Naming your beer

Morning All,

In the introductions section, I posted my first two brews and said:

"50L of a my own Bitter IPA recipe. (Maris Otter & Caramunch, Fuggles & Goldings & Wyeast Whitbread XL 1099 (x2 packs)"

....and this got me wondering what the proper naming etiquette of your own beer is?

Whilst the above is indeed my own recipe in the end, I did get some of the basis (the Maris Otter & Fuggles bit) from Dr. Smurto's Landlord recipe. I didn't have the required Crystal Malt, so I added Caramunich and as I didn't have Styrian Goldings, I added East Kent. I also didn't fancy London Ale yeast (as I am am not a Southerner), so I pitched Whitbread XL instead  8)

Now, this batch (my first attempt at all-grain) may (probably will) turn out to be as tasty as old dishwater and probably nothing like Dr. Smurtos in the slightest, so I don't want to tar the good Dr's name with a crappy ole beginners brew; but that said, I also feel I want to give proper dues where they are due?

So, what thinks ye all?

Should I call it Dishwater IPA or Dr. Smurto's right now, or wait till it is drinkable, try it and only use the Dr. moniker if it is amazingly delicious and somewhat resembles the original (even though many of my ingredients are different?).

Cheers!

Fred.

Try it first! You have to see your baby first to give it a name

I brewed a Christmass Beer last year that turned out to be more bitter (due to too much grapefruit zest) than expected. Labels were already printed, however I changed the name of the beer
into X-mas Bitter and printed new labels. Worked fine for me
R,
Slurk

Etiquette?  We don't need no stinking etiquette!

OK. Serious answer.  Hmmmm. Currently I've got a Fuggle hopped ale in primary that's dark but not quite porter dark. I'm calling it Darth Fuggle.

Last winter I made a few attempts at American pilsner, complete with 6-row barley, corn, and Noble hops. Came out pretty good. Called it American Piss. 

In my case it all goes into a keg, so it's not like I'm going to offend sensitive family members by handing them a brew sporting a picture of someone relieving themselves into a beer bottle with yellow drippy letters proclaiming the name, or a winking Dick Cheney in a Vader hat using his sabre to cut Darth Fuggle out of a giant hop cone.  Though that would be fun. I guess it all depends on the audience. In my case the audience is pretty much me and the old widower next door who shares my brew by the pitcher, so anything goes.

Some of the names of my brews are just fun like the above (American Piss) and some and more descriptive.  I had an IPA that was darker, but not black, so I named it Deep six IPA.  Deeper than the surface.  I had a four leaf clover ale (Irish Red) that I actually put four leaf clovers into the boil just for fun (and luck of course).  Names are fun in my opinion.

For me, naming a beer is just as important as developing the recipe, or brewing the recipe, or building your own gear to brew the recipe, or anything else associated with this pursuit called homebrewing. (I can't call it a "hobby," and "occupation" is just asking for trouble.) When you pour (pun half-intended) so much of your time, energy, and money into a brew, you own it, in every sense. And that's what the creativity and personality and inspiration and passion all collide. So an unnamed beer is just... well... it's not complete.


OK, I'm being a bit dramatic, but just offering your pals a "yellow beer" or a "red beer" or a "somewhat muddy brownish beer" isn't quite the same as offering them a beer with a name that identifies it a bit more obtusely.


You can apply any sort of rule you want to how you choose a name. Sometimes you just want to be goofy about it--I'm a sucker for bad puns and pop culture references. Sometimes, it describes the ingredients, or the style, or the technique. Sometimes its an homage of one sort or another.


A few examples:


My first brew after my drought used hops from a farm where I get goat milk, and the yeast was a harvest from a local brewery called Beards Brewery. In honor of the ingredient sources, I'm calling it Goat Beard Brew.


My second batch was an IPA using a single hop variety (the same from the above). I have no idea what the hops are, so I just called it the One Note Hopsichord.


Batch #3 is a session ale using a single hop variety. It's a friendly kind of beer (just tapped it tonight), and pretty well in balance. I actually have a theme I'm working on with this style, with several follow-ups planned, but this inaugural one is being called Simpatico. (Can you guess the hop?)


My next brew is a re-brew from days of yore. It's a buckwheat beer, cheekily titled Buckawheat Banzai: Across the Aleth Dimension.


Sometimes, the name means something. Sometimes, it's just for fun. But always, it's an important part of the creative process for me. And I wouldn't be lying if I said that, a lot of times, I come up with the name first and then design the beer around it. I came up with two brews today on that concept alone!


So, name your baby. It's got your eyes.

I recently put my yellow lab down, she was a little over seven.  She had the C word and although we all fought hard in the end, that's a tough disease as I'm sure all of you know.  Anyway, I guess you could say naming pretty much every beer I've made since after her has been a little therapeutic.  Her name was Tralee and as a result, there has been Tralee's Paw Brown Ale, Tralee McDrinkington Scotch 80,  McTralee Oatmeal Stout, Beautiful Blonde Belgian blonde and when we first had to stomach the prognosis there was a TraleeBock and a Traleefest (Oktoberfest) too.  Anyway, you get the idea, you can name your beer whatever you want to name it.  In other words, someone else's recipe doesn't equal someone else's beer.  Given all the variables that go into the finished product, even if you used all the same ingredients in exactly the same proportions the odds of your beer tasting exactly like theirs aren't all that good anyway and thus, license to call it yours. 


Of course, if you enter it into a competition and it wins and you're asked to publish the recipe it would be good form to give credit to whoever inspired the recipe but aside from that, I think naming beers is part of the fun.  Finding creative and meaningful (to you anyway) ways to name your beer makes it a little better in some weird way.

