Many breweries love to come up with clever names for their seasonal and specialty beers. We love reading those names, and then drinking the beers. Over the course of the past year, we jotted down a list of our favorite beer names, and after double-checking that we didn’t miss any by going back through every single edition of The Week Ahead in Beer, here are just a few of our favorites.

We are awarding the best of the best with the mythical Thunder From Dortmunder Cup, named after the wonderful Marble seasonal that first caused us to crack up at its name many years ago. To us, that was the beer name that raised the bar for cleverness in New Mexico.

Now, not every brewery goes for the funny/whimsical/pun-filled names, and that is OK. Also, this is just our opinion, so if you have a personal favorite that we do not list here, go ahead and leave a comment identifying that specific beer.

First up, we gotta give more props to Bow & Arrow, which released four hazy IPAs this year, with names crafted from classic songs. All four finish tied for Best Lyrical Beer Name.

• Standing on a Corner in Winslow, Arizona
• Wild Horses Couldn’t Drag Me Away
• Like a Diamond in the Desert, Like a Beacon in the Night
• Some People Call Me the Space Cowboy

Apologies if any of those songs are now stuck in your heads.

As for the rest of the breweries, here are our favorites, and a few honorable mentions where applicable.

• Bosque: Dunks Not Dead, with honorable mention for Mr. Watermelon Gose to Work, Dark Times in the Shire, Sean Jean Sweatpants (Hazy IPA), and Kiwi Herman (Pale)
• Bow & Arrow: Mo Money Mo Poblanos (Imperial Stout), with honorable mention for Like a Tumbleweed I’m Gone with the Wind (Hazy IPA)
• Boxing Bear: El SomBearo (Mexican Lager)
• Casa Vieja: Hop the Casbah (Hazy IPA)
• Downshift: She’s a Beaut, Clark (Winter Warmer)
• Ex Novo: Munder, She Wrote, with honorable mention to the very strong quintet of Dolla Dolla Pils Y’all, A Star is Bjorn (Baltic Porter), Dunkel Steve, Taste the Rain Bro? (Juicy IPA), and Weed be Good Together (IPA)
• Flix: Paul Rudd is a National Treasure (Lager), with honorable mention for I Came, I Saw, I Lagered
• Gravity Bound: Maizey Train (Mexican Lager), with honorable mention for Movin’ to the Country (Peach Ginger Wheat)
• Harmon Lane: Fuggle Around and Find Out (Chocolate Peanut Butter Porter)
• Hidden Mountain: Reverse Saazmosis (Czech Pils), with honorable mention for De Peche Mood
• High and Dry: Casual Car Fire (Grapefruit Sour), with honorable mention for Lamb with Fangs (Hoppy Wheat) and Hop Pocket (IPA)
• La Cumbre: Rise of the Weresquirrel (Hazy IPA), with honorable mention for Revenge of the Unicorns (Hazy IPA) and The 5-Eyed Monster in the Hopback (DIPA)
• Marble: Noah Sleep ’Til Burque (German Ale)
• Pink Boots Society Collaboration: Put the Pilsner on a Pedestal
• Quarter Celtic: A Cure for my Ale-ment (Pale), with honorable mention for Goobs Conundrum (IPA)
• Rio Bravo: Hey Zebra (Hazy IPA), with honorable mention for Alegorithm (Pale) and Pop Rocks & Hop It (Hazy IPA)
• Second Street: Space Heater (winter warmer), with honorable mention for Tipsy Parrot (Pina Colada Cream Ale)
• Sidetrack: Matching Stoutfits, with honorable mention for Mild Davis
• Sobremesa: Kenergy
• Steel Bender: Weekend at Bender’s (Pale Ale), with honorable mention for I Goat You Babe (Fresh Hop IPA) and A Million Ways to Rye in the Southwest
• Thirsty Eye: Shut the Front Dort
• Turtle Mountain: Why Does it Hurt When IPA?
• Unhinged: The Whackadoodle Wheat

Good lord, this is hard to pick an overall winner. We can add best movie line used is She’s a Beaut, Clark. Best real-life reference is for Casual Car Fire (someone really did set a car on fire in the High and Dry parking lot). Best accompanying can art goes to Rise of the Weresquirrel and El SomBearo, though even that is debatable (and we could probably do a separate post ranking the best can art of the year). Best one that you just want to yell is Shut the Front Dort.

In the end, though, there can be only one.

Congrats to Sidetrack on Matching Stoutfits, and really, congrats to all of our breweries on giving us such a strong list of names to choose among for this new annual honor.

The only thing better than all those names? The beers themselves! Get out there and try those that are currently available and show the breweries a little love during the slowest month of the year.

And the best part? Thunder from Dortmunder is currently on tap at Marble, so you can enjoy the O.G., too!

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister