‘The Phone Just Hasn’t Stopped’: Osama Bin Laden-Themed Beer Achieves Viral Fame, Sells Out At Brewery

A beer named after Osama Bin Laden achieved viral fame and sold out. (Photo: Mitchell Brewing Co.)

The BBC reported on Tuesday that a beer named after Osama Bin Laden sold out at Mitchell Brewing Co. after achieving celebrity status and going viral on social media. The response was so intense that employees had to shut the website down and unplug phones at the establishment.

“We’ve woken up the last couple of mornings with thousands and thousands and thousands of notifications,” said Luke Mitchell. Mitchell runs the brewery and pub with his wife, Catherine.

Other beers at Mitchell Brewing Co. have been named after famous — or infamous — dictators including Kim Jong Ale and Putin Porter.

“They’re all tongue-in-cheek names — a nicer outlook on some horrible dictators,” Luke Mitchell claimed according to the BBC.

The brewery claimed it donates £10 ($13) to Voices Center For Resilience — a nonprofit that helps communities recover from traumatic events and supports the victims of 9/11 — from each barrel of Osama Bin Lager.

Perhaps surprisingly, the brewery says it hasn’t received any backlash since the release of Osama Bin Lager.

“Everyone laughs when they see the names on the bar,” Mitchell claimed. “As far as I’m aware, no one’s been offended, but I’m sure there is someone out there. I think there is always a risk of somebody being offended.”

Mitchell is definitely onto something. For some reason, beer names and marketing trends tend to attract controversy.

In April, a Florida Brewery faced backlash after naming a peanut butter ale after an Epi-Pen. Certain individuals believed the naming of the beer was “discriminatory,” and found it made light of peanut allergies.

Some quipped that this was an incident of cancel culture getting out of hand. No beer-related incident has epitomized “cancel culture” to a greater degree than the Bud Light controversy.

In April 2023, the beer behemoth drew outrage amongst conservatives and the MAGA crowd after the brand partnered with Dylan Mulvaney, a transgender female influencer.

Though the American right has a history of claiming liberals and progressives are “woke” and “liberal snowflakes” who champion cancel culture, the irony is not lost that conservatives attempted to “cancel” a beer brand with unprecedented swiftness after being offended by its choice of brand ambassador.

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