Death From Above has been given the chop.

Wellington brewery Garage Project has stopped making one of its most iconic beers after getting a letter from an Australian woman who called its name hurtful.

The beer, Death From Above, has been made since 2013 and is sold around the world. It has a cult following and is especially popular in Norway and Sweden.

But production has been stopped. Some ingredients will be thrown out and cans and labels will be destroyed at considerable cost.

Kevin Stent Garage Project's Pete Gillespie says brewing should be fun but it has to be sensitive to the wider community it exists in. This dark beer was celebrating the new Star Wars movie in 2015.

Brewer Pete Gillespie said ending the beer was his personal reaction to the letter from a Australian woman of Vietnamese descent.

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"She wrote a very long and detailed letter to us explaining how upset she was and how the imagery and name had triggered things in her."

Garage Project has stopped making its Death From Above beer after four years.

The beer is a fusion of American-style pale ale and South-East Asian flavours of mango, lime, Vietnamese mint and chili.

Originally Gillespie wanted to call it Apocalypse Now.

But back in 2013 he says another group of brewing collaborators called The Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse "got really upset with us".

"I thought there was room for both to exist with a comical pop pun name, but to avoid conflict we changed the name."

Death From Above was the motto of the US Army Airborne Division which featured in anti-war movie Apocalypse Now's famous Ride of the Valkyries helicopter attack scene. It was also the name of a band he likes (Death from Above 1979) and so seemed to work well.

He said it was in no way meant to be pro-war or pro use of napalm.

"It really was just a pop culture reference. But I reflected deeply on it and the last thing I want to do is upset people. Brewing is meant to be fun, but we don't do it in a vacuum. We exist as a business in a broader community."

Gillespie said it upset him deeply that anyone would think of the Garage Project as being racist, or as glorifying violence which wrought misery and destruction on a country.

"For the record, racism sucks and violence, on the whole, is a s... way of solving international disputes."

The beer has a cult following and its demise is being mourned.

Shane H on Untapped.com beer review site said: "The king is dead. Long live the king. An iconic NZ beer is no more."

But others on the same site were angry.

JJV said: "Sad news that garage project are too scared of bad press to stick up for a perfectly reasonable beer name. Shame." And Stuart M said: "The sad demise of an excellent beer, the victim of political correctness and the camellia blossom sensitivity of precious snowflakes."

Gillespie said he was open to the idea of eventually bringing back the beer under a different name. But only when it felt right. And it didn't feel right now.