An Open Cease and Desist Letter to Dogfish Head Brewery, LLC


Our legal department tells me that we get cease and desist letters all the time.  They even have a division dedicated to the legal imbroglios created by our maltgonewild site, which paralegals Rachel and Jerry over there like to call “the college savings plan” or “the early retirement fund,” for some reason.  I guess lawyers really have funny ways of talking about things.  But today we are writing our first cease and desist letter.  And for reasons not clear to me, no one in legal wanted to participate.  So I’m on my own.

There was a lot of attention paid to the recent iCloud theft of photos of Jennifer Lawrence and others.  We share their outrage and, I’m sorry to say, Stephen shares their pain.  You see, his 64mb Earthlink dial-up account was hacked, and it appears that the Dogfish Head art department had access to the unspeakable cache of photos on Reddit when designing the label to the Dogfish Head 75 minute IPA.  Oh, sure, they replaced the cat-o-nine-tails in his right hand with a wooden mallet.  And where now there is a wooden barrel, the original photo shows a [redacted] being [redacted] by a [redacted].  [Rachel: “Jerry, you see my redactions, right?”] [Jerry: “One step ahead of you, Rach.”]

So we, the members of Malt Impostor, urge you to immediately begin using the unaltered version of the image on your beer labels, and ask that you ship replacement labels to all residents in states in which the beer is sold so that–

–[Stephen: “No!  We are asking them to stop using the image altogether!”].

Ah, yes, we insist that you desist from use of this image on the label of your beer or anywhere else.  It is clearly recognizable as Stephen and thus constitutes a violation of his 4th Amendment rights and is tantamount, in its obscenity, to a Geneva War Crime.

Make no mistake.  We are the first to agree that the Dogfish Head 75 minute IPA tastes great.  It’s a winning blend of two tremendous beers, and the subtle kiss of maple syrup blesses their marriage.  And we appreciate the natural carbonation and the brilliant use of dry-hopped, whole-leaf Cascade hops.  We even wondered what this would be like if distilled into a whisky and then poured onto pancakes.

But really, we can no longer abide the insult of Stephen’s boudoir shots from his barely-remembered trip to Club Clinch in Rotterdam to insult us from the shelves of our favorite victualists.  Bill thought that if we told you Stephen’s safe word you would stop immediately, so for the love of all that is holy, I say [redacted].

  
  
   
  
                                                                      –John

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