If you happen to own a brewery or your own brand of beer, you might be tempted to share some of your wares with the people who design, copy write, and edit the labels of your product. This, while a definite gesture of goodwill, may be a mistake. The people at Lagunitas Brewing Company may be adhering to this policy, although I see a section titled “420″ on their website, which means there might be other substances at play with the “design” team.

Now make no mistake, the Cappuccino Stout, like the rest of the Lagunitas Brewing Company’s product offering, is quite good. “Why would you want your beer to taste like coffee” you ask? Because regular Cappuccinos just don’t take the edge off, that’s why. Anyway, you probably can’t tell, but at the bottom of the label, it says “ale brewed with Columbian coffee”, which would be fine if the coffee was:

1. from the United States, and possibly the coffee growing mecca of Columbus, Ohio
2. roasted by Christopher Columbus
3. a style of font lamer that Times New Roman
4. sold by the Columbia sportswear company
5. somehow attributed to the Space Shuttle Columbia

You see, “Columbian” is defined as follows according to Dictionary.com:

Co·lum·bi·an /kəˈlʌmbiən/ Pronunciation Key – Show Spelled Pronunciation[kuh-luhm-bee-uhn] –adjective

1. Literary. Pertaining to America or the United States.
2. Pertaining to Christopher Columbus
   -noun
3. Printing. a 16 point type of a size between English and great primer.

So, what I believe the Lagunitas Brewing Company meant was “ale brewed with Colombian coffee”. As we all know, Colombia is the country known for its coffee production among other things, and products from Colombia are referred to as “Colombian” rather than “Columbian”.

Unless, of course, I’m missing something. Maybe it really was brewed with coffee made from Columbus, Ohio. I hear the tropical climate in Columbus is a coffee grower’s paradise, and rivals the coffee produced by Sweden. Juan Valdez himself almost moved there back in the 80′s but when he got to Ohio he decided that it totally sucked and went to Rhode Island to open a candle/skillet store.

All I’m asking is that people do their homework, and don’t drink alcohol or smoke cannabis when they are designing or proofreading a beer label (if they’re trying to write a funny blog post, that’s another discussion).They might come up with some cool designs, but they also might end up confusing consumers who aren’t sure if their beer is flavored with coffee influenced by the man who discovered the new world, from the buckeye state, or if it’s just that regular old Colombian stuff.