The History Of Beer Labels
From “The International Book of Beer Labels, Mats & Coasters” published by Chartwell books in 1979 op https://retrorambling.wordpress.com/articles/misc-articles/the-history-of-beer-labels/
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The beer label today is still essentially a means of advertising. To promote the product, and to attract the required custom on the bar shelf, a good label must be simple and bold in its design. The manufacture of special beers tends to give rise to special labels, and foil has been used in a number of countries, especially the United States and Canada. British labels have in the past tended to be rather conservative. Unlike many labels from other parts of the world, they are not pictorial, but generally depict the brewer’s name, trade mark or motif and brand name, although the introduction of regulations affectingcontents and the country of origin has, in the opinion of some, devalued the design to a certain extent, as the additional wording tends to clutter up the label. D. H. Tew, in an article entitled ‘A Critical Study of Beer Labels’, written in 1948, described beer label design as falling into two main categories. Some brewers, such as Schous of Norway, use a standard design and stick to it for all their products, while others use different designs and even different shapes for each brand. The former practice makes the public familiar with the label and the latter enables the customer to recognize what they want at a glance.
...
Over the years, there has been much variation in the basic shapes of labels, of which there are 15: circular, oval, pear-shaped, rectangular, square, shield, barrel, triangular, diamond, octagonal, hexagonal, parallelogram, saddle, crescent and loaf. There are also many variations within these basic shapes, and the great variety can only be really appreciated by reference to illustrations (https://retrorambling.wordpress.com/articles/misc-articles/the-history-of-beer-labels/).
Bottled products bore paper labels in the seventeenth century. Early drug phials had a label which covered the whole of the glass and early in the following century, patent medicine vendors were using paper labels widely. The first use of labels on alcohol bottles seems to have come in the middle of the eighteenth century, it is known, for example, that a black and white label was being used for port wine in 1756. Up to the 1860s, bottles of wine were sold in cases largely’ to members of the upper and middle classes, and were therefore not distributed widely; around that time, however, concern that a wider public should have access to wine (partly to counteract the widescale consumption of spirits) gave rise to legislation to allow any retailer to sell wine in single bottles, and each bottle had to have a label.
Beer labels were probably unknown before the 1840s. In England, beer was not bottled to any great extent until 1834, when the duty on glass was repealed. Before that time, the customer had his own bottles which were impressed with his own seal=usual ly showing a coat of arms or name, together with the date~ just below the neck of the bottle. After 1834, bottles were still sealed by hand. The name of the brewer and a description of the contents were stamped into the neck of the wax seal. Because of expanding trade, a quicker method of identification was developed: a metal foil capsule, similar to those still used today for the bottling of wines and spirits, was soon introduced. This depicted the brewer’s name and nature of contents. There was, however, a disadvantage in that when the bottle was handled roughly the cap soon became illegible. Printed paper labels were therefore the answer.
The growth of cities caused by the Industrial Revolution in England enabled brewers to ‘mass produce’ their beer, while in rural districts, the decline of home brewing increased the sales of country brewers.
...
With beer being sold on an increasingly wide scale, brewers recognized the importance of identifying their products properly, and for this the label was vital.
...
Because bottled beer has a longer life than casked beer, it was more extensively used for this brew, which is invariably found advertised on the earliest labels. Labelled bottles were probably in general use in the United Kingdom by 1855, due to the extensions of the railways and canals which allowed the brewers to expand their markets. During the Crimean War, they were being exported in quantity. (A bottle with a faded label from that period is kept at William Younger‘s Brewery in Edinburgh.)
Owing to changing methods of sealing bottles, a new type of label came to be used: the stopper label. As the yeast in beer naturally builds up large quantities of CO2, the cork was usually sealed with wax or foil cap and wire to prevent the force of the gas driving the cork out, particularly with export ales. In 1872, the screw stopper was patented by Henry Barrett of England and began to replace the cork, although corks were still in general use in England in the 1930s, while in Ireland they lasted to 1970. (In Belgium, Liefmans Brewery of Ouedenaarde still uses corked litres and jeroboams for its beers...In 1892 crown corks (metal closures with a corrugated edge which fit on the lip of the bottle and which can be levered off with a bottle opener but not satisfactorily replaced) were invented by William Painter, and they further reduced the use of ordinary corks.
