The Feds are telling brewers in Florida to stop making marijuana flavored beer. So I hope they don’t find out what I’m doing.
But on a more serious note; What did anyone THINK was going to happen? And why weren’t people a lot smarter about that?
That last question is purely rhetorical, given our current “leadership”.
One more note: I’m off until Wednesday next week. Cheers!
Just a little story today on Oregon’s craft breweries starting up refillable beer bottles.
I think these kinds of things are always pretty cool, because I’m genuinely tired of having a disposable world presented to me.
I remember reading a meme somewhere that went something like “If your idea isn’t available to the poor people, then it isn’t revolutionary”.
And I like that: only something that becomes available to everyone is actually able to change the fabric of things. While I’m sure there are plenty of instances where this wasn’t the case, pointing to achievements like running water, plumbing, electricity and (almost but not quite) internet, it’s fairly easy to prove how only when something is accessible at the lowest economic levels, do we see real changes.
Which is why I appreciate what this brewery in Denver is wanting to do. Above and beyond the incorporation of Mexican food and flavors into beer, there’s an attempt to reach out to the more economically marginalized people of Denver by making good but inexpensive ales. They don’t talk about it until the end of the article but they do talk about it.
How else are craft brewers and enthusiasts going to convince people to join them? If people cannot afford your product, it may as well not exist, right?
So make something that people can have, and see where that takes you.
I know that, as part of the craft brewing wave, exalting the works of craft breweries on all the levels that they do work to make a better product is important.
But. When the big corporations do something right, let’s give them credit. And this? This is something they did right. (It’s also super interesting to me and a little sciencey so it hits all those notes for me).
While the article’s tone is a little too clever with pop-culture references for me, and it definitely veers off the subject near the end, the underlying information is pretty interesting: how do you produce food on a planet that isn’t Earth? How do we use science to produce better beer?
I’ve always been of the opinion that anyone who really loves a thing would understand that they need to do things to protect it and ensure that it survives. Hunters should be conservationists, for example. If there aren’t protected wild spaces, nobody wins.
As such, drinkers should also be environmentalists. Because we need water. Without it, there are a LOT of problems but for the sake of staying on track let’s get to the most relevant one: we don’t have more beer.
And that’s one reason, amongst many, that we should pay attention to climate change.
Some people, however, are only motivated by the cold hard realities of cash. Well, I got an article for you, too.
This is extremely cool. If hop flavor can be imbued into beer without or with significantly less hops then that is a huge boon for everyone. Less water for hops means more water for other necessary things, like more beer.
However, my friend at the Traveling Yeti has a wiser and more nuanced take on things that keeps my enthusiasm in check.
