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Beer Names Breweries Should Be Ashamed Of

I am by no means a sensitive person.  I told dead baby jokes to every girl I was interested in and when one finally laughed I put a rock on it.  I’ve looked at things online that would make you throw up your kneecaps, caught so many intestinal diseases in the Peace Corps that discussing fecal matter is my second language, and performed surgery on myself with nail clippers on things you do not want to see.

That being said, seeing beers named after genitalia, feces or semen I cannot stomach.  I know a funny label goes a long way with free marketing and catches the eye of the casual beer-hunter, but gross labels cross the line and enter the territory of me not wanting to buy the beer.  Seeing as how there are now over 1,700 breweries in the United States all trying to come up with a different name for the same style beer I can see the need to be unique, but you will never see me drinking these beers.  This list is in no way comprehensive and only constitutes beers I’ve stumbled upon or heard mentioned.

Porter Potty Porter
Made by Hank Is Wiser Brewery in Cheney, KS.  I have no idea if it’s good or not and frankly I don’t care.  I already have a hard time not thinking about diarrhea every time I drink a Brown Ale, having a Porter named after a shit house just goes too far.

Golden Shower Imperial Pilsner
Made by Dogfish Head, they pulled the name after a few runs and changed the name to Golden Era.  Maybe people drinking a pint thought it looked and tasted more and more like urine as the beer warmed up.  Nothing like drinking a beer while thinking about being urinated on.  (Honorable mention: Rogue’s Yellow Snow)

Pearl Jam Twenty: Faithfull Ale
Dogfish makes the list again.  I know it’s not a big deal and most people don’t know what Pearl Jam means, but ever since someone told me in 8th grade that pearl jam meant semen I couldn’t get it out of my head.  Linking beer to semen does not make me thirsty.  Which brings me to my next beer quite nicely.

Pearl Necklace Oyster Stout
Flying Dog got a lot of good press from their Raging Bitch beer being censored in Michigan, they’re trying to piss off people yet again.  A possibly salty beer named Pearl Necklace? No thanks.  For those who might not know the term, a pearl necklace is when you cum around someones neck making it look like a necklace.  Check out this surprisingly NSFW Wikipedia entry on the subject to learn more.  If my Encyclopedia had been like this when I was a kid I would have read it a lot more than I did.

Velvet Merkin
I guess I don’t watch enough Victorian-era movies which showcase these sometimes.  A merkin was something women back in the day used to wear as a sort of pubic hair wig.  They’d shave to keep away lice and crabs, then put the wig on which could be washed later.  It was also used to hide signs of venereal diseases.  Bartender!  I’ll take two!  Firestone has since changed the name to Velvet Merlin but I still hear Merkin.

I’m sure as more brewers get desperate to make their beer unique or sneak in a cultural reference it’ll only get worse.  Sweet.

Road Trip: Uncommon Brewers

I've actually been writing more for my friends website than I have my own recently, check out the latest post on Uncommon Brewers in Santa Cruz.

Beer, Religion and Politics Do Not Mix

Going through my RSS feed this morning something caught my eye.  David, over at Musings Over a Pint wrote a post about how passages in the Quran are the reason why the Twin Towers were attacked on 9/11/01.  You can check out the post here.  Oh, and just to warn you, if you comment on the post and it's anything other than pro-that post, it will be deleted and you will be banned from the site.

While we could get into a whole debate on how angry passages in the Quran cause extremism, the thing that caught my eye is that David himself seems to be an extremist Christian.  I could go into how there are just as many if not more violent passages in the Bible than there are in the Quran, point to the Inquisition, the Curch helping Nazi's identify Jews in their community in Germany, or countless other evil things Christianity did and continues to do to our world.  And yet his criticism of the Bible is non-existent.

I am always surprised when people mix politics and religion with their work.  If I see an auto parts store that publishes on their website how Obama is really Kenyan, I'll avoid that store.  Similarly, if I had a company and had a bumpersticker saying how Palin is the anti-christ, I'd expect people on the other end of the spectrum to do the same.

With how loving and friendly the beer community is, this website was really a shock to the system.  You never hear the Trappist Monks screaming about how suicide damns people to hell, or that abortion is murder, imagine if they put that on their bottle.  What I'm trying to say is that religion and politics do not belong in craft beer.  I hope David can find the peace and serenity of not being so angry all the time and enjoy a pint of beer with everyone in our community, not just the extremists.

Cheers mate.

STRESS

Holy crap guys, I am in need of a strong beer right about now.  I just moved from swanky Rockridge in Oakland back to my home town of Canyon up in the Oakland Hills.  I'm so stressed out I think my stress level just reached a plateau and is hovering a full max.  Here's the deal:

Moving from a one-bedroom dank apartment to a three-bedroom house means I need a real bed, tools, food, and basically everything one needs with a regular house.

Fixing up the house with everything from a laundry line to power-washing and treating the deck to future projects (like an Indiana Jones type rope bridge).

Buying a car because I now live in the middle of nowhere and I refuse to bike in the rain.  Okay, the car stress was my own fault.  I could have gotten a reliable truck for the money I paid, but instead I opted for a 1970 FJ40 Land Cruiser (who wouldn't, right?).  It needs a parking brake, I want to switch it to disc, and power steering would be nice.

Oh, and did I mention my house is up a dirt trail?  Moving heavy objects is no fun but I am burning off all that baby-beer fat.

I figure I'll be feeling a lot better about two weeks from now and I'll stop being so agro all the time.  League curling and softball are great releases.