...
Because of the small size of the stopper, label, its design shows more ingenuity and taste than that of the larger ‘side’ label, and this is the reason why stopper labels can add a final touch to any collection.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of stopper labels is the wide variety of inscriptions. The most common is ‘Observe (or see) that this label is unbroken’. This is varied occasionally with ‘This label should be unbroken when received’, ...Advice to the drinker is frequent, with ‘pour out with care’, ‘do not shake the bottle’ and ‘none genuine without this label’. At times, the price of beer appears.
The name of the brewer or brand of the beer is occasionally seen on the tab, but this is mostly reserved for the centre of the label which fits over the stopper itself. Of equal fascination to the collector is a similar type of label used in Germany, Holland and other European countries. This fits vertically on the neck of the bottle and is sometimes the only label used. Grolsch of Holland use bottles with porcelain ‘swing’ top closures (devices for removing the cork or stopper by pressing two wire bales which pass through the stopper and lock against the neck of the bottle) for some of their beers, and the raised lettering on the bottles themselves necessitates a label on the neck rather than the main part of the bottle.
...Trade expansion led to an increase in competition among brewers, and inevitably, undesirable practices crept in. Imitations of the best ales were sold; for example, Scotch ale by an American company was sold as Scotch in the United States. And before legislation was introduced from 1875 onwards governing trademarks, other companies could copy these without the established or authentic users having the full protection of the law.
....
The Bass red triangle, as depicted on the Pale Ale label, is perhaps the world’s best known trade mark. The story is that a loyal employee sat on the steps of the registrar’s office all night to ensure that the red triangle was the first trade mark to be registered in 1890 under the Trade Marks Acts; Bass’s diamond trade mark was the second entry. Both marks had, however, already been used for many years. The Bass label has a further claim to fame: it is shown on a bottle in Edouard Manet’s famous painting of 1882, ‘Le Bar aux Folies Bergeres’
...
Just before the Second World War, bottles with permanent fired-on or stencilled labels were introduced in England. While they were of some use during the wartime paper shortage, they were not popular,...The paper shortage in the Second World War also meant that some brewers, especially in the United Kingdom, stopped issuing labels and instead designated the type of beer, in small bottles, by the colour of the crown cork.
(https://retrorambling.wordpress.com/articles/misc-articles/the-history-of-beer-labels/)
Let’s face it…most brewers are men. While there are some highly-regarded female brewmasters working today (like Carol Stoudt of Stoudt’s Brewing), the industry is still unfortunately dominated by the unfairer sex. On the plus side, the preponderance of male brewers has led to some pretty sweet beer labels over the years (http://aleheads.com/2011/06/11/sexiest-beer-labels/).
Doordat het brouwen een mannenbolwerk was kwam er naast de twee categorieën van D. H. Tew (‘A Critical Study of Beer Labels’, 1948), a standard design and stick to it for all their products, while others use different designs and even different shapes for each brand is er nog een derde categorie: de dubbelzinnige:
Zoals die van de Nederlandse brouwerij Pimpelmeesch:
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Al zijn er nu andere etiketten (zie biernetwerk).
Naast etiketten kregen bieren ook rare namen van bergen, of iets anders?
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Zoals Tyranena BGW Hop Whore Imperial India Pale Ale (Brewed by Tyranena Brewing: COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION
Overpowering perfume. Dripping with luscious hop flavor. And, oh what a body. You’re in for one helluva experience!).
1978 was the worst year for beer diversity in post-Prohibition America, with only 89 breweries operating in the entire country. Most of those breweries sucked, so a nation addled by other drugs might not have realized that things were starting to look up. President Carter decriminalized home-brewing that year, empowering a generation of garage-based drinkers and dreamers to develop their own recipes and techniques. A lot of these hobbyists eventually went pro, leading to the well-chronicled rise of craft beer.
Now the U.S. is home to more than 3,500 breweries, half of which have opened since 2010. There are currently thousands of companies making beer that’s better than pretty much anything that was available up through the mid-1990s. The new-wave brewers have distinguished themselves from their predecessors by employing better ingredients in innovative ways. But there’s one area in which they’re stuck in 1978: A lot of craft beer marketing is astonishingly sexist.
...
