Once again, it is time to select the best beer name of the year. We name this pseudo award after Marble’s Thunder from Dortmunder, the first local beer name to crack us up years ago.

The rules are fairly simple: A brewery has to come up with an original name and release it for the first time in a calendar year. Sorry, no repeats for a beer like Steel Bender’s What We Brew in the Shadows, which won this honor last year.

The Crew combs back through editions of The Week Ahead in Beer to line up a long list of favorites. We then nominate our top three picks going off a system of three points for first place, two for second, and one for third, and the beer with the most points takes the title.

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.

Last year, we also noted the best movie line (Wolfman’s Got Nards, Painted Lady), best real-life reference (Yabba Dabba Don’t, Ex Novo), best accompanying can art (Mashing Queen, Pink Boots Society Collab), and the best one you want to yell (It’s Not a Tuber, Bosque).

If we had to pick in those special categories this year, we’re just going to rename best movie line as best Painted Lady beer name, and this year that goes to A Naked American Man Stole My Balloons, an exceptionally funny and random line from An American Werewolf in London. There really wasn’t a beer name this year that referred to a specific real-world occurrence, so instead we will hand that to Gravity Bound for Dude, Where’s My Bike? for their support of the local cycling community.

As for that combo of can design and beer name, we realized most of our favorite monikers were for draft-only brews. Perhaps this one will come back next year. As for the one beer name you could yell across the bar, we have to go with La Cumbre’s Fudge It!, a chocolate ale if it wasn’t obvious.

Oh, and Franz Solo wanted to give a special shout-out to La Cumbre for having the will to make Project Dank: Uranus Edition because of, well, that poor planet. But, it was a great IPA.

I would also like to hand out the Bosque Memorial Final Best Beer Name award, going with Dunks Not Dead, though The Pilz Have Eyes was also a winner.

Here are all the Crew’s votes. We will save you the math work and list the top scores below.

• AmyO: 1) My Hammy Vice, Ex Novo; 2) Red Sheep of the Family, Boxing Bear; 3) What’s-a-Matcha You, Thirsty Eye
• Andrew: 1) Canadian Tropics IP-Eh, Marble; 2) Lavender, I Hardly Knew Her, Beer Creek; 3) No Schwarz, No Shoes, No Service, Canteen
• Brandon: 1) No Schwarz, No Shoes, No Service; 2) Mango Unchained, Sunday Service; 3) What’s-a-Matcha You?
• Erin: 1) Release the Craic’n, Santa Fe; 2) Mango Unchained; 3) A Naked American Man Stole My Balloons, Painted Lady
• Franz: 1) Project Dank: Uranus Edition, La Cumbre; 2) No Schwarz, No Shoes, No Service; 3) Blazing Saazles, Boxing Bear
• Luke: 1) No Schwarz, No Shoes, No Service; 2) Release the Craic’n; 3) All for tha Chinooky, Marble
• Reid: 1) Canadian Tropics IP-Eh; 2) What’s-a-Matcha You?; 3) Blazing Saazles
• Stoutmeister: 1) A Naked American Man Stole My Balloons; 2) Blazin Saazles; 3) Release the Craic’n

All right, so we did the math, checked it twice, realized there are no wrong answers, and crowned Canteen’s No Schwarz, No Shoes, No Service as this year’s winner. It racked up nine points, finishing ahead of Marble’s Canadian Tropics IP-Eh and Santa Fe’s Release the Craic’n, which both earned six.

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 that starts Thursday.

Keep supporting local!

— Stoutmeister