Categories
opinion

Is beer a luxury, or a right?

This post over at Appellation Beer made us think again about beer’s status in the world.

A lot of people see it as a basic right in life. They get annoyed when it’s taxed and/or the price goes up.

Unfortunately, it’s a heavily processed product. Yes, beer is a processed food. And like all processed food, it is very energy intensive. Think about the energy used in growing barley; malting the barley; mashing the barley; throwing most of it away and boiling the remaining liquid; chilling the remaining liquid; moving, storing and distributing the the finished product, sometimes to the opposite side of the world.

And then, nature takes a funny turn for a year or two, malt and hops go up in price, and we suddenly find that what once we drank as a cheap alternative to clean water has become an expensive luxury.

So, beer really ought to be expensive, and we probably ought to consume it more thoughtfully.

What options do the brewers and distributors have for keeping the price down? Reducing the quality, for one. Or squeezing the people in the supply chain, as in this depressing tale from Tyson.

Personally, we’d rather pay a fiver for our pint than damage the planet, or people’s livelihoods. Is that what it’s going to come to?

For a lot more on related topics, from a more learned writer than us, see Chris O’Brien’s Beer Activist blog.

Bailey

Categories
The Session

Don't forget / no olvideis the Session!

This Friday is beer-blogging Friday! We’ve asked you to tell the world how you got into good beer. Full details here.

Este viernes organizamos “The session”, y invitamos a los hispano-hablantes a participar también. El tema es; ¿cómo comenzó tu pasión por la cerveza buena?  Más aquí.

Categories
buying beer pubs

New York beer finder

What a great idea — Beermenus.com is a website that tells you which beers you can find in which pubs and bars. Sadly, only for New York at the moment.

I wish someone would do one of these for London!

Via Lifehacker.

Categories
marketing News

Cheeky Stella Artois ad campaign

This new advertising campaign for Stella Artois is designed to emphasise the quality of the product. It implies that Stella contains only the four traditional ingredients of beer:

Stella Artois advertisement -- "Contains only four ingredients: hops, malted barley, maize and water"

That’s right — hops, malted barley, maize and water.

Maize!? Rather than trying to hide the fact they they use corn as an adjunct to make the beer cheaper, they’re boasting about it, counting on the fact that most people won’t know any better. Hardly honest, but bloody clever.

And they’ve avoided mentioning all that yucky yeast, too, in case the thought of it puts anyone off.

Categories
homebrewing opinion

Enough already with the crystal malt

Two years ago, I didn’t know what crystal malt was. Now I can’t escape the bloody stuff.

Crystal malt is dark, but not black, and kilned with the express purpose of giving beers colour and sweetness. Many great ales use it in moderation. Unfortunately, as we discovered whilst brewing our own beers, too much of the stuff can overpower a beer and leave it tasting rather sickly, because crystal malt has some sugars that can’t be fermented.

And sickly is how I’ve found a few microbrewed beers recently, mostly, I think, because they’ve overdone the crystal. The giveaway flavour is a kind of burnt, treacley, toffee-like, musty taste. Beers that boast “massive malt flavours” on their somewhat amateurish labels seem to be the worst afflicted.

The over-use of crystal malt is just as likely to unbalance a beer as that other ingredient which brewers are currently adding in careless handfuls — American citrus hops — only it’s harder to spot.

Time for a bit of tasteful restraint with both, I reckon.

Bailey