The name was inspired by harsh and recurring memories of a neighbor the brewer had growing up, who happened to be named Amel (yeeesh). Amel was dark brooding older German guy with a heavy accent, who happened to live across the street from the brewer, in a corner house (right where the brewer and his friends, as kids, played stickball and two hand touch football pretty much the entire year after school, for years. Amel maintained the most amazingly manicured hedged around his house - impeccable. We occassionally knocked a ball in his garden behind the hedges. He would often threaten to cut our ears off with a well worn (and probably not very sharp) pair of hedge clippers. The result was that when we needed to get a choice football back, or whatever else went astray, we’d huddle together, then practically draw straws as to who would breach the hedges. He was such a maniac that I decided to name a beer after him.