What's in a (Beer) Name?

From months-in-the-making puns to the people behind the scenes, here's how your favorite local brews got their names.

The naming of Whitman Brewing’s In Suspension beer involved merging a brewing term with the preservation 19th century poet.

While doing research for a soon-to-be-released Capital Region Living story on the City of Schenectady’s decades-long revitalization effort, I came across an Instagram Q&A with Frog Alley Brewing owner JT Pollard, in which he said his favorite Frog Alley beer was called F in A. Though West Coast IPAs aren’t really my cup of tea/beer, the name caught my eye. Not only is it a great pun, but it also hints at the brewing industry’s culture, which I’ve learned through very scientific research, research and more research is pretty informal, unserious and profanity-prone. In other words, that kid who got in trouble for saying “Effin’ A” (or the grown-up version of the exclamation) in your high school may very well be brewing beer now. (If you’ve never heard the swear word substitute, this may or may not clear things up.)

While F in A is no longer on the Frog Alley draft list, it set me on a quest to figure out what’s in a (beer) name: