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Ballyhoo: The Name Game

a dining table in front of a brick building

This post was going to follow my “can I try your beer” one from early November, but then the New Belgium sale fired me up enough to dedicate last month’s entry. Since then, the employees voted to sell, amid a level of controversy. Yikes! So, let’s turn back to a lighter topic.

Early on, if a homebrewer gets serious enough about the hobby, they’ll name their “brewery”. We were no different, the LUKI name came long before we decided to open a commercial brewery. The naming of your garage brewery and beers usually is a result of wanting to create a clever label. Most times, these names are heavy with inside jokes, or something horribly inappropriate. We used work jokes and pop culture. I mean, how could you even consider yourself a homebrewer if at least one beer you made isn’t called Duff. Or Düff. Or Red Tick Beer. The possibilities are endless. (Yes, we’re fans of the early seasons of The Simpsons). Our inappropriate names were never documented outside of our top-secret brew diary, and only escaped as a wink between us as others drank. But then you make enough batches, and you lose the pizazz of naming things. Sure, we got to our 42nd batch and called it “Mostly Harmless” as a nod to our love of The Hitchhiker’s Guide. We made a pumpkin ale and absolutely had to call it “It’s the Great Pumpkin LUKI Brew!”. Those are rare, though, as usually you’re making “Chocolate Porter Version 16, w/Ecuadorian Cocoa Nibs”, which is what we made last weekend.

Then you enter the commercial space. Naming is hard, and you’ve got a microscope on you. This pop-culture stealing. inappropriate wordplay can be a hard habit to break. Getting a cease and desist is almost inevitable, especially when you mess around with big properties. Sometimes it’s done clever, like the “dilly dilly” thing that happened in Minnesota around the their Superbowl. Other times it’s not. Don’t mess with Starbucks. Or you can say “bring it on!” and steal from Disney or the NFL, even though it’s all in good fun. Of course, the publicity of a cease and desist can be a marketing angle of its own, given the “there is no bad press” concept. Unless your naming comes from a place of anger, and the public disagrees with you. There is an argument of “who are you hurting?” when you name beer like this and don’t distribute. I do see the point. Ultimately, it’s a case of trademark infringement and if the owner of the trademark is willing to put up the fight. Big companies? Probably. Small, taproom breweries with very limited distribution? Not really, especially when names are used in one-off or seasonal situations.

Here’s an example. We love a play on words and pop culture as well. We’re also fans of Family Guy, and when the style of New England IPA became popular, I really wanted to name ours a “Giggity IPA” (taken), or at least a “Quahog IPA” (taken, in different forms). So, we abandoned the idea as it’s not worth getting in that fight as a new brewery. And yeah, neither is a real circus-y name, but given the nature of rotating new beers, we’ll burn through all the sideshow names fast. (Wait… “Sideshow Bob”! Ugh, taken.) I suppose we could always go with a generic name generator for the haze craze. “Wet Hopped Tropical Trellis Snack” has a bit of ring to it.

To repeat the blog from two months ago, one of the frequent comments we get is “you must have some cool names planned”. Yeah, I get it, we’re a circus brewery and we should have a few good ones up our sleeve. But there’s a problem… we have no idea what’s going to be popular. The successes should get the cool names. If we make an IPA for the masses and call it, let’s say, “Lion Tamer IPA”, what if it’s a flop? Ok, tweak the recipe, but do we still call it the same thing? And try as we may to improve it, we’ll never get a second chance on that cool name that’s been trademarked. Even if it’s version 2.0. On the flip side, if “Baby Yoda IPA” becomes the best seller, how’s THAT going to age… assuming I don’t catch the eye of Sauron Disney.

So, do we have cool names planned? Yes and no. We’ve got a list, but they probably won’t be used right away. Truthfully, we’ll be surprised if the beer styles on tap at opening are anything close to what becomes our core lineup. The neighborhood will decide, more than anything else. That’s why names are not a deal to us. We’re not distributing, so I don’t need to carefully develop a full marketing plan to bring “Lion Tamer IPA” to the larger consciousness of craft beer fans everywhere. Wait. Dang. “Lion Tamer” or some derivative is already used by multiple other breweries. Whoops.

As we draw 2019 to a close, I’d like to say thanks for reading, and following along with these posts. I do enjoy writing them, and hope I still have the time to do so as we march forward. The holiday season is a time for joy and reflection but can also be filled with anxiety and loneliness for a lot of people. We’re all in this together, practice a little kindness.

Happy holidays, from myself and the entire LUKI extended family,
-Jeff
December 27, 2019
Written while drinking a Panoramic Porter by the Lariat Lodge Brewing Company.

P.S. More of test than anything else, here is my current 20-song heavy rotation Spotify playlist. I do kinda-sorta keep it updated if you have any desire to follow it.   I will eventually be using crowsourced playlists for the taproom, so that will be fun to see what develops.