Naming a beer, does it matter?

Yakima 728
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I tend to honor the recipe's name given by those who created it. That said, I finally created my own recipe which is a Black IPA with a strong piney taste and have called it Lost In The Woods. Tried for a bit of a psychological feeling and was a lot of fun coming up with it.
 
I don't always name my brews, but the Witrus triple citrus wit came out great, and the name just makes it all the better. Thus, in the spirit of the name being important I brewed what I'm calling...

Busta Nut Brown Ale
 
SWMBO bought me a recipe journal.
I have been entering my recipes in an attempt to rid myself random loose notes.
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1458482472.039039.jpg
The biggest issue is my OCD is flaring up writing recipes but not putting a name to them.
Considering the second line has a spot for "style"
The recipe I have got from kits an HBT is easy.
For my own recipe I am leaving blank for now.
SWMBO already snapped at me when, once again thanks OCD, I asked "what happens if I make a beer and later find a recipe that better suits the name?"
View attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1458482799.028046.jpgView attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1458482811.726432.jpgView attachment ImageUploadedByHome Brew1458482829.939776.jpg
 
bransona said:
I don't always name my brews, but the Witrus triple citrus wit came out great, and the name just makes it all the better. Thus, in the spirit of the name being important I brewed what I'm calling...

Busta Nut Brown Ale
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Don't know if I could drink a "Busta Nut" but love the Witrus Triple Citrus. This thread is full of great names I reckon I'll be "borrowing" from time to time. :mug:
 
'Considering the second line has a spot for "style"
The recipe I have got from kits an HBT is easy.
For my own recipe I am leaving blank for now.' -Pyg
For my own recipes, if not intended as a specific style, I run them through Brewer's Friend, it shows the matching styles.
 
Names either drive the recipe idea or are an afterthought. I had the idea for a Jekyll and Hyde beer, so I brewed 8 gallons of wort and split it between WLP001 and French saison yeast.

On the other end if the spectrum I made a Chinook IPA and haven't thought of a name for it yet. Just wanted to do a Chinook single hop IPA. Might band it Helo IPA (like helicopter), or Leonardo (since da Vinci had some scribbles for helicopters).

I have two ideas I still need to look at making. The seven deadly sins (thinking 7 similar beers using different woods) and the four horsemen of the Apocalypse.

Same time I am planning a split batch of Helles using WLP860 and WLP835, no idea what to name the WLP835 half (thinking something to do with Andechs since that is where it is supposedly from, and my parents had their first date there).
 
JohnSand said:
If you don't name your beer, it won't have self esteem. At least clap hands for it. :)
I keg now, so no labels, rarely names. When I did name them, I picked a name that had to do with the style, the recipe, or something that happened during the brew-day. My Flying Dog clone was Fat Cat, (The cat lost weight since then) the Pliny clone started so citrus-y that I called it Hopsicle. Have fun with it, but don't stress either. We're not poets or artists, we're homebrewers. (With apologies to any Homebrewing Poetic Artists)
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I do this... I just made an "Bloody Knuckle Oatmeal Stout" because I skinned the crap out of my knuckle on brew day (Saturday)
 
I do feel the need to name beers. But only once they become regular recipes. If they are one offs or kits I buy annually such as more beers pumpkin kit.. I just call it the pumpkin ale. But once it becomes a regular at least brewed 4 tines a year it needs a name. And then you don't have to rush and come up with silly names before competition.

My chocolate vanilla Porter is almost ready to be labeled but I am trying a variation right now same base recipe but a coffee version... But I am coming up with a name for both.
 
Part of the fun of the hobby to me is coming up with names. I try to name my beers after local surf spots, but will also come up with other names depending on a variety of factors. For example, I had a batch in which virtually everything went wrong on brew day and during fermentation, so I called it "Murphy's Law IPA." It came out great, by the way. I made another batch with a friend on Father's Day which also happened to be the Summer Solstice, so I called it "Father's Day Solstice Pale Ale." I also made beer for an office BBQ and had a naming contest at work. It was a Saison and our boss is famous for staying at Four Seasons Hotels, so the winner was "Four Saisons" Belgian Ale.
 
I only name them once I have the details hammered out.