One of the higher-profile repeat offenders is Flying Dog Brewery of Frederick, Maryland, maker of many dog- and dog-plus-one-more-entendre-themed beers including Raging Bitch Belgian-Style IPA and Pearl Necklace Oyster Stout. Both have ready-made plausible deniability baked into their origin stories. Raging Bitch is art, because Hunter S. Thompson sidekick Ralph Steadman designed the label; plus, duh, a bitch is a female dog!
Pearl Necklace’s label shows a dog wearing a necklace made out of pearls, which are found in oysters, which are used to make oyster stout. Alas, “pearl necklace” also refers to a porny sex act and, even worse, a ZZ Top song commemorating said act.
Atlanta’s SweetWater Brewing Co. gained notoriety in March when a Chicago outpost of Binny’s Beverage Depot refused to stock their Happy Ending imperial stout. The store’s former beer manager, Adam Vavrick, told the Chicago Tribune, “This label is about a female Asian sex worker manually stimulating a man to orgasm and cleaning up the ejaculate with tissues. Why is that appropriate on a beer label?”
...
The problem isn’t that these labels hint at sex. It’s that they and others of their ilk almost never refer to mutually respectful sex. It’s ironic that the one beer name Flying Dog has seen fit to retire is Doggy Style Pale Ale, which is a cheesy thing to call a beer, but at least the act referenced isn’t inherently degrading to, or unpleasurable for, women. Sex and sexism aren’t the same thing, which is why there’s nothing wrong with Sierra Nevada calling its new pilsner Nooner. Go ahead and evoke consensual, mutually beneficial daytime screwin’ all you like. But the vast majority of beer-land sex references objectify women, or worse.
(www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2015/07/craft_beer_sexism_labels_like_raging_bitch_and_happy_ending_only_alienate.html)
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Naast de bieretiketten, zijn er ook de labels voor op de tap
(zie ook www.pumpclipparade.co.uk).
Er is niet verwonderlijk veel discussie over, zoals van Melissa Cole, maar ook vanuit Beer Advocate:
Candice Alström has every right to be offended by the labels. She has every right to feel this way and every right to discuss the issue. The problem is that there are countless other forums Ms. Alström could have used to proclaim her opinion. Instead, she chose to use Beer Advocate, a site that employs her as the Director of Special Events and which is tremendously influential in the craft beer world. She essentially used Beer Advocate as a bully pulpit to unleash a character assassination on a man (and his company) that she clearly finds distasteful (http://aleheads.com/2011/07/07/clown-shoes-controversy/).
The beer, made by Pig Minds Brewing in Machesney Park, is called PD California Style Ale and features an image of a woman’s legs with underwear around her ankles.
Shocked?
You should be, but labels like this are becoming more and more commonplace on beers made around the country, and many breweries seem to be just fine with using images like this to sell beer (www.timeout.com/chicago/blog/time-to-grow-up-breweries).
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Why Does Craft Beer Suddenly Seem to Have a Problem With Women?...The above was created by a person. On purpose. With forethought and consideration, with effort put into creating the artwork, with the words strung into a very specific order, with the language used to make it legal for purchase and approvable by the US Government, and submitted as a thing that a group of people must have honestly believed was okay. (Quite possibly this is the same person or group of people who came up with beers called “Crazy Bitch,” “Donkey Punch,” and “Ester the Wild Bitch.”)
I suppose it was a lot of things all at once that pissed me off. The concept that a beer should be used as an agent into a person’s pants. The knees-together implied-scared stance of the person in question. The lowered panties in front of a row of fermenters. The jokey-joke cowardice of not even owning up to what whoever was behind this really meant, not being able to come out and just say what a “PD” was. Even the fact that it’s a beer made with blueberries leads me to believe that somewhere along the way, someone probably chuckled and decided that this was a “chick beer” because it was, you know, fruity, right bro? (www.guysdrinkingbeer.com/craft-beers-problem-with-women)
At SkepChick, my acquaintance Julia Burke wrote about the topic (and mentioned racist beer names [o.a. La Petite Mort] and misogyny on the part of booze writers, two other big issues in the drinking world). And there's another good take here.
These posts touch on beer labels and names around the country, but the Midwest certainly isn’t immune to the problem. Plenty of beers brewed in our backyard have sexist names or feature labels designed to appeal to one target demographic: men.
