GrodsCorp

Open beer thread

Wednesday 16 May 2007, 8:39 am

Categories: Alcohol, Politics, Vegetarianism

A few beer-related questions have been asked in various comment threads about the place so I thought I’d open up a comment thread specifically devoted to beer-cahol.

It all started here:

Marketing info says that Coopers Pale Ale is very popular with progressive lesbians, but Coopers gives all its political donations to the Liberal party.

So if I like Coopers Pale Ale, am I a progressive-conservative lesbian?
– Bruce

I like Coopers and I knew I was progressive but am a little surprised to learn that I’m a lesbian.
– The Editor

I’m likely to order any of a dozen different drinks depending on my mood, so I must be a schizophrenic swinging voter.
– Bridgit Gread

And continued here:

Now, I’m very disappointed to learn that Cooper’s gives political donations to the Liberal party, I may have to seriously reconsider my tastes. But did you know that Cooper’s is the only commercially-available beer in Australia that’s vegetarian-friendly? The rest use gelatine derived from beef skin for filtering.

Does anyone know the political donations of breweries such as Little Creatures, or Matilda Bay? I can’t go back to the bland, empty-tasting crap that CUB or Lion Nathan urinates into the market (apart from Squire, which I understand is Lion Nathan).
– Jangari

So now that the conversation’s all in one place go for it!

24 Comments

John Surname (Wednesday 16 May 2007, 10:05 am) #

I would like to point out that Coopers Pale is my favourite beer in the world, Little Creatures Pale a close second. If that makes me a Liberal lesbian, so be it.
strider (Wednesday 16 May 2007, 1:41 pm) #

Please keep in mind that to maintain a stable democracy, people need to support, either through their time or their money, mainstream political parties.

Hence Coopers (particularly given the current state of the Coalition) through its support of the Liberals, is not only doing a good act for our democracy, but doing something which could be considered as good as supporting a charity.

And it is also important to consider that all the most excellent things, whether they are fast cars or fine wines, or even good beers, are produced through Capitalism. (The Liberal Party is the best defender of Capitalism in Australia and hence deserves Coopers’ support.) Try drinking a beer from a communist country - or something which would meet the environmental criteria the Greens might set. You’ll find they are even worse than Toohey’s.

Hmmm… this is too much for a comments section. I might write more on this sort of thing on my own blog sometime.
Jangari (Wednesday 16 May 2007, 2:44 pm) #

So, beer has benefited from the capitalist system?
I doubt that somehow. The smaller-capacity microbreweries of the country produce the best beers available. Inversely, the worst beers are all produced by the same two companies. Which of these two situations best represents the capitalist system? Now, has capitalism really been all that conducive to the production of good-quality beer?
The Happy Revolutionary (Wednesday 16 May 2007, 4:16 pm) #

A smidgeon of Communism is probably a necessary spice in the finest draughts - the beer from Germany, Czech republic, and Hungary is probably the best in the world. And possibly Cascade is made by the Red Brigade.
John Surname (Wednesday 16 May 2007, 11:12 pm) #

Strider’s right - Cooper’s support of the Coalition is the lone reason our country hasn’t descended into communism.
Bruce (Thursday 17 May 2007, 1:31 am) #

I enjoy European beers. Does that make me an elitist, euro-trash, islamofascist, sympathiser or an elitist, conservative, Bavarian Purity Law* loving, closet NAZI?

* The Bavarian Purity Law is not as sinsiter as it sounds; it basically has tennets that prohibit the use of refined sugars (conforming beers have to be full malt) amongst other quality measures.
Bruce (Thursday 17 May 2007, 1:45 am) #

Strider,

The Open Source community has been described by Bill Gates as communism, and more generally as hippies. Most open sourcers I know aren’t particularly capitalistic (understandable considering that they want their software to be freely distributed and available to the disadvantaged.)

So I challenge you to test your capitalist quality hypothesis by brewing a lager using a liquid lager yeast and Greg Lehey’s design for a stable low-temperature fermenter run using his FREE, open-source software (you can compile it on FreeBSD or Linux and there is FREE support from COMMUNities on the web.)

Greg’s work, and a link to his original blog can be found here.

Caveat: At this point I am unsure of Greg’s politics, but his means of distributing the technology isn’t exactly capitalist. That and he’s spent time coding in leftist Europe.

He even looks like Osama! :O
Bruce (Thursday 17 May 2007, 1:46 am) #

You have to be kidding! I made a good comment and it got eaten :(

I’ll do it again another time… *sulk*
The Editor (Thursday 17 May 2007, 8:13 am) #

Comment got spaminated for some reason, Bruce. Successfully recovered.
Bruce (Thursday 17 May 2007, 11:02 am) #

Yay! I’ve had that problem of late as well at my blog. Mikey got pulled into my Askiment spam folder for some reason.
Strider (Thursday 17 May 2007, 6:19 pm) #

Is anyone going to tell me that these people running the mircobreweries are not doing it in the hope of making a buck in the free market system we all enjoy living under?

Bruce, I am an amateur winemaker, not an amateur brewer. Hence I am going to have to turn down your challenge about making a beer (at least until I turn my mind to learning how to make a home brew).

