Quick! What kind of beer is Kyoto Brewing Kuroshio no Gotoku?
Or this? Schneider Weisse Tap X Mathilda Soleil.
Or this one? Ushi-Tora Uetake #040 Tap 72.
You may know these beers. In fact, you may know them so well
that you have clear sense memories of them. On the other hand, like many of us,
you may have had them at one point in your beer-drinking career, even quite
recently, and cannot recall exactly what kind of beers they were.
There has been some discussion recently on a beer-related
website about how difficult it is to determine, or remember the styles of
certain beers based solely on their names.
That Kyoto beer was probably a saison or a Belgian IPA,
right? – after all, those are Kyoto Brewing’s primary styles. The Schneider was
surely a wheat beer (Weisse, yeah?). And the Ushi-Tora was probably a…. (Geez,
I have no idea.)
Kuroshio no Gotoku is actually a stout (perhaps the “kuro”
part of the name is a hint). The Schneider Weisse is a weizen bock – one of the
best in the world. Ushi-Tora Uetake #040 Tap 72 is an Imperial IPA.
Without a defining style hitched to the end of the name,
such as IPA, Saison, or Stout, beer drinkers often have trouble recalling which
beers they liked or whatever the hell it was that they drank a year, a month,
or even a week ago.
This is especially true for beers from breweries, such as
Ushi Tora, which often list new brews simply by numbers, leaving it to others
to add the style names when those beers are listed on sites such as RateBeer
and Beer Advocate. Kyoto Brewing has a penchant for poetic Japanese names which
in some cases befuddle even fluent Japanese speakers.
I do remember that Upright Seven (#7) is a saison because I’ve
had the pleasure of drinking it a few times. But, then again Upright Four (#4)
is also a saison, as is Upright Five (5#). But Upright Six (#6) is not; it’s a
dark rye beer.
Of course, using numbers and unusual phrases for beer names
certainly helps avoid trademark violation disputes, which have become more
common as the number of craft breweries has been growing dramatically.
Anyway, raise a glass of # ___. Here’s to an increasing
number of beers!