Pig Minds coyly hints at the name of the beer on the label: “We now present ‘PD California Style Ale.’ Police Department? Purple Dinosaur? Positive Discipline? We will let your pig headed minds decide for themselves.” Please. Destihl Brewery, in Bloomington, is making Strawberry Blonde Ale and the label has a drawing of a strawberry with long blonde hair, boobs and high heels. Hailstorm Brewing Co., from Tinley Park, is making Dominatrix Double IPA, and the website promises: “Like the dominatrix, she will reel you in with her sweet beauty then whip you into a hoppy submission!” Classy. The brewery also makes Honey Pot Blonde Ale and BBW, or Big Beautiful Wheat, both of which feature a woman spilling out of a dirndl. Similarly, Lake Barrington’s Wild Onion Brewery is making Hefty-Weiss, which also features a pigtailed woman in a dirndl, blowing bubblegum. And these are just new labels that were released in July.
What’s going on here?
Beer—making it, selling it, drinking it—has always been, and continues to be, a boys’ club, even though more women are working at all levels of the brewing industry (www.timeout.com/chicago/blog/time-to-grow-up-breweries).
Screw Loose Blonde – Light and easy-going, this American Blonde Ale is never bitter (http://pecanstreetbrewing.com/beers-we-brew/).
Deep Ellum Brewing Company has been attracting negative attention since Burnt Orange Report published a takedown of its logo promotions for its Dallas Blonde Ale, specifically the "goes down easy" tagline. Genevieve Cato and a slough of other responders have called the line sexist and a promotion of rape culture (www.dallasobserver.com/restaurants/accused-of-promoting-rape-culture-deep-ellum-brewery-takes-an-innuendo-off-its-van-7034590, www.dallasobserver.com/restaurants/deep-ellum-says-its-blonde-brew-goes-down-easy-and-some-people-are-offended-7041744#more).
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If I were a female, all of these things would say one thing to me: We don’t want you here (www.guysdrinkingbeer.com/craft-beers-problem-with-women).
Women have always been second-class citizens in beer advertising, so it's no surprise craft brewers have taken the innuendo-riddled example of Budweiser and St. Pauli girl to extreme and "edgy" lengths. Alvey taps brand marketing firm Bicycle Theory to try to get some insight as to why so many beer brands resort to explicit T 'n' A in order to move their product.
The consensus seems to be "because it's funny."
(www.citypages.com/restaurants/sexist-beer-labels-why-the-four-firkins-banned-this-beer-from-its-shelves-6595299).
...research by Molson Coors shows that 42% of women are put off beer by the macho marketing…(http://letmetellyouaboutbeer.co.uk/index.php/an-open-letter-to-all-breweries-about-branding/)
Women drink nearly 32 percent of all craft beer sold in America. Why name your beer something that at least a third of your potential customers might feel uncomfortable ordering? Jenny Pfäfflin, an exam manager for Cicerone.org, estimates that roughly 22 percent of certified cicerones (beer sommeliers, more or less) are women, and she expects that percentage to rise. These are women who recommend beer for a living. Maybe don’t go out of your way to piss them off?
(www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2015/07/craft_beer_sexism_labels_like_raging_bitch_and_happy_ending_only_alienate.html)
Bud Light apologizes for slogan that critics said endorsed rape. Alexander Lambrecht, vice president of Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light division, said the company would never condone disrespectful or irresponsible behavior. The message won’t be printed on any more bottles, the company said (www.kansascity.com/news/business/article19865871.html).
Isn’t this a lot of effort expended over a stupid beer label? It’s just beer, right? Why are you taking this so seriously? Can’t you just relax? Aren’t you just giving these guys what they want? Free publicity? I bet they’re laughing all the way to the bank! And besides, other beers have women on the label! Other beers brewed by women, in fact! What about that! Huh? Anyways, people have been selling beer with sex for decades and using alcohol to get into people’s pants for centuries, so you shouldn’t make a big deal out of it (http://www.guysdrinkingbeer.com/craft-beers-problem-with-women).
You may think I’m making a fuss about nothing but I’m a firm believer that any aspect of society that fosters intolerance is created of thousands of elements, none of which are too small to challenge, and this element should, most certainly, be called time on (http://letmetellyouaboutbeer.co.uk/
index.php/an-open-letter-to-all-breweries-about-branding/).
