May 26, 2008
In a previous blog, we drove home the true threat posed by global warming. Several polar bears may have been set off on that great ice-floe journey from which there is no return since that posting; however, the danger that we were pointing out looms large much closer to home – as close as your basement fridge – the possibility of a global beer crisis due to a lack of barley.
The warming of the planet, combined with a supply-side crisis, has also resulted in a short supply of hops in the US. Microbreweries, faced with less available hops, a key ingredient in their product, have taken to jacking up their prices, and, unless there is a change in the situation, we may be forced to either pay through the nose or agree with those who taunt us for drinking microbrews and settle for whatever is cheap and available because, after all, beer is beer.
This is the kind of news that is best met drunk. A recent TV news report suggested that beer is recession proof, and we would tend to agree. A few years ago you may have been toasting your good fortune, wondering why in the world someone would give a walking debt machine and astronomically high credit risk like yourself a mortgage. Now, with fortunes having reversed, and gas so expensive that you’re bargaining with the neighbor’s kid for his used 10-speed, you can tilt that same bottle to keep your mind off the dark state of your financial affairs.
Beer, however, is useful for more than just pouring down your throat in an effort to escape from the crippling grim reality of the diminished financial and natural resources of you and your country, although it is quite good for that. Beer is working for a better tomorrow.
The 2008 Democratic Convention will be sponsored by Molson Coors Brewing Company. The company’s Coor’s Light, which can most charitably be described as “quite quaffable”, will be on sale at convention events. Despite both he and Hilary Clinton attempting to appeal to the lumpen by palming the odd pint on TV – which we covered here – Barack Obama tied with “none of the above” on a survey asking Americans who among the presidential candidates would make a good drinking partner. To be fair, the best drinking partners we know are able to do things like put cigarettes out on their tongues and so forth, and they would not make good holders of public office.
Perhaps sensing that it would not find a future presidential candidate that was as beer-drinker friendly as Bush, Coors chose a different and innovative tack – rather than merely fueling the drunken antics of young Democrats in functions near the event itself, it will also be fueling the convention’s fleet of flex-fuel vehicles. As the “official ethanol sponsor” Coors will donate fuel made mostly out of beer waste – E85 fuel, 85 percent ethanol (beer in this case) and 15 per cent gasoline). When we speak of beer waste here, we’re not talking about spillage as a result of a shaken beer, or what results when you knock one over your keyboard while typing out a blog. The waste beer being turned into ethanol by Coors comes from beer that had been lost during packaging, or rejected for quality reasons.
Rarely, have the words of Homer J. Simpson been more appropriate: “Here’s to alcohol, the cause of—and solution to—all life’s problems.”
