East End Brewing (Pittsburgh, PA) has decided to change the name of their core brand Hefeweizen “Monkey Boy”, to now “Hefe Weizen”.

Scott Smith, Owner of East End Brewery, addressed this change directly on the brewery’s blog:

Hi. Scott here.

We’re changing the name of our Monkey Boy Hefeweizen to simply Hefe Weizen. Here’s why…

We originally brewed this beer about 13 years ago, and the intent was to produce a classic German style hefeweizen, and call it Monkey Boy to highlight the banana esters in the aroma and flavor. The name also makes an obscure reference to a goofy sci-fi movie (Buckaroo Banzai), where an alien uses the term monkey boy as an insult for humans as being evolved from apes. It was never intended to be anything beyond that. So when someone asked us to change the name last month “because it’s offensive”, it really caught me off guard.

I’m white. So my privilege includes never experiencing anything negative related to words like boy and monkey. But ultimately, my intentions on this are meaningless. I can’t just assume that everyone is in my head and knows exactly what I’m thinking.

PERCEPTION IS WHAT MATTERS. If someone walking into our place for the first time (whether they “get the references” or not), feels like we’re being shitty toward an entire group of people, then we’ve failed. Miserably.

Although the decision to make this change was rather immediate, it‘s taken us about a month to settle on a new name, develop artwork, print labels, package and release the beer. You should see fresh Hefe Weizen cans hitting the store shelves in another week or so. We’ve got them up on our store now, if you’d like to take a look.

Thanks for bringing this up, Jess. And thanks to all of you for moving forward with us!

Cheers – Scott