From “The International Book of Beer Labels, Mats & Coasters” published by Chartwell books in 1979 op https://retrorambling.wordpress.com/articles/misc-articles/the-history-of-beer-labels/
The beer label today is still essentially a means of advertising. To promote the product, and to attract the required custom on the bar shelf, a good label must be simple and bold in its design. The manufacture of special beers tends to give rise to special labels, and foil has been used in a number of countries, especially the United States and Canada. British labels have in the past tended to be rather conservative. Unlike many labels from other parts of the world, they are not pictorial, but generally depict the brewer’s name, trade mark or motif and brand name, although the introduction of regulations affectingcontents and the country of origin has, in the opinion of some, devalued the design to a certain extent, as the additional wording tends to clutter up the label. D. H. Tew, in an article entitled ‘A Critical Study of Beer Labels’, written in 1948, described beer label design as falling into two main categories. Some brewers, such as Schous of Norway, use a standard design and stick to it for all their products, while others use different designs and even different shapes for each brand. The former practice makes the public familiar with the label and the latter enables the customer to recognize what they want at a glance.
...
Over the years, there has been much variation in the basic shapes of labels, of which there are 15: circular, oval, pear-shaped, rectangular, square, shield, barrel, triangular, diamond, octagonal, hexagonal, parallelogram, saddle, crescent and loaf. There are also many variations within these basic shapes, and the great variety can only be really appreciated by reference to illustrations (https://retrorambling.wordpress.com/articles/misc-articles/the-history-of-beer-labels/).
Bottled products bore paper labels in the seventeenth century. Early drug phials had a label which covered the whole of the glass and early in the following century, patent medicine vendors were using paper labels widely. The first use of labels on alcohol bottles seems to have come in the middle of the eighteenth century, it is known, for example, that a black and white label was being used for port wine in 1756. Up to the 1860s, bottles of wine were sold in cases largely’ to members of the upper and middle classes, and were therefore not distributed widely; around that time, however, concern that a wider public should have access to wine (partly to counteract the widescale consumption of spirits) gave rise to legislation to allow any retailer to sell wine in single bottles, and each bottle had to have a label.
Beer labels were probably unknown before the 1840s. In England, beer was not bottled to any great extent until 1834, when the duty on glass was repealed. Before that time, the customer had his own bottles which were impressed with his own seal=usual ly showing a coat of arms or name, together with the date~ just below the neck of the bottle. After 1834, bottles were still sealed by hand. The name of the brewer and a description of the contents were stamped into the neck of the wax seal. Because of expanding trade, a quicker method of identification was developed: a metal foil capsule, similar to those still used today for the bottling of wines and spirits, was soon introduced. This depicted the brewer’s name and nature of contents. There was, however, a disadvantage in that when the bottle was handled roughly the cap soon became illegible. Printed paper labels were therefore the answer.
The growth of cities caused by the Industrial Revolution in England enabled brewers to ‘mass produce’ their beer, while in rural districts, the decline of home brewing increased the sales of country brewers.
...
With beer being sold on an increasingly wide scale, brewers recognized the importance of identifying their products properly, and for this the label was vital.
...
Because bottled beer has a longer life than casked beer, it was more extensively used for this brew, which is invariably found advertised on the earliest labels. Labelled bottles were probably in general use in the United Kingdom by 1855, due to the extensions of the railways and canals which allowed the brewers to expand their markets. During the Crimean War, they were being exported in quantity. (A bottle with a faded label from that period is kept at William Younger‘s Brewery in Edinburgh.)
Owing to changing methods of sealing bottles, a new type of label came to be used: the stopper label. As the yeast in beer naturally builds up large quantities of CO2, the cork was usually sealed with wax or foil cap and wire to prevent the force of the gas driving the cork out, particularly with export ales. In 1872, the screw stopper was patented by Henry Barrett of England and began to replace the cork, although corks were still in general use in England in the 1930s, while in Ireland they lasted to 1970. (In Belgium, Liefmans Brewery of Ouedenaarde still uses corked litres and jeroboams for its beers...In 1892 crown corks (metal closures with a corrugated edge which fit on the lip of the bottle and which can be levered off with a bottle opener but not satisfactorily replaced) were invented by William Painter, and they further reduced the use of ordinary corks.