As an aside, I think I read somewhere where someone was giving Charlie Papazian credit for giving homebrewers the freedom to name beer.  I think they said that had it not been for him naming all his beers in his books we all might have fallen on the convention of Batch 01, or IPA#2, and then left it at that.  Seems like it might have some truth to it  ???

8)

"Given all the variables that go into the finished product, even if you used all the same ingredients in exactly the same proportions the odds of your beer tasting exactly like theirs aren't all that good anyway and thus, license to call it yours"

Excellent. I would agree.... I think......but if I were to ever enter this IPA brew into a comp and win, Dr.Smurto will be duly named as my inspiration

For the record then, my newly named ale (brewed with the Braumeister 50) shall be called:

Bunker IPA (As it's currently conditioning in my nuclear bunker downstairs

9.8kg Maris Otter
300g Caramunich
----------------------
Mash in 54L @ 52C - 10 mins
Phase 2 63C - 45mins
Phase 3 72C - 5mins
Mashout 78C - 10 mins
----------------------
Sparged with 8 litres (well why not?!)
-----------------------------
84g Fuggles (60mins)
55g EK Goldings (20mins)
Boiltime 80mins
-----------------------------
2x Wyeast Whitbread XL 1099 @21C
-----------------------------
According to the software:
OG:1.045 (it was actually 1048)
ABV: 4.31%
FG: 1.012
IBU 31.4
Colour 11.4 EBC

Fingers crossed, and thanks for all the replies!

Fred.

Maine Homebrewer said:

Came out pretty good. Called it American Piss. 

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haha, nice one! I just remembered that (against my better judgement) I got a mash-kit for a German Lager whilst I was at the shop last weekend so I can try out a cold fermentation process too. And as I brew down in a bunker, I'm sure gonna have some fun naming that one*  :

*No offense meant to any nice German brewmeisters on here of course!

I haven't been naming too many of my brews yet.  I have named one, only because it was so obvious.  I made a straight forward RIS and stirred in 5 pounds of tootsie rolls at the end of the boil.  Tootsie Roll Stout was the obvious name for this one.

Funny: a homebrew club just started in my area, and the first "competition" is going to involve the use of chocolate in a brew. I thought a Tootsie Roll stout sounded mighty tasty, but I was planning on using ingredients to approximate the flavor of a Tootsie Roll--namely, chocolate and orange. Maybe I'll just cheat 

cmbrougham said:

Funny: a homebrew club just started in my area, and the first "competition" is going to involve the use of chocolate in a brew. I thought a Tootsie Roll stout sounded mighty tasty, but I was planning on using ingredients to approximate the flavor of a Tootsie Roll--namely, chocolate and orange. Maybe I'll just cheat 

Click to expand...

Trust me, putting 5# of Tootsie Rolls into the boil isn't cheating!  16.5% ABV required a lot of yeast of two different types.  I used a half gallon of harvested London Ale Yeast (Wyeast 1028) slurry at high krausen (I had to step up the starter three times to get this much yeast.  My OG was 1.142!  It went to nearly 16% ABV in 4 days.  Thank God for 8 gallon bucket fermentors!

I pitched dry champagne yeast into the secondary about a week before bottling.  This took it up another .5%.  After having steady hydrometer readings for three consecutive days, I then pitched another envelope of dry champagne yeast into it with my bottling sugar (just in case!). 

The tootsie rolls leave wax behind in your fermentor, but buckets clean up fairly easily with lots of really hot water.  I still have some waxiness in my glass carboy secondaries, but once again, lots of hot water cleans them out.

The taste is amazing!  It's a silky, smooth chocolate flavor, not overpoweringly sweet, but still sweet.  My IBU's were 112.3!  Even at that high of an IBU, there is no real bitterness to the beer.  I've tried making it with lower IBU's, but it is sickly sweet when I do.

The flavor is best described as a chocolate flavored bourbon, without the hotness of a bourbon.  The alcohol is obviously noticeable, but not overpowering.  I have to find someone who didn't like it, and this includes people who don't like beer.

It's a sipper, that I serve in small cognac glasses.  I'll post the recipe in the recipe threads.

Be patient, if you make it.  It takes a while to ferment out and then forever to carbonate, but it is worth the wait.

and.........this thread got me thinking.  What do all of you think of "Roll Over In the Grave Tootsie Roll Stout"?

Dang--that's crazy talk, right there Sounds pretty interesting, actually--I was just going to do more of a standard sweet stout, but I might have to do this in preparation of next year!

Historically, I've shied away from brewing bigger/imperial (cruiser) beers, mainly due to the cost. And, while I like a slow-sipper now and again, I've never really wanted 5 gallons of it. However, now that I'm looking at doing more 2.5/3 gallon batches, bigger beers are more of a reality for multiple reasons.

But, I digress... we can carry on the discussion in the appropriate thread

I tend to brew recipes from people I have come to respect.  I usually provide the original brewers name in my, "Assistant Brewer" field of Beer Smith.  I also will copy the website from where I got the recipe into the notes section of the software package.

When I name the beer I often times acknowledge the original brewer.  I was recently given an American Amber recipe for a clone of a Lakefront beer out of Milwaukee.  My friend and mentor Chuck gave me the recipe.  So I named it, "Lake Chuck Red".

I have come to trust and enjoy Ed Wort's recipes from over on Home Brew Talk.  I incorporate his name or his brewery, "Bee Cave" into a name.  Over the years I began to adjust that base recipe and I believe it is now mine to claim.  An Amber Ale is an Amber Ale but each is a bit different from others of the same style.