{"id":20599,"date":"2024-06-06T14:38:42","date_gmt":"2024-06-06T02:38:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/?p=20599"},"modified":"2025-04-01T14:54:21","modified_gmt":"2025-04-01T01:54:21","slug":"anchovy-april-fools","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2024\/06\/06\/anchovy-april-fools\/","title":{"rendered":"A hop called Anchovy, and the impossibility of April Fools"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"A<\/a>
Ingredients: Anchovies. (May contain traces of anger.)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

A few years ago, U.S. brewing company Fast Fashion sponsored a new hop varietal and named it “anchovy”, in a move that’s probably half in-joke turned outwards and half marketing stunt.<\/span>1<\/sup><\/a><\/span> It’s still fairly niche, but it pops up occasionally in this part of the world, and always restarts a train of thought of mine when it does.<\/span>2<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Personally, I love anchovies; that’s a word with positive associations for me,<\/span>3<\/sup><\/a><\/span> and I can see the fun in the incongruity of naming a hop that. But the beer industry has an awkward relationship with\u00a0comedy that’s worth poking at a little.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

It’s never more obvious than the first few days of the fourth month each year, when “April Fools” posts dribble out across the internet as timezones roll around the world and various non-chronological social media feeds finally get around to showing you something. They fail in interestingly different\u00a0ways sometimes, but it’s always a parade of low-effort nonsense that somehow still feels like it wasted too much of too many people’s time.<\/p>\n

\"Collage<\/a>
2024 April Fools highlights \u2014 if that’s the word \u2014 from Pilsner Urquell<\/a>, Budweiser Budvar<\/a>, Untappd<\/a>, Modern Times<\/a>, Coopers<\/a>, and Stone<\/a> (original posts archived at those links for their full context, not that it helps much)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

The only one I really liked this year was Pilsner Urquell’s gentle riff on the ml\u00edko pour<\/a> as “plant-based milk”.<\/span>4<\/sup><\/a><\/span> (Czech) Budweiser’s post is them taking a jab at (U.S.) Budweiser, but it’s clumsier and lacks punch because there’s nothing really wrong (or funny) about brewing with rice.<\/span>5<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Untappd’s “what if there was a silly app?” joke simply feels dated, rather than rising to self-satire. Modern Times’ “foam selfie” is something that has actually existed for\u00a0years<\/em><\/a>, and Coopers similarly just mashed together a trend for “AI”-generated recipes that has already crested<\/a> with an example that would be great, and basically already is<\/a>. Then Stone’s obviously-impossible “negative alcohol IPA”, is… what? Ridiculing the low-strength trend, or going more for an absurdist angle? I can’t tell, but I don’t think either works. Good comedy tries to say something<\/em>,<\/span>6<\/sup><\/a><\/span> but most of what you see on April Fools seems to come from a shallower need to\u00a0post something<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

Mountain Culture are one of the few breweries I follow online who regularly go for a gag of some kind.<\/span>7<\/sup><\/a><\/span>\u00a0Humour was a big part of their huge annual push for Hottest 100 votes<\/a>, where they went for a Be Kind Rewind<\/em> kind of low-budget brewery-themed film remake vibe,<\/span>8<\/sup><\/a><\/span> but it’s their April Fools posts that have reliably made me want to write something like this<\/em> each year.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a>They announced joint venture seltzer production with Range, complete with a clever names-and-logos mashup, which made people go “oh, that makes sense” (it was peak seltzer trend, the two breweries often collaborate, and Range were already making some) for a while before realising it was a bit and shrugging it off.<\/span>9<\/sup><\/a><\/span> The next year, they announced two Beavis and Butt-Head themed beers, and then faked up a cease and desist from Paramount \u2014 the joke there apparently being the mere idea there’d ever be consequences for the rampant IP ripoffs our industry revels in; the beers were launched.<\/span>10<\/sup><\/a><\/span> Then this year they teased glass longneck bottles of their flagship beer, and the online response was a near-universal “hell yes<\/em>” followed by disappointment when the rug was inevitably pulled. They later claimed to be considering making them \u2014 using April Fools as a coward’s trial balloon, like a teenager asking someone out “just kidding<\/em>… unless” \u2014 but nothing has eventuated yet. [update, 1 April 2025<\/span>: It took them twelve months, but they’ve done it<\/a>. And it seems they skipped making a “joke” at all, this year. You’re welcome.]<\/p>\n

None of this is worth it. So please, brewery marketing people and indeed anyone else with the keys to the relevant social media accounts: take a moment, right now, go to the calendar, put a reminder in for March 31 \u2014 delete tomorrow’s scheduled post<\/em>.<\/p>\n

\"The<\/a>
The other cartoon reference<\/a> on loop in my brain, now<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

But anyway, back to anchovy. Every brewery that uses the hop is caught between needing to riff on the name by referencing actual anchovies somehow (pizza, fishing, whatever),<\/span>11<\/sup><\/a><\/span> but also being careful to reassure potential buyers that no fish was involved in the brewing. Because of course<\/em> you have to reassure people of that. Putting actual anchovies in a beer wouldn’t make a Top 100 of weird things we’ve done. (And I do wonder if you could actually make it work<\/em>: oyster stout is a real thing<\/a>, after all. I love them.)<\/p>\n

This is the general version of the April Fools problem: there’s basically nothing you can joke about with beer that wouldn’t give someone pause. We’ve made it way too easy to aim for comedy and hit confusion instead, to wind up being frustrating when you were trying to be funny. I lost count of how many times I had to explain the backstory when an anchovy-hopped beer has been on at a bar I’ve been working. If you generalise that out over x<\/em> years and y<\/em> venues for z<\/em> different beers, Fast Fashion owe a hefty donation to a bartender’s benevolent fund or something for the hours and hours<\/em> of staff time they’ve essentially appropriated.<\/p>\n

Just the other day, I was pouring a customer a (lovely) brown ale called ‘Brown Corduroy’<\/a> and they made a joke of double-checking whether it was brewed with actual pants. The public have internalised the absurdity of craft beer. I think they<\/em> get to make fun of it. I’m not sure we do, anymore.<\/p>\n

\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few years ago, U.S. brewing company Fast Fashion sponsored a new hop varietal and named it “anchovy”, in a move that’s probably half in-joke turned outwards and half marketing stunt. It’s still fairly niche, but it pops up occasionally in this part of the world, and always restarts a train of thought of mine … Continue reading A hop called Anchovy, and the impossibility of April Fools<\/span> →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[47],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-20599","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reports"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":1003,"url":"https:\/\/philcook.net\/beerdiary\/2010\/10\/29\/gouden-carolus-hopsinjoor\/","url_meta":{"origin":20599,"position":0},"title":"Gouden Carolus ‘Hopsinjoor’","author":"Phil","date":"October 29, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"An evening of pub-hopping and beer-having had made Kirsten and I rather peckish, so we backtracked a little up Hood Street to a place called Gothenburg, which had caught our eye on our way to House. 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