Bockenale

I love coming up with names - whenever I'm writing something, I've usually come up with a lot of the names, and certainly the title, in advance.  Sometimes they change as it goes along, but that's where I start.  It's not even that I find names particularly meaningful, inherently - I don't subscribe to the idea that the etymology of your name is important, studies about people named "Baker" becoming bakers aside - but I generally find that if I know a character's, place's, or story's name, I'm ready to use it, and if I'm still not sure, it's half-baked.

I also love stupid, stupid puns.

So naming beers is fun, because it combines those things.  It's also a little frustrating because all the good ones are already taken.  There are at least two Coal Porters, for example.  In trying to come up with a name for my latest brew I've been through a couple, and I finally settled on what I thought must be peculiar enough to be unique - Bock'N'Ale (a classic pun, if you'll forgive me, in reference to the combination of yeasts) - but sure enough, there's at least one out there already.  So I modified the spelling a little.  Alternately, I've been working on something to do with Winan's Steam Gun, playing on Steam Beer.

Unfortunately, the reason I'm working on that second one is, rather than that I genuinely need a unique name, the fact that our cold snap ended and it's been warm and lovely and entirely inappropriate for lager yeast, so my beer is probably going to turn out all fruity and cloudy after all.