To quote the missus "I'm not putting that in my mouth."
Just what we all needed, lactose-free 'beer' from northern hipsters – it's the Vegan Sorbet Sour
Beer o'clock starts at 4pm today at Leeds-based North Brewing Co's tap room where it will be launching a sour beer that "pushes the boundaries of taste, flavour and colour". Forget your hoity-toity cloudy lemon ales from Holland; this one's a manly bright pink and made in Yorkshire. The Vegan Sorbet Sour is brewed with …
COMMENTS
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Monday 16th September 2019 08:44 GMT Trixr
"Milk" has been used in English for centuries to refer to milk-like substances. Are you going to rename milkweed and dandelion milk as well?
What do you call coconut milk now? Soy milk has been fine for decades. If anyone can demonstrate an instance of an averagely-intelligent person not understanding coconut/soy/whatever milk doesn't actually contain milk from a mammal, I'd be very interested in seeing it.
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Friday 13th September 2019 18:04 GMT Sgt_Oddball
That would be one of the others...
Northern monk (based in the city of Leeds as well) did that as one of their "don't mess with Yorkshire" beers. T'was a nice beer too, they have also done a pineapple and ginger beer called 'grannies mix'.
Also worth noting the North brewing team have already done a tap take over in the tate modern with a triple fruited gose co-lab.
I do however wonder what made this beer in particular caught the eye of Mr. Dabbs?
Tramp icon because I always feel so poor after buying this months releases...
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Friday