However, I am someone who is interested in teaching and encouraging other people to take up garage winemaking (which is why I blog regularly about my winemaking processes and ingredients etc).

This is done out of motives which are related to the capitalist system - if the only garage wine makers (aside from me) are old blokes in their 70s, then the whole market for wine grapes (outside of the real wineries) will disappear and drive up my costs.

Hence I am trying to ensure that there continues to be a demand for wine grapes, in order to protect my sources of supply.
John Surname (Thursday 17 May 2007, 11:09 pm) #

Strider, if you think that the Labor party are a threat to capitalism, you are sadly mistaken. I am a capitalist myself (shock horror), but your claims that all the best wine/beer/cars happen in a capitalist society is laughable, as are your claims that Cooper’s donate to the Liberal party to protect capitalism.

Update: Just checked how much they donated - it was just $4000 to the SA Liberal party.
Strider (Friday 18 May 2007, 1:30 pm) #

On cars, I suppose those tanks the USSR built were all pretty good, especially when compared to Ferrari or BMW or Mercedes.

And I am dying to try some great eastern European pre 1989 wines - I believe that Hungarian Tokay has improved greatly with that new ingredient - capitalism.

And what I said was that Cooper’s was donating money to the party which best defended Capitalism, but the main gist of my argument was that it is donating to preserve a stable democratic system.

Donating to the Australian Democrats on the other hand, given their stated intentions of running David Hicks for parliament (especially if they dump Andrew Bartlett for Hicks), is neither going to help preserve a stable democracy, nor help their sales of alcohol product.
The Happy Revolutionary (Friday 18 May 2007, 3:08 pm) #

Hungarian wine is very nice, but I’m not sure that capitalism is the defining ingredient. I mean, all of Australia is capitalist, yet it seems that only the southern states are able to produce really good wine, beer, cheese, etc.
Also, the Democrats are very much pro-capitalist, and will not really be dumping Bartlett or running Hicks.
Bruce (Friday 18 May 2007, 4:21 pm) #

I dunno why that Hicks-Democrats meme still gets wind.

Incidentally Strider, I’d have thought u were the kind of guy who would have speculated that sales of alcohol would skyrocket if Bartlett was dumped.
Jangari (Friday 18 May 2007, 4:32 pm) #

1. Democrats were begotten by the Libs.

2. Microbreweries rarely make much money, the people running them and putting most of their savings into them would be much better off getting a mail room job at Macquarie Bank or something.

3. ‘Capitalism is not necessarily conducive to a better beer’ is not synonymous with ‘communist beer tastes better’.

4. The Democrats never considered running Hicks. They were merely pressed to say if they’d allow him as a member of the party, and they’re so bereft of members these days that they’d be stupid to stop anyone from joining, even the cursed Hicks.

5. Coopers’ donation to the Libs was not because they want to ‘preserve a stable democracy’ but because they want to be able to hire cheap immigrant labour and not have to pay penalties, overtime or severance.

6. Coopers Pale is still the best damn beer in the country and I’ll happily wear the hypocrite badge if it means I can continue to drink it.
John Surname (Saturday 19 May 2007, 12:05 pm) #

“3. ‘Capitalism is not necessarily conducive to a better beer’ is not synonymous with ‘communist beer tastes better’.”

Certainly not, but I have heard wonderful things about Vietnam’s “Bubble Beer”. Made daily, and apparently it runs out by afternoon it’s so popular.
rdb (Thursday 24 May 2007, 1:11 am) #

Hey Ed, try this link it will bring back fond memories.
http://www.questbevs.com/beer/h5.html
The Editor (Thursday 24 May 2007, 7:52 am) #

I’m going to have nightmares now, rdb.
John Surname (Thursday 24 May 2007, 4:36 pm) #

From the website:“keep it at room temperature, and serve over ice to take it down a notch. Enjoy!”

Ew.
rdb (Friday 25 May 2007, 7:06 am) #

Just bottle it and add bubbles!
From the washinton post
“The Sacred Ganji River has become such a human toilet that India finally admitted that the water may need chemical purification in order to continue its religious work of purifying the believers.”
By Secular_Priest | Mar 15, 2007 1:56:07 PM
Now doesn’t that get your taste buds yearning for a sip of that wonderful foamy brown liquid?
The Editor (Friday 25 May 2007, 12:54 pm) #

It’s the Ganges — bottled!
Krypto (Monday 29 October 2007, 11:23 pm) #

http://www.democracy4sale.org has a fairly complete list of political contributions made by business and lobby groups, don’t dwell too long there, you’ll never buy a single product ever again.
One small correction to the content of the main text, gelatin usually is made from hooves, and/ or from boiling bones, it is actually used during a process called finning, the addition of a finning agent causes a chemical reaction to increase the clarity of a beer or other fermented beverage, not strictly a filtration process.
Commercial home brew kits usually contain a sachet of finnings which are added at a certain stage of the beer’s fermentation, to make a vegitarian friendly home brew, simply omit this step, the only difference in the finished product is a slight cloudiness in the colour of the beer (which some people actually prefer).
Damian (Tuesday 18 March 2008, 10:53 pm) #

I think this discussion should get a second airing now that Cascade has released its “green” beer.