Esteemed British baker and former judge on the Great British Bake Off, Mary Berry, has had her lawyers issue a cease-and-desist letter to Richmond, California-based Armistice Brewing Company. As the brewery explained on Instagram, they have had to rename a pastry stout they'd named in Berry's honor, and cover over a label showing an illustration of Berry herself.
The beer has newly been named "Cease and Desistberry Pastry Stout," and it's a stout that's been brewed with berries. The brewery joked in an Instagram post that they "spent thousands on a last-minute re-design with a boutique branding agency in London." As you can see, it's a happy face sticker and a printed label.
As Alex Zobel, co-founder of Armistice, describes the beer to SFGate, "It's a massive pastry stout with over 200 pounds of raspberry puree, two kinds of single-source cacao from Dandelion Chocolates, vanilla, lactose — it's an absurd beer. So we named it after after Mary Berry because she's the queen of pastries."
And for those just tuning in to the national craft beer scene, the term "pastry stout" has taken hold along with a trend in the last few years of brewing sweet, over-the-top, dessert-inspired stouts, which often have chocolate overtones.
As The Takeout explains, the 84-year-old Berry's team is just protecting her image and trademark, and she does in fact have a U.S. trademark for her name "as it pertains to kitchen products like aprons, scales, and bakeware."
The craft beer world is constantly producing kooky beers these days, and giving them crazy names in an attempt to garner publicity — and there's nothing like a cease-and-desist from a beloved baking personality to raise the profile of a little brewery in Richmond!
Armistice says it's doing a release party for the beer tomorrow (Friday), at which bottles will be available for $19. If you can't make it over there tomorrow, you can order the beer for pickup here — but you have to show up in person to retrieve the beer within a week, or the beer will be resold with no refunds.
