Kathy Flanigan

Milwaukee Journal Sentinel

Henry Schwartz, chief executive officer of MobCraft Brewing, apologized Tuesday for a beer selection called Date Grape.

The craft brewery, which opened in Milwaukee this year, crowdsources its beer — allowing people to vote online for new recipes to be brewed. That process backfired when the final eight under consideration included the offensive name.

Schwartz took to Twitter and Facebook to explain and make amends.

"As many may know, there was an offensive name of a user-submitted beer in this month's vote. Our monthly votes let people submit ideas for the beers; we did not have a process for screening names before the vote rounds started. I feel horrible that this oversight happened, the beer name has been changed and we now have a process where our team vets names before they ever appear publicly. We would never promote rape culture as it is a very serious issue, never to be joked about. Again my deepest apologies for this."

UPDATE:After apology, brewer to donate to rape crisis center

The beer name ignited a social media firestorm from people who saw the flavor up for a vote on MobCraft sites. Many called the name "disgusting." Others planned to write complaints to MobCraft addressed to "Dear Sirs (for whom else could you be)."

The Date Grape recipe was sent in by Jeremy Bergener of Westminster, Colo., and calls for wine grape juice and dates to be added. He also named the concoction.

On a Facebook post that has since been taken down, Bergener said, "Date rape isn't funny, but date grape … "

For a while, MobCraft changed the offending name to Dates & Grapes, an English ale. But even that was taken down by Tuesday afternoon.

MobCraft co-founder Andrew Gierczak goes through the submission recipes to see what has been submitted and then begins building the recipe from there. They didn't always look at the names on the recipes before putting them to a vote on the website, Schwartz said.

"There was no stopgap in place," he said. "Everybody's slammed doing work on stuff and didn't notice."

Some beer drinkers like Analiese Eicher, a program director for a Madison nonprofit, were quick to call out MobCraft.

"I've been part of beer naming. This is not something you call a beer," she said.

Robyn Klinge, who who started Madison's Craft Beer Week and the group FEMS (Females Enjoying Microbrews), was dumbfounded that the name made it as far as it did.

"You shouldn't need a formal process to realize that a name is offensive," Klinge said. "I wonder if it's something that just doesn't occur to men and in most breweries it's kind of men running the show."

Katie Krueger uses MobCraft as a business model in the class she teaches at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. She plans to add a second part to the class next semester — a warning.

"This is an example of crowdsourcing gone wrong," she said. Inherent with the practice, she said, is that "you hand over control of your brand to the public."

Beer culture suffers from a macho air. Figures from the Brewers Association say that men of drinking age are close to three times more likely to drink beer weekly than adult women. But women who drink beer counter that if brewers want more women customers they have to reconsider how they portray them.

Last year, Budweiser came under fire for branding its beer with the tagline: “The perfect beer for removing 'No' from your vocabulary for the night" as part of its #UpForWhatever campaign. After public pressure about date rape, AB InBev ditched the campaign and the slogan.

MobCraft's apology is a "great first step," said Susie Seidelman, who was one of many women who contacted the brewery. "Any alcohol manufacturer has to understand that alcohol and rape go hand in hand.

"I would really like to see MobCraft make a donation to a rape crisis center and acknowledge the responsibility that they have to promote safety, not just in consumption but in what happens when people consume."

She added: "At the very least, I think we've all improved their workflow."

Alderman Jose Perez, whose district includes Walker's Point where MobCraft Brewery is located, called Schwartz after he heard about the controversy. The response from Schwartz was within the hour.

"They owned it as a mistake, and they've done the right thing and apologized to everyone," said Perez, who recently took the owner of Sabbatic tavern to task for an ad that mocked teen pregnancies. "They never had this issue up to this point. It was one person who overstepped a disgusting boundary as if it was humorous or some play on words."