Better than Carlsberg?
Not taking risks, are you?
Anyway, TGIF! I'm off.
Google's investments over the years have pushed the company's foot through many a door. However, its latest venture still comes as quite a surprise. The Internet tech-firm is now producing beer. Google has joined forces with brewer Dogfish Head to produce a Belgian Dubbel beer called Urkontinent. While the brewing company …
Beer can only be belgian if made in belgium I'd guess, or with an exact recipe exported possibly (like all those "export" beers, UK-brewed but costlier) at a stretch.
But there is no "belgian style" --- there's blondes, browns, ambers; there's sour gueuze possibly sweetened like faro or with added fruits like cherrie; there's high or low yeast processes; even the lager goes from watery blonde stella to brown jupiler.
And a Germanic name like "Urkontinent"? What does that even mean (Gondwanaland?)? It's certainly neither a Flemish nor Walloon word -- so even the name isn't belgian. Beer in search of a gullible public?
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There certainly is a lot of good beer available in the US if you avoid the mega-corporate-breweries that sponsor sporting events and churn the stuff out by the tanker-load.
The better known craft brands can even be found in the "beer" section of your friendly neighborhood megastore surrounded by the worthless pish you refer to.
Granted, the shit beer from Anheiser Busch, et all is rubbish (see what I did there?), the NorthWest US is home to so many craft beers that you can't throw a rock without hitting a microbrewery. There are so many brews with so much flavor you couldn't possibly get tired of any of them.
If you ever find yourself on the North West Coast, look for beer from any of these fine breweries:
Lagunitas, North Coast (thier Imperial Stout is untouchable. Makes Guiness look like a childs drink) Ninkasi, Silver City, Pike, Iron Horse, Pt Townsend, Diamond Knot, Bear Republic, Stone, 7 Seas, BJs, Dogfhish Head (if you must, really they are overpriced and not any better than the rest of the lot). The list goes on and on. Most of these breweries average alcohol content is around 5-6%. The Imperials get upwards of 10-11% - no joke.
"Other ingredients, sourced from every curved-corner of the Earth include wattleseed from Australia, amaranth from South America, rooibos from Africa and myrica gale from Europe"
This is exactly why the Germans came up with Reinheitsgebot. To stop people from ruining good beer with random ingredients that have no place in it.
...because yeast wasn't properly understood until the middle of the 19th century. Once Bavarians had a handle of just WHY wort fermented, the law was amended to account for the newfound knowledge. These days, the adherence to the law is seen as a sign of regional pride and tradition, but they don't look down on people who experiment elsewhere and come up with something good. After all, Weissbier (wheat beer) is brewed in Germany, just not in Bavaria.
Great idea, beer with built-in pub conversation.
When you and your mates drinking gBeer (tm) 1.0 (beta) have finished arguing over whether or not all those ingredients make it any good, you can move on to arguing whether or not moving all the ingredients around makes the slightest fucking difference to the planet's ecosystem, given the ever escalating megatonnages of crap being chucked out due to Chinese and Indian industrialisation.