What’s in a name?

With the recent release of Salted Caramel Tonkoko a many of you will have noticed, and a few have voiced concern, over the change in ABV of the beer. The first release of Salted Caramel Tonkoko was a big 12% brew, more akin to its Empress Tonkoko in flavours and style than the new version just previously released. This beer was originally brewed in August 2021, back when we were trialing different flavours of Tonkoko and thusly not rally thinking of the future potential iterations of the idea. We’d only be doing the odd one or two of these special flavoured editions of the iconic brand and, in our excitement, we forgot the fact that it may actually be great and that we might want to do it again with other variants and the potential to cause issues when we try to name it. We were young and silly back then…

What’s the problem you may ask? I mean a few people here said it… well, let us explain the issue. we’ll try to make it fun, honest! Stick with us here…
So we originally had Salted Caramel Tonkoko at 12%, way back in August 2021. We now wanted to make a ‘normal’ version of this beer at the usual Tonkoko ABV of 4.3% but what would we call it? The first thought was (and I’ll use SC as the shortened version here for Salted Caramel as I’m lazy) We could call it SC Session Tonkoko, which could work but it then makes it sound like a session version of a Tonkoko range, so a lighter than the usual 4.3% version. That might not sell well with punters. Also, in the future, if we decide to make a SC Tonkoko version at the Imperial Tonkoko ABV of 7.5% what do we then call it? We would need to try to find a name that is between SC Session Tonkoko and SC Tonkoko but we can’t use the word Imperial as that would then sound like its a stronger version of the original SC Tonkoko and that was 12%! You see the problem we have caused for ourselves.

The problem then gets more tricky in the fact we’ve made other flavour beers in the Tonkoko range, but in our infinite wisdom called those beers [insert flavour] Tonkoko and they are all various forms of ABV. Cherry Tonkoko was a 9.5% version, what do you call the bigger 10.6% version if we make it or the 4.3% version? Tiramoosu Tonkoko is another one, 7.5% but not called anything Imperial; again we are stuck with naming other versions. And we really do want to make these beers at different strengths (Cherry Empress Tonkoko anyone, hell yes!)

The new ranges of the Tonkoko brands are getting great reviews back from you guys, and to be fair they are pretty good, so we wanted to continue to try new flavour profiles and strengths of these beers going forwards. This naming thing was a going to give our marketing team a proper headache where it should be really easy to call the beer what it is… something needed changing up immediately before something went pop in the marketing office!

The, relatively, simple decision was made to standardise the entire process, and to do it now as we have a new branding style so labels would need to be updated anyway. We would make the original beer range the base point of reference to the style; so Tonkoko (for 4.3% variants), Imperial Tonkoko (for 7.5% variants) and Empress Tonkoko (for any 10%+ variants). Using this name as a base makes it super simple to then make the flavour variants, if we add cherry to the base beer of Tonkoko the resulting brew will be Cherry Tonkoko. Sounds really simple, but it took a lot of talking over to get the idea to stick! I mean, we have loads of beers already out there, which many of you have checked in on Untappd and we didnt want to loose the scores on these beers. So, these beers have all had their names updated to the new style of naming things. So if you checked in Tiramoosu Tonkoko originally it will now be found under Tiramoosu Imperial Tonkoko (we’ve just changed the nae in Untappd). When we brew this again the beer you originally had will now match the name on Untappd. Your old scores and comments haven’t moved and the new beer will be logged in the right place. Good stuff.

We acknowledge some of you will be thinking “this SC Tonkoko isn’t as good as the last one, why did they change it?”, well the answer is simple. It’s only the name that has changed, and think of it in the fact that we’ve done it so that we can make the big beer again. In fact this name changing format has been done in the express reason to make more Tonkoko variants. And bigger more exciting ones too! It makes it easier for you to know what type of beer you are ordering as you can now see, without having to check the ABV tab, what strength and style of beer it is from the name alone.
So we hope this makes a bit of sense and that the transition to the new way of calling things is as smooth as it can be. We’re hoping to be making more Tonkoko variants soon and we are especially looking forward to some exciting Imperial and Empress versions coming up, and unlike previously they will be called just that for everyones ease… Imperial and Empress Tonkoko.

So unlike Bart Simpson, “do have cow, man” and Tonkoko is her name – however you want to call it.