...
Because of the small size of the stopper, label, its design shows more ingenuity and taste than that of the larger ‘side’ label, and this is the reason why stopper labels can add a final touch to any collection.
Perhaps the most fascinating aspect of stopper labels is the wide variety of inscriptions. The most common is ‘Observe (or see) that this label is unbroken’. This is varied occasionally with ‘This label should be unbroken when received’, ...Advice to the drinker is frequent, with ‘pour out with care’, ‘do not shake the bottle’ and ‘none genuine without this label’. At times, the price of beer appears.
The name of the brewer or brand of the beer is occasionally seen on the tab, but this is mostly reserved for the centre of the label which fits over the stopper itself. Of equal fascination to the collector is a similar type of label used in Germany, Holland and other European countries. This fits vertically on the neck of the bottle and is sometimes the only label used. Grolsch of Holland use bottles with porcelain ‘swing’ top closures (devices for removing the cork or stopper by pressing two wire bales which pass through the stopper and lock against the neck of the bottle) for some of their beers, and the raised lettering on the bottles themselves necessitates a label on the neck rather than the main part of the bottle.
...Trade expansion led to an increase in competition among brewers, and inevitably, undesirable practices crept in. Imitations of the best ales were sold; for example, Scotch ale by an American company was sold as Scotch in the United States. And before legislation was introduced from 1875 onwards governing trademarks, other companies could copy these without the established or authentic users having the full protection of the law.
....
The Bass red triangle, as depicted on the Pale Ale label, is perhaps the world’s best known trade mark. The story is that a loyal employee sat on the steps of the registrar’s office all night to ensure that the red triangle was the first trade mark to be registered in 1890 under the Trade Marks Acts; Bass’s diamond trade mark was the second entry. Both marks had, however, already been used for many years. The Bass label has a further claim to fame: it is shown on a bottle in Edouard Manet’s famous painting of 1882, ‘Le Bar aux Folies Bergeres’
...
Just before the Second World War, bottles with permanent fired-on or stencilled labels were introduced in England. While they were of some use during the wartime paper shortage, they were not popular,...The paper shortage in the Second World War also meant that some brewers, especially in the United Kingdom, stopped issuing labels and instead designated the type of beer, in small bottles, by the colour of the crown cork.
(https://retrorambling.wordpress.com/articles/misc-articles/the-history-of-beer-labels/)
Let’s face it…most brewers are men. While there are some highly-regarded female brewmasters working today (like Carol Stoudt of Stoudt’s Brewing), the industry is still unfortunately dominated by the unfairer sex. On the plus side, the preponderance of male brewers has led to some pretty sweet beer labels over the years (http://aleheads.com/2011/06/11/sexiest-beer-labels/).
Doordat het brouwen een mannenbolwerk was kwam er naast de twee categorieën van D. H. Tew (‘A Critical Study of Beer Labels’, 1948), a standard design and stick to it for all their products, while others use different designs and even different shapes for each brand is er nog een derde categorie: de dubbelzinnige:
Zoals die van de Nederlandse brouwerij Pimpelmeesch:
Naast etiketten kregen bieren ook rare namen van bergen, of iets anders?
Zoals Tyranena BGW Hop Whore Imperial India Pale Ale (Brewed by Tyranena Brewing: COMMERCIAL DESCRIPTION
Overpowering perfume. Dripping with luscious hop flavor. And, oh what a body. You’re in for one helluva experience!).
1978 was the worst year for beer diversity in post-Prohibition America, with only 89 breweries operating in the entire country. Most of those breweries sucked, so a nation addled by other drugs might not have realized that things were starting to look up. President Carter decriminalized home-brewing that year, empowering a generation of garage-based drinkers and dreamers to develop their own recipes and techniques. A lot of these hobbyists eventually went pro, leading to the well-chronicled rise of craft beer.
Now the U.S. is home to more than 3,500 breweries, half of which have opened since 2010. There are currently thousands of companies making beer that’s better than pretty much anything that was available up through the mid-1990s. The new-wave brewers have distinguished themselves from their predecessors by employing better ingredients in innovative ways. But there’s one area in which they’re stuck in 1978: A lot of craft beer marketing is astonishingly sexist.
...
