What's in a name?

Naming our beers was one of the trickier tasks we came up against when designing our branding. There are so many craft beer legends out there with super creative, clever and witty names. After thinking long and hard and after lots of puns and plays on words (mostly from co-founder John) we realised that we may have been trying to be something we’re not.

Now that’s not to say we aren’t creative, clever or witty…we just forgot that starting the Copper Beech Brewing company was a very personal journey. Each beer has been brewed from the heart with a memory attached and we didn’t want to keep it all to ourselves so we thought what better way to share them with you? Read on to find out how your beer got its name.

South Pointing Fish

When Dan first began to wonder if brewing beer was something he could do on a professional level, he would hand out bottles of home brew to friends of his, as well as John’s golfing buddies for feedback. It was a mutually beneficial arrangement - they got a load of free beer and for Dan it was a fantastic way of figuring out what did and didn’t work.

Dan had originally wanted to brew with all British ingredients but quickly learned that it would limit his scope too much and so moved into lots of different hop combinations that you now find in the likes of our I Left My Heart in NYC. That being said, he was determined to brew a great beer using all British hops and so eventually came back to this beer recipe.

When he handed out this blonde, originally dubbed ‘Jester’ after the hop, it was the first time he received unanimously good feedback with comments such as ‘When can I have more?’. It was at this point he said to himself ‘I can do this’ and truly believed it. This beer was the one that made him feel like he was moving in the right direction, hence the name…

Fun Fact: Developed in China, South pointing fish is the original name for the Compass.

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