North Bay brewery releases 'F— PG&E' beer, gets bombarded with 1-star Yelp reviews

The Shady Oak Barrel House taproom in Santa Rosa, Calif. The Shady Oak Barrel House taproom in Santa Rosa, Calif. Photo: Shady Oak / Facebook Photo: Shady Oak / Facebook Image 1 of / 4 Caption Close North Bay brewery releases 'F— PG&E' beer, gets bombarded with 1-star Yelp reviews 1 / 4 Back to Gallery

A Santa Rosa brewery owner fed up with multiple years of devastating fires sparked by PG&E power lines made a bold statement last week by way of one of his company's beer names: "F— PG&E."

(It should be noted the brewery, Shady Oak Barrel House, used the full curse word.)

Shady Oak owner Steve Doty is certainly not the only Northern California resident angry at the utility company, which is why he didn't expect the kind of backlash the beer name prompted a few days later.

"There were no problems Wednesday, Thursday or Friday, but then I guess some point on Saturday afternoon some person saw it and misread it and then things exploded," Doty tells SFGATE.

The Facebook post on Friday announcing the new beer seemed innocuous enough despite, of course, its use of profanity. The beer was described as a "classic California pale ale" and was accompanied by an ad for their trivia night. But then, an onslaught of comments began to roll in.

"My husband works for PG&E, they are the hardest working employees and the most generous," wrote one commenter. "My husband will be letting crews know to pass this s— show of a bar due to your low class, and ignorance."

"As a wife of a Lineman who puts his life on the line daily to ensure people like yourself have power I absolutely will not be supporting your establishment, nor will my friends or family," added another.

The blowback on Facebook — which included responses from non-California residents — was bad enough. But then, commenters began adding 1-star reviews to Shady Oak's Yelp page, dragging the company's rating down to 3 stars.

Doty was stunned. He meant to draw attention to the negligence of the PG&E execs, not to insult the boots-on-the-ground workers. But something was lost in translation.

In May, PG&E was found to be at fault for the 2018 Camp Fire in Butte County, which killed 85 people and destroyed 19,000 buildings. The utility giant is currently preparing to go to trial for its role in the 2017 Tubbs Fire, which tore through Santa Rosa and Sonoma County the year before. Then just last week, a federal judge demanded PG&E answer questions related to a transmission line malfunction which may be related to the recently contained Kincade Fire, also in Sonoma County.

To Doty, the beer's name seemed like a straightforward response to the company's alleged wrongdoing.

"My read on it is that I guess people have inferred something else from what I have actually said and assume that I'm against the employees which are here and are helping us, which we have as regulars, which we support," he says. "Then people are also assuming that for an area like we are in, Santa Rosa, where we've been horribly, horribly burnt by fires and all of the fallout from that, that we also, for some reason don't like the people that are helping us? I guess that's just kind of painful too. We're not against those people."

Worse yet, Doty says some people have been calling the taproom. Staffers are finding themselves on the receiving end of harassment and violent threats, which he says is unfair, as he's the one who named the beer.

Yelp has since halted reviews (and expunged a number of reactive 1-star ratings) on Shady Oak's page, citing the company's Consumer Protection Initiative to SFGATE.

"Yelp reviews are required to describe a firsthand consumer experience, not what someone read in the news or on social media," a spokesperson says. "Our user support team ultimately removes reviews that violate these guidelines."

On Sunday, Doty posted an apology to those upset by the beer name, and clarified that the "name was chosen in some contempt for the corporation itself." But as for the beer, he's still standing by the name.

"It's really strange when it's a company that is known at fault for killing people, destroying lives and communities and people have a problem with me calling them out," he says. "No, they deserve it."

Alyssa Pereira is an SFGate digital editor. Email: apereira@sfchronicle.com | Twitter: @alyspereira

