The Dizzy Blonde is off... ‘sexist’ beer names axed
DRINKS with sexist names and labels have been banned from the UK’s biggest festival of beer as campaigners try to attract more women to pubs.
Brews with names such as Dizzy Blonde and Village Bike have not been allowed at this week’s Great British Beer Festival.
Organisers have also called time on beer pump clips and bottle labels featuring images of big-bosomed, semi-clad women.
The names have become a favourite method for some independent brewers to market their craft beers which are enjoying a sales boom. But the Campaign for Real Ale wants to change the image of beer as just a men’s drink as it tries to make its festival, which opened at London’s Olympia yesterday, more inclusive.
National organiser Abigail Newton said all 1,000 beers, ciders and perries on sale at the festival had been checked to make sure they adhere to Camra’s new code of conduct.
She said: ‘It’s hard to understand why some brewers would actively choose to alienate the majority of their potential customers.
‘We need to do more to encourage female beer drinkers, which are currently only 17 per cent of the population. Beer is not a man’s drink or a woman’s drink, it is a drink for everyone.’
Last year Nottingham’s Castle Rock Brewery changed the design of pump clips for its Elsie Mo beer from a picture inspired by US Second World War aircraft nose art of a woman in stockings and suspenders to one featuring ‘Elsie Mo’ as a heroic pilot.