I have to applaud the Brewers Association. They have walked the fine line of being a trade organization while also adding a bit of policing to their actions as well. This is all due to offensive beer labels. A problem that sits in the corner mostly but will occasionally flare up whenever a brewery in some weird bubble decides to use a name that most would find offensive, primarily aimed (99%) against women.
The plan is that a brewery can make and name a beer in an offensive way and they can enter it into competitions like the World Beer Cup and the Great American Beer Festival BUT if they win, the beer will not be announced from the stage (I assume an awkward pause will be the substitute) nor can the brewery market the win by using the name of the competition won.
Basically, a brewery can say it won a medal and that seems to be the extent of it. They will not be allowed to link the BA or the competition name with the beer. New will be required signing of licensing agreements with terms of use for using the BA name PRIOR to entering a competition.
And while adding this new code, they acknowledged that this action was not going to be easy to enforce. Bob Pease the CEO of the BA made it clear (through some unfortunate phrasing) that , “..it’s gonna be sticky. It’s going to be hard.”
I think this action will help. Either a brewery will change a name, hopefully forcing a burst of creativity, or they will not enter the beer in competition. It does not abridge their rights of free speech or get them blocked from joining or staying in the craft beer club. It basically starves the brewery of the attention that it probably desired. Each time a beer name is typed into a form for one of these two competitions the one doing the typing had better be doing so with this rule in mind.
Before anyone flies off the handle with this is America, this is PC bulls..t, everyone is too easily offended, remember who are Not-My-President is right now. This country could use a LOT more rules about denigrating speech than it currently has on the books.
Breweries need to craft great beer and great beer names.