(Milton, DE) – This will be some inside baseball for most but I’ll do my best to explain.
I post a lot of labels here that have been formally approved for sale by the TTB (the governing authority in the U.S. for alcohol, tobacco and firearms). 99% of the labels I post come to fruition meaning that those beers are actually produced, packaged in bottles and/or kegs, and then sold to the public. In rare cases, a brewery may not sell a beer in the U.S.. Some of these labels keep a status of “approved” as the brewery may decide to eventually sell the beer. Some of them adopt a status of “surrendered.”
In the case of Dogfish Head 75 Minute IPA, a label was approved and then surrendered by the brewery just a few days later.
I’ve seen labels surrendered on rare occasion and couldn’t find much of an authoritative write-up on the subject so I sent an email over to Robert Lehrman. Part of what the Lehrman Beverage Law firm does is assist companies in processing their TTB label applications so Lehrman has years of expertise.
I looked at the label. I don’t see any obvious reason why it would need to be surrendered. It is quite possible that the company simply changed their mind about some aspect, and doesn’t need it. Or maybe it’s a tiny, limited bottling.
Initially, I thought that it may have been a mistake and that the brewery meant to submit only a keg collar application. Then again, why go through the trouble of doing the 750ml label copy in the first place? Or perhaps there was a small mistake on the label? But the TTB allows a company to make many changes to an approved label without having to surrender and re-submit it.
To make a long story short, I have no idea why this label was surrendered. Per Lehrman…
Yes TTB does have revocation procedures. This is old, but not a lot has changed. A distinction would be that a revocation is forced and a surrender is all or largely voluntary. Another common reason for surrender would be, quite simply, if Battle Martin (the TTB person who reviews almost all beer labels) asks for it back. It would not be terribly uncommon for a label reviewer to say, I missed an issue, please give it back. It’s probably best to cooperate with such a request in most instances.
By now, the brewery is aware that beer geeks like myself and many readers here are tracking their labels so it’s not out of the realm of possibility that the brewery changed its mind in a very short period of time and wanted to make that message clear. There are easier ways to do that surrendering a label though. So for that reason, I suspect that 75 Minute IPA 750s is still “on.”
One last thing…I did notice something interesting on the application…
PRODUCT WILL BE PACKAGED IN AN EMBOSSED BOTTLE
Embossed bottle? Interesting.
For now, readers should be aware that an approved label application for the 750ml bottle no longer exists at this point.
Again, some long-winded inside baseball there.
Stay tuned for further developments…
Could it have something to do with protecting copywright if another brewery was looking to make a 75-minute IPA? It might be Dogfish’s way of marking their territory on the XX-Minute IPA name…
Nah, you’re thinking of trademark and actual use of the beer in commerce, even on tap, would be enough for Dogfish to stake a claim on it if they wanted to trademark it.
Yep, my bad.
Could it be as simple as the fact that there’s no UPC code in the label submitted? Maybe we care too much…
And to think that the Cali supermarkets thing got 1/10 the reads as this. Sometimes a guy running a website just knows his audience (& what it wants). Prosit!
Pingback: Was 75 Minute IPA label surrendered due to Johnny Cash’s likeness? | Beernews.org
Why doesn’t someone just drop DFH an email and ask???
Because I haven’t received a reply to an email or returned phone call from them since the spring. Posting labels is a touchy subject with breweries as is (and may or may not have something to do with lack of response from DFH on other non-label topics like zoning, expansion, etc.).