traditional English Ale brewed with a German Wheat mash and New Zealand hops.”
Here’s what I want on beer cans or labels: a name that makes some kind of sense and ideally hints toward the style (or, if you will, a subtitle), a branding unity among the brewery’s products, ABV and, if called for, IBU. Also, if a beer is dry-hopped, or continuously-hopped, or in any way post-boil hopped, and/or you, the brewer, think the kind of hops matter, you ought to make that information readily available to the drinker.