One of the higher-profile repeat offenders is Flying Dog Brewery of Frederick, Maryland, maker of many dog- and dog-plus-one-more-entendre-themed beers including Raging Bitch Belgian-Style IPA and Pearl Necklace Oyster Stout. Both have ready-made plausible deniability baked into their origin stories. Raging Bitch is art, because Hunter S. Thompson sidekick Ralph Steadman designed the label; plus, duh, a bitch is a female dog!
Pearl Necklace’s label shows a dog wearing a necklace made out of pearls, which are found in oysters, which are used to make oyster stout. Alas, “pearl necklace” also refers to a porny sex act and, even worse, a ZZ Top song commemorating said act.
Atlanta’s SweetWater Brewing Co. gained notoriety in March when a Chicago outpost of Binny’s Beverage Depot refused to stock their Happy Ending imperial stout. The store’s former beer manager, Adam Vavrick, told the Chicago Tribune, “This label is about a female Asian sex worker manually stimulating a man to orgasm and cleaning up the ejaculate with tissues. Why is that appropriate on a beer label?”
...
The problem isn’t that these labels hint at sex. It’s that they and others of their ilk almost never refer to mutually respectful sex. It’s ironic that the one beer name Flying Dog has seen fit to retire is Doggy Style Pale Ale, which is a cheesy thing to call a beer, but at least the act referenced isn’t inherently degrading to, or unpleasurable for, women. Sex and sexism aren’t the same thing, which is why there’s nothing wrong with Sierra Nevada calling its new pilsner Nooner. Go ahead and evoke consensual, mutually beneficial daytime screwin’ all you like. But the vast majority of beer-land sex references objectify women, or worse.
(www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2015/07/craft_beer_sexism_labels_like_raging_bitch_and_happy_ending_only_alienate.html)
Naast de bieretiketten, zijn er ook de labels voor op de tap
(zie ook www.pumpclipparade.co.uk).
Er is niet verwonderlijk veel discussie over, zoals van Melissa Cole, maar ook vanuit Beer Advocate:
Candice Alström has every right to be offended by the labels. She has every right to feel this way and every right to discuss the issue. The problem is that there are countless other forums Ms. Alström could have used to proclaim her opinion. Instead, she chose to use Beer Advocate, a site that employs her as the Director of Special Events and which is tremendously influential in the craft beer world. She essentially used Beer Advocate as a bully pulpit to unleash a character assassination on a man (and his company) that she clearly finds distasteful (http://aleheads.com/2011/07/07/clown-shoes-controversy/).
The beer, made by Pig Minds Brewing in Machesney Park, is called PD California Style Ale and features an image of a woman’s legs with underwear around her ankles.
Shocked?
You should be, but labels like this are becoming more and more commonplace on beers made around the country, and many breweries seem to be just fine with using images like this to sell beer (www.timeout.com/chicago/blog/time-to-grow-up-breweries).
Why Does Craft Beer Suddenly Seem to Have a Problem With Women?...The above was created by a person. On purpose. With forethought and consideration, with effort put into creating the artwork, with the words strung into a very specific order, with the language used to make it legal for purchase and approvable by the US Government, and submitted as a thing that a group of people must have honestly believed was okay. (Quite possibly this is the same person or group of people who came up with beers called “Crazy Bitch,” “Donkey Punch,” and “Ester the Wild Bitch.”)
I suppose it was a lot of things all at once that pissed me off. The concept that a beer should be used as an agent into a person’s pants. The knees-together implied-scared stance of the person in question. The lowered panties in front of a row of fermenters. The jokey-joke cowardice of not even owning up to what whoever was behind this really meant, not being able to come out and just say what a “PD” was. Even the fact that it’s a beer made with blueberries leads me to believe that somewhere along the way, someone probably chuckled and decided that this was a “chick beer” because it was, you know, fruity, right bro? (www.guysdrinkingbeer.com/craft-beers-problem-with-women)
At SkepChick, my acquaintance Julia Burke wrote about the topic (and mentioned racist beer names [o.a. La Petite Mort] and misogyny on the part of booze writers, two other big issues in the drinking world). And there's another good take here.
These posts touch on beer labels and names around the country, but the Midwest certainly isn’t immune to the problem. Plenty of beers brewed in our backyard have sexist names or feature labels designed to appeal to one target demographic: men.
