Courtesy of a St. Petersburg Times columnist:
10. Unibroue La Fin Du Monde How can you not love a beer that calls itself “End of the World?” Fortunately, the only thing that will end after enjoying this complex brew is your ability to make do with just any beer.
9. Harveistoun Old Engine Oil Mega-breweries spend millions of dollars on image building, cultivating a look, image and an enticing name that’s not distasteful. Then there’s the Harviestoun brewery in Scotland that simply looked at its tasty old ale and named it after the first thing that came to mind: Old Engine Oil.
8. Sweetwater Happy Ending Imperial Stout The name refers either to living happily ever after or the beer’s great finish. It has nothing to do with massage parlors. Would a brewery that also has beers named Donkey Punch and 420 go there? I think not.
7. Ridgeway Santa’s Butt A butt is a wooden keg of beer. The picture on the bottle of jolly St. Nick’s butt crack peeking out from his baggy pantaloons ensures no one misses the double entendre. It has the distinction of having been banned in Maine and New York.
6. Buffalo Bill’s Alimony Ale Billed as “the bitterest beer in America,” this India Pale Ale is clearly the brainchild of someone disenchanted with the notion of till death do us part.
5. Dogfish Head Golden Shower Originally named Prescription Pills, the brewery was forced to change the name, lest someone think it was a pharmaceutical. Golden Shower saw one release before the government folks figured out what they’d approved. The beer is now known as Golden Era.
4. Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast Pooh Coffee The coffee added to the beer is pooped out by a civet (a catlike mammal that loves coffee). A bit literal? Yes. But still funny.
3. McQuire’s I’ll Have What The Gentleman On The Floor Is Having Barley Wine The name is a subtle hint that at 12 percent alcohol by volume, this beer is meant to be sipped. If you can drink it faster than you can say it, slow down!
2. Avery Collaboration Not Litigation This beer typifies the spirit of the craft brewing community. Vinnie Cilurzo of Russia River Brewing and Adam Avery of Avery Brewing realized they both had beers named Salvation. Showing a selfish disregard for the financial health of America’s lawyers, the two brewers decided that instead of suing each other, they’d team up to brew this bold beer.
1. Wasatch Polygamy Porter The slogan explains perfectly why this is the coolest beer name ever: “Why have just one?” I have big love for this beer’s name.
5 Comments
Let’s add Weyerbacher’s Blithering Idiot.
George, those are some good ones.
Celo – i almost bought that last year for a friend!
Edward – now i’m going to have to look up "slug" and exactly what measurement that is. Cool!
Santa’s Butt reminds me of my late friend Rick Berger. We worked together in a laboratory and most of the results were reported in milligrams per liter. Rick came up with a conversion factor so that we could report data in slugs per butt instead. The slug is apparently a unit of mass as obscure as the butt is for volume.
The Santa’s Butt folks also have one called Lump of Coal. It’s a yummy porter and exactly what I want in my stocking!
Fun list – Sweetwater seem to have a monopoly on well-known craft beers with fun names (Hummer, 420, Blue).
The only local beer that I can remember having a head-turning name was ABC’s Dang IPA (made accidentally, allegedly).
Pity He’Brew was missing from the list. Their beers are kosher and not necessarily great, but have some good names
Jewbilation 11
Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A
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