Offensive Beer Names

I thought it might be illuminating to look through the names of the beers we've had on tap at Hashigo Zake and check whether anyone might be offended by them. This could be an invaluable resource the next time the Dominion Post are looking for a story. By the time I got to the Es I was exhausted.

But to be fair to the Dominion Post, Garage Project do appear in this list an alarming number of times, and this is without getting as far as Golden Brown and Pernicious Weed.

Beer	Brewery	Possibly offended group
AK4.7	Founders	victims of gun violence
Avarice IIPA	666	saints
Bastard Rye	Garage Project	children of rye farmers
Beach Bum	Twisted Hop	beach goers
Beastwars IPA	Hallertau	victims of beast attacks
Black Arrow Pils	Townshend	victims of terrorism
Black Dwarf	8 Wired	black people of small stature
Black Magic IPA	Golden Bear	victims of voodoo
Black Ops IPA	Coronado	victims of counter-terrorism
Black Power	Moa	victims of gangs
Black the RIPA	Renaissance	Victorian era prostitutes
Blackbeard Porter	Golden Bear	victims of piracy
BlitzGreig IPA	Townshend	victims of the Blitz
Bumaye Imperial Stout	8 Wired	George Foreman
Bye Bye Blanket Man	Tuatara	Blanket Man
California Uber Alles	Garage Project	Arnold Schwarzenegger
Cherry Bomb	Garage Project	victims of chemical weapons
Clusterfunk	Funk Estate	prudes
Czar Imperial Stout	Wigram	Bolsheviks
Dasher’s Envy	Moon Dog	Prancer
Day of the Dead	Garage Project	the undead
Dead Good Pilsner	Free House	the living
DeadCanary	ParrotDog	victims of mining disasters
Defibrillator Weizenbock	Doctor’s Orders	victims of heart disease
Dirty Blonde	Cock and Bull	blondes
Emerson's last of the Mohicans	Emerson’s	native Americans
Epic Armageddon	Epic	survivalists
Expat Pom Porter	Twisted Hop	poms

Lift Your Game, Dominion Post

There’s nothing like seeing someone or something that you know turned into media cannon-fodder, to realise just how seedy journalism can get.

Garage Project’s Death From Above is not for sale anywhere yet and won’t be for a month. And it’s not being advertised anywhere, unless you count the brewery showing the artwork to its subscribers on social media.

That branding and artwork was actually the result of a forced change, after the beer’s intended name turned out to conflict with an existing brand. The intention all along was to make reference to the 34 year old movie Apocalypse Now. The beer in question has some ingredients with Vietnamese connections as well as being packed with American hops. It will no doubt be quite a mouthful. So in craft beer land an allusion to Robert Duvall’s Ride of the Valkyries-playing airborne cavalry is really, really apt.

Now to put things in perspective, Apocalypse Now has for years been the name of more than one bar in Vietnam. (Even more amusingly, Phnom Penh has a bar called “Heart of Darkness”.) The Apocalypse Now in Saigon has a surfboard on display with the slogan “Charlie Don’t Surf”.

But today must have been a slow news day, because someone at the Dominion Post saw fit to make calls to the RSA, a couple of Vietnam-born New Zealanders and a university academic to try and stir up some offence from people who would almost certainly not have heard of Death From Above if the reporter hasn’t called.

I don’t know much about the use of napalm, but it sounds as though it was a complete blunder to associate the airborne cavalry with the dropping of napalm, as the Dominion Post story did. But I guess if you only know Apocalypse Now from sound-bites, it is Duvall’s character who professes affection for the aroma of napalm.

Now as if the actions of Dominion Post, Stuff and Fairfax weren't sleazy enough, try going on Stuff and making a criticism of them for running this nonsense story. Will it get past their moderators? No. Make a really silly, reactionary comment wishing ill-fortune on Jos and Pete and, sure, they’ll publish.