Pig Minds coyly hints at the name of the beer on the label: “We now present ‘PD California Style Ale.’ Police Department? Purple Dinosaur? Positive Discipline? We will let your pig headed minds decide for themselves.” Please. Destihl Brewery, in Bloomington, is making Strawberry Blonde Ale and the label has a drawing of a strawberry with long blonde hair, boobs and high heels. Hailstorm Brewing Co., from Tinley Park, is making Dominatrix Double IPA, and the website promises: “Like the dominatrix, she will reel you in with her sweet beauty then whip you into a hoppy submission!” Classy. The brewery also makes Honey Pot Blonde Ale and BBW, or Big Beautiful Wheat, both of which feature a woman spilling out of a dirndl. Similarly, Lake Barrington’s Wild Onion Brewery is making Hefty-Weiss, which also features a pigtailed woman in a dirndl, blowing bubblegum. And these are just new labels that were released in July.
What’s going on here?
Beer—making it, selling it, drinking it—has always been, and continues to be, a boys’ club, even though more women are working at all levels of the brewing industry (www.timeout.com/chicago/blog/time-to-grow-up-breweries).
Screw Loose Blonde – Light and easy-going, this American Blonde Ale is never bitter (http://pecanstreetbrewing.com/beers-we-brew/).
Deep Ellum Brewing Company has been attracting negative attention since Burnt Orange Report published a takedown of its logo promotions for its Dallas Blonde Ale, specifically the "goes down easy" tagline. Genevieve Cato and a slough of other responders have called the line sexist and a promotion of rape culture (www.dallasobserver.com/restaurants/accused-of-promoting-rape-culture-deep-ellum-brewery-takes-an-innuendo-off-its-van-7034590, www.dallasobserver.com/restaurants/deep-ellum-says-its-blonde-brew-goes-down-easy-and-some-people-are-offended-7041744#more).
Women have always been second-class citizens in beer advertising, so it's no surprise craft brewers have taken the innuendo-riddled example of Budweiser and St. Pauli girl to extreme and "edgy" lengths. Alvey taps brand marketing firm Bicycle Theory to try to get some insight as to why so many beer brands resort to explicit T 'n' A in order to move their product.
The consensus seems to be "because it's funny."
(www.citypages.com/restaurants/sexist-beer-labels-why-the-four-firkins-banned-this-beer-from-its-shelves-6595299).
...research by Molson Coors shows that 42% of women are put off beer by the macho marketing…(http://letmetellyouaboutbeer.co.uk/index.php/an-open-letter-to-all-breweries-about-branding/)
Women drink nearly 32 percent of all craft beer sold in America. Why name your beer something that at least a third of your potential customers might feel uncomfortable ordering? Jenny Pfäfflin, an exam manager for Cicerone.org, estimates that roughly 22 percent of certified cicerones (beer sommeliers, more or less) are women, and she expects that percentage to rise. These are women who recommend beer for a living. Maybe don’t go out of your way to piss them off?
(www.slate.com/articles/life/drink/2015/07/craft_beer_sexism_labels_like_raging_bitch_and_happy_ending_only_alienate.html)
Bud Light apologizes for slogan that critics said endorsed rape. Alexander Lambrecht, vice president of Anheuser-Busch’s Bud Light division, said the company would never condone disrespectful or irresponsible behavior. The message won’t be printed on any more bottles, the company said (www.kansascity.com/news/business/article19865871.html).
Isn’t this a lot of effort expended over a stupid beer label? It’s just beer, right? Why are you taking this so seriously? Can’t you just relax? Aren’t you just giving these guys what they want? Free publicity? I bet they’re laughing all the way to the bank! And besides, other beers have women on the label! Other beers brewed by women, in fact! What about that! Huh? Anyways, people have been selling beer with sex for decades and using alcohol to get into people’s pants for centuries, so you shouldn’t make a big deal out of it (http://www.guysdrinkingbeer.com/craft-beers-problem-with-women).
You may think I’m making a fuss about nothing but I’m a firm believer that any aspect of society that fosters intolerance is created of thousands of elements, none of which are too small to challenge, and this element should, most certainly, be called time on (http://letmetellyouaboutbeer.co.uk/
index.php/an-open-letter-to-all-breweries-about-branding/).