My wife, Carrie, and I have a fascination with craft beers with clever names. It’s probably inevitable when you love beer and words. I swear that half the craft beers we’ve bought have been based on name alone: Shmaltz Brewing’s Bittersweet Lenny’s R.I.P.A, Rogue’s Dead Guy Ale, Clipper City’s Small Craft Warning, the list is almost endless.

So imagine Carrie’s delight when she tripped upon this brand at Morris Miller Wine & Liquor: Porkslap Pale Ale, the beer with two delirious, belly-bouncing pigs on the label. The ale is brewed by Butternuts Beer & Ale, based in upstate New York, where, according to the brewer’s Web site, “common men and women brew approachable beers for other common men and women.”

Gotta love beer makers who back-up their populist propaganda with pig-slapping references. Nothing says “common man” like the lowly pig, an animal not even worth warring over.

The beer itself won’t cause many craft brewers to shake in the boots, either.

Porkslap is Butternuts’ version of an English Pale Ale, and as such, it’s pretty bitter. To its credit, though, the Porkslap moderates the bitterness with a decent amount of maltiness, which gives the ale a decidedly bready flavor. I’d tend to drink this stuff with something spicy, maybe Mexican or even Thai or Ethiopian, assuming you can find the beer, of course. Butternuts’ distribution is mostly limited to the northeastern United States, but with its appearance at Morris Miller, I’d guess that this pale ale with the populist perspective wants to spread its influence, like an good, old-fashioned imperialist.