A beer label of all things, for a beer called Witches Wit, which shows the burning of a Witch.This is nothing short of an outrage. It shows no respect for the living, or the dead. And to use it as a market ploy for beer ? What were these people thinking ? Yes, such things happened, to our ever lasting shame, but to glorify it as a market ploy, is beyond any bounds of acceptable. ( Many updates have been added to this post )

So, as our sister Susun Weed, below asked of us, and I myself request, please let the makers of this product know, this is NOT acceptable. Not only does it glorify the murder of Witches, but downgrades and defiles all women.

This is a Censored version of the label, but I think you can easily see, it's distasteful in the extreme, and needs to be recalled off the shelves and the makers told, in no uncertain terms, that we will not stand by and see this kind of horror, perpetrated.

This is it uncensored off of Google:

This is even being marketed on t-shirts: Part of the ad for this shirt is and I quote "Attend your next medieval witch burning event in style with this oh-so-flattering v-neck T-shirt. The front features the Lost Abbey Celtic cross while the back display’s our famous Witch’s Wit label." Is this revolting or what ?

"Pass it around, boycott Lost Abbey beer until they change their hateful label for the new beer Witches Wit. The label depicts a witch burning at the stake, while hundreds of anonymous men look on. Here is our censorship of the label, pass it around. If you find the label offensive, write to Lost Abbey public relations person Sage, email your outrage to This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it and be sure to cc the director of operations This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it - Lets flood their mailboxes, one witch at a time, together we join. Blessed be." From Susun Weed, the herbalist sister who brought this matter to our attention on Face book. I have taken the liberty to quote her here, since she states the matter so well.

I Thank you for your attention, and I hope between us all, we can force them to remove this atrocity from store shelves.

Added information:

Many who have written to the company have gotten what appears to be a canned letter, stating and I quote "I encourage you to look at all of Lost Abbey’s beers and consider them in context. Each of the Lost Abbey beers features a label which depicts a theme of Catholic excess — good and bad — on the front, and tells a moral story on the back. ...Our other beers — Devotion, Deliverance, Judgment Day, Inferno, The Angel’s Share, etc. — all have similar messages of morality. Unfortunately, the people who started this memo either didn’t bother or didn’t care to actually read the label and simply chose to fan the flames of ignorance and intolerance — which, ironically, is what the beer is actually against."

There is more, but this should give you an idea of the first responses to our outrage. This kind of arrogance, just proves that not only whoever thought up this idea and approved it likely needs to be fired, so apparently does whatever PR person made such a condescending and almost insulting reply to legitimate concerns. By the way, I have looked at all of their other labels, and most of them are pretty tame. A few that might make a few people go mmmmm ? But on this one, as the kids say " Epic Fail "

As lets get real, who reads the back of a beer bottle ? And I ask what should be the obvious question, what about the T shirts and any other marketing items that have been made with this image, is the story included with them too ? Mind you, these items are direct marking from the Lost Abby themselves. 

They have since stated in other reply letters that are more recent that " they made an ignorant mistake, and are happy to correct it. They’re...thinking of having a contest with people submitting ideas for an alternative label, and are working to get in touch with the right folks in the pagan and/or feminist communities that could help them do just that".

Which is an improvement on the first set of replies but the beer is still being marketed, and no where on their web site do they make any reference to this problem, or their intentions on correcting it. May the letters continue, until we see action, not just lip service.

Esta Weiss