Surrender.... not Dorothy. A RyePA story

When we moved here (literally 4 years ago this week) we started to get settled in  and discover the beer scene. One of the first places  we went for in person brewery time was 7 Locks Brewing in Rockville  (yeah go ahead and sing that we shouldn't go back to Rockville and waste another year. We do it. I'm sure Rockville is used to it by now). 

The tasting room and brewery is in a small industrial park, kid and dog friendly, with food trucks and live music. Small, which is nice. Sometimes we've gone, and it's been too crowded, so we get a couple sixers to go. Or, we are there with the place to ourselves, playing board games and waiting for the delivery pizza to arrive. We have seen some stellar local music here. It's a good place, with good beer. An honest, and tremendously good local brewery.

I like it.

All of the beers are named for local spots, and one of them has, well, a history. 

The beer now known as simply Surrender used to be called "Surrender Dorothy." In your mind, if you think of a certain witch spraying smoke across the sky from the bristles of her broom in an effort to get a little girl from Kansas to give up some shoes, you've got a good reference. 

However, If you are in  the DC area, and you are driving on the Beltway, about a mile from our house you come around a bend, and there is ... well... a sight. 

The Washington DC area Mormon Temple is right in front of you. Right there. In Your Face.

It makes an astonishing first impression for those who have never seen it.

Doug moved here two weeks before I did because his job started before mine ended. So he got to experience the area for a little while and there was something he insisted I see when I got here. 

One night, we got in the car at dusk and drove towards Virginia. He told me to keep looking out the windshield, don't look at my phone, don't get distracted. Just. Be ready. 

I wasn't ready. 

The sunset hitting the building caused the white marble to glow with a pinkish orange tint, and the spires, the golden spires, just radiated in the magic hour light. 

"Holy shit." I believe was my reaction.  I pondered how many people coming around that corner may have lost control of their cars as they gazed upon this majestic sight. 

"It's like.... Oz or something," was my next comment. 

"Exactly," said Doug. 

We then came to find out that at one point in the 1970s, there was graffiti on the bridge we'd just gone under that said "Surrender Dorothy." Apparently, I was not the only one to visually connect Oz and the Emerald City (though salmony pink at the time). 

7 Locks created a Rye IPA (RyePA) and named it Surrender Dorothy.  Not in homage or to steal from The Wizard himself, but as a nod to this historic local lore. 

The beer is a delicious, flavorful blend and became their flagship brew. What a cool local thing to learn about, what a fun and exciting piece of history, right here. 

I never equated the beer itself with any sort of trying to glean any sort of benefit from Oz. It was the local story, the history, and the greatness of the tale that made it great.

A couple years ago, 7 Locks attempted to secure the copyright to Surrender Dorothy, and I believe that was their undoing. 

Turner Entertainment fought them on it, as they hold the copyright on anything "Dorothy" and Oz related. This would be too close to what the Wicked Witch wrote in the sky for anyone's liking and would confuse consumers.  To be honest, no. For me, at least, the two are detached and far apart from each other.

The old label did include a yellow brick road as the Beltway, and the overpass says Rye IPA and not Dorothy. I think it is apart enough that there isn't any benefit stolen from Turner Entertainment but a change in the branding would have worked out to distance the Turner Entertainment concerns from the beer.

7 Locks has rebranded the beer to just "Surrender," aptly. The Beltway is now just a grey ribbon of boringness, the Temple still stands in the distance. There is a worker painting the overpass to remove "Dorothy." 

After Donald Trump was elected, they temporarily rebranded this beer as "Surrender Donald," and I regret not getting a can, or a T-shirt, or anything to jump in on the commemoration.

Name or not, as Surrender Dorothy, Surrender Donald, or just Surrender, the beer is the same, delicious, and wonderful brew. If nothing else, Turner Entertainment should sue the Mormon Church for making a really amazing Oz on the highway for us all to see. 

There is a good article here in the Washington Post, if you can read it. Democracy doesn't die in darkness, it dies behind a paywall. 

And as for me, I still love this beer. It will always have the Dorothy Connection for me, and honestly the first DC area thing I've felt connection to. Cheers to 7 Locks. Keep brewing beautiful beer, and I'll keep buying it.