As an example, I'm tweaking my ESB. I have it listed as "Bitter MKI" and "Bitter MKII". With this one, I know what I'm going to name it when it's done, Hawker Tempest. I don't always have a name before the finished beer is born, but this time I do since I had enough time between brew days to obsess over the recipe itself so I took a break from that and obsessively looked up various planes the RAF used in WWII
 
i love puns and clever names so i usually do. when i finally got around to brewing a beer after fixing out our house, it just called it 'untitled pale ale' which is the name brew toad automatically assigned it. i made a typical SN style american pale ale recently out of randoms leftovers and called it 'kitchen sink ale.'

i think a good name and art package are a bigger factor for craft brews. lord knows i've probably bought some beers based on name or artwork alone. however, i saw this the other day and there is no way in hell i'd ever try the beer (even if i liked brown ales). most unappealing name and art i've ever seen on a craft brew.
http://www.atgbrewery.com/Menu/Beer/2/Malt/4/The-Brown-Note/170
 
kev211 said:
That's not a very good name for a beer.


Or is it???
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Ahhh, I was praising someone's name choice of "Extra Special Biter", then realized it was MANY posts before. The whole unread post thing, y'know.

The best of my own beer names is Orange is the New Brown, below.
 
I have a few creative beer names for recipes I'm currently trying to perfect. For the most part however, I just label my brews with the style, date brewed, ingredients, and percentage of alcohol by volume.
 
brewcat said:
I'll name them when recipe tweaking is done and continually brewed. I have a maibock kegged. Hopefully it earns a name. With that, maybe Hopeful Maibock. Or I wish I had a name Maibock. To be really pretentious they could be combined. Hopeful Maibock...or I wish I had a name.

Any SMaSH could be a Hulk Smash!
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heh, i've gotten into the smash habit too...

Smashed Final.jpg


smash3.jpg


photo_2016-03-18_19-37-35.jpg
 
I name all of mine. So far, all but one have stuck to the theme of major fault lines within California. This also happens to be my field of study, so I've had no shortage of names so far.

I've actually used this naming scheme to help develop recipes a few times, too. There have been times where I've thought about characteristics of different faults, and tried to figure out how to translate that into characteristics of beer. San Andreas is a California Common because it's just the most essentially California, and because the fault was identified after the 1906 earthquake, which hit San Francisco, which is where California Common first developed. And, San Jacinto is a saison with Amarillo and Mandarina hops and white sage, because the fault runs through dry as hell desert and sagebrush and also orange groves.
 
Sometimes I name em, sometimes not. I mean, some of them are just not very good, some of them get cleverer the more you drink em. Make a fat tire clone, 1/2 the bottles were labled inflated rubber, the other just ftc. This year, names have been clever like "Lakefront Red" or Chinook IPA, DPA (dan's pale ale), etc. Red's are easy is always a decent name.

mine just have the name and the bottling date, and that's it. never felt the need to add anything else.
 
Read a debate on another forum, where the discussion was- if you follow a recipe but alter it slightly, does it need to be named after the source (i.e. Is a Bud clone with citra still a bid clone?)
My thought was no.
You make the beer call it what you want!
 
Pyg said:
Read a debate on another forum, where the discussion was- if you follow a recipe but alter it slightly, does it need to be named after the source (i.e. Is a Bud clone with citra still a bid clone?)
My thought was no.
You make the beer call it what you want!
Click to expand...

On that note, the way I see it, if you took my recipe, to the letter, and breed it on your system it would still come out a little different. Hell, if I took my recipe and did it on your system it would still be different.

Now if I cloned something, I would give it a name based on the name of the original, like a pun or something based on the original, but that's just me and I'd never get up in arms if someone else did different.
 
I plan on brewing a few clones, and naming them as I see fit. I will let it be known it is a clone, though.
 
PADave said:
Mine are numbered. I put a simple batch number on the cap with sharpie.
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LOL EXACTLY what I do as well! :D Tho, I think my latest batch I will actually name..It is a Guinness clone called Gooder Than Guinness, but I think I will name mine Hair of the Cat..Because as soon as I started the siphon into the bottling bucket I look in and see a cat hair..Grrrr! Oh, well..Maybe it will add flavor! LMAO
 
Naming your beer is part of the fun of brewing. You can come up with some cool names that are custom to you and to whatever your in too
 

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