Cease & Desist Describes Its Cookie Without Naming It

The ingredient list reads hazelnut, chocolate sandwich cookie and marshmallow. The middle one is described that way on purpose.

Adroit Theory Brewing Company explains the name directly in its release notes. The brewery says it learned, the hard way, that using a name-brand product inside a beer does not entitle you to put that brand in the beer's name. The consequence it describes was not a letter from a law firm but the deletion of its social media account. Since then, it says, it has been careful and vigilant about how it refers to the products it uses, and it leaves the identification to the drinker - who, it notes, should have little trouble working it out.

That circumspection is now close to an industry convention. Breweries building beers around recognizable supermarket products routinely describe them generically, because trademark protection extends to uses that might suggest a brand endorsed or produced the item. Naming an ingredient is one thing. Naming your product after somebody else's is another.

What makes this release a neater piece of work than most is that Adroit Theory has stopped treating the workaround as an inconvenience and made it the title. The beer is named for the thing that happens when you get it wrong.

The build itself is a straightforward dessert stack. Hazelnut, marshmallow and chocolate cookie cover nut, toasted sugar and cocoa, three flavors that sit naturally on a cream stout base.

At six crowlers, this is the smallest run among the brewery's six new crowler releases this week. Cease & Desist is available now at the Purcellville taproom in pours and crowlers.