Lawyers for Ozzy Osbourne are trying to stop a brewer from making an unauthorized brand of "Ozzy" beer. Baltimore-based The Brewer's Art named one of its many house brews after Ozzy, with the cans featuring images of his knuckle tattoos as well as bats — including a headless one.
According to The Pulse Of Radio, Ozzy's legal team issued a cease-and-desist order, after which brewery head Tom Creegan announced that the "Ozzy" beer would be pulled. However, according to The Baltimore Sun, liquor stores in Baltimore said they are still selling the beer, and six-packs were available Thursday afternoon at Brewer's Art.
Cynthia Blake Sanders, an intellectual property lawyer who teaches entertainment and sports law at the University of Maryland Carey School of Law, told The Baltimore Sun that celebrities have the right to decide how their names and images are used commercially.
"You can't make the commercial use of a person's name on any product, but particularly not [with] people who have a value on their persona," said Sanders.
"If they called it Ozzy and it wasn't so clearly a sort of heavy-metal styling, somebody might connect it with a different Ozzy," she said. "But when they've used both his tattoo, in addition to his hands" and the bat imagery, "that's really using a great deal of his persona."
During its short time on the shelves, the "Ozzy" beer was acclaimed by brew enthusiasts, with the drink getting a 90 out of 100 rating on the Beer Advocate web site.
Ozzy and BLACK SABBATH will hit the road this Monday (March 31) for a North American tour that begins in Brooklyn, New York and spends most of its time in Canada, before wrapping up in Los Angeles on April 26.
Atlanta progressive metallers MASTODON have teamed up with the the London, England-based Signature Brew to create Black Tongue, an 8.3% Double Black IPA named after one of the band's songs.
Signature Brew's description: "Rumbling smoky notes are offset by the elixir of misbehaving punchy hops. Mosaic and Magnum hops to the front, with Carafa Special 3 Malt and Pale on the baseline, this is our biggest and most powerful creation to date. The band wanted to create a 'pallet crusher' and that's certainly what has been delivered. A beer for enjoying slowly, letting the bombardment of flavour and intensity hit your tongue and explode with every sip."
For more information, go to this location.
Launched in August 2011, Signature Brew works with musicians to create custom brews tailored to the artists' specific tastes.
According to Bloomberg, the idea behind Signature Brew is simple: Let a band sample a range of beers, write down what its members like and don't like, and then create a brew specifically for them.
Denver, Colorado's Trve Brewing Company is proud to announce details on their upcoming first out of four ales titled Eastern Candle — dedicated to the mythological occult metal actABSU. In honor of their 20th anniversary second album, "The Sun Of Tiphareth", Trve has created the first out of four ales: Eastern Candle — a pale wheat beer fermented with brettanomyces in white wine barrels. The ale is a fine equilibrium of wheat and white wine with a slight, fruit-like yeast character. (Fittingly named after the song "Never Blow Out The Eastern Candle").
The three forthcoming beers to be unleashed are the following:
* Tiphareth - Red Ale: This will be a soured beer with a mild strain of brettanomyces fermented in red wine barrels. This fusion will have a nice malty, tart, yet dry balance including red wine adding a background complexity.
* Manannán - Brown Ale: The Manannán batch will feature rye in the grain bill, as it will be soured and fermented with a shrouded strain of brettanomyces in whiskey barrels. This will be a more assertive brew with malt character and plenty of obscurity from the yeast while also showcasing the barrel flavors.
* Winter Zephyr - Black Ale: A dark wheat and dark rye concoction giving the beer its cryptic color. This ale will highlight a fair amount of oats to retain vast body after the brettanomyces have alchemically fermented in wine barrels.
ABSU recently announced details of their upcoming North American Connexus Continuation Tour, the trek to showcase the band performing set with music spanning throughout their twenty-two year recording career. This excursion is a follow-up mini-tour by the Texas-based mythological occult metal trio since the release of "Abzu" — the second of a planned trilogy of recordings.
According to The Drinks Business, Robinsons Brewery has announced the production of the one millionth pint of IRON MAIDEN's Trooper beer. The brewery said the mark had been reached six months ahead of schedule — just eight weeks after Trooper was launched.
This equates to over 20,000 pints of the beer being drunk every day since its launch on May 9.
Robinsons' managing director Oliver Robinson said: "We are amazed to reach this mark in such a short time, a million pints already is way ahead of all rational expectations, and are grateful for the support we have had from the retailers, MAIDEN fans, real ale enthusiasts, our distributors and the beer trade generally as they were so quick to catch on to the genuine and unique quality of this beer.
The sale of IRON MAIDEN's Trooper beer was recently halted in Sweden by the country's state-run liquor store monopoly Systembolaget due to legal concerns over the skull and crossbones motif on the label.
Independent U.K. brewer Robinsons, which created a real ale in partnership with heavy metal band IRON MAIDEN, has now released the following statement regarding the matter:
"Due to local Swedish government alcohol and marketing act which do not allow elements of war, weapons or aggression to be featured on alcoholic product, we were unable to sell Trooper beer to our fans in Sweden unless we modified the label artwork.
"As our first and foremost priority is for our Swedish fans to be able to enjoy Trooper beer, we amended the label by simply focussing purely on [IRON MAIDEN mascot] Eddie's face and are now very pleased to advise that the new label, currently exclusive to Sweden, has now been approved.
IRON MAIDEN's Trooper beer was officially launched yesterday (Thursday, May 9) at Robinsons Brewery in Cheshire, with a reception attended by brewing trade representatives from both the U.K. and internationally.
As fans may have read recently, the unprecedented upfront demand for the beer meant Robinsons had to brew three times a day, six days a week for the first time ever in the brewery's 175-year history to cope with pre-orders in excess of 300,000 pints. Robinsons were overwhelmed by the number of enquiries they'd had from all over the world and sent the band a comprehensive listing of whereabouts the interest had been — from a staggering 184 countries! So, a big thanks to all MAIDEN fans and it's great to know the MAIDEN family extends into so many places where the band have never even had a chance to play before!
British heavy metal legends IRON MAIDEN recently teamed up with Cheshire family brewers Robinsons to create a new beer, Trooper.
To celebrate the release of Trooper, select Robinsons pubs will haveTrooper on draught from the evening of May 9. Locations can be found atthis location.
According to The Sun, Robinsons is having to work a six-day week to keep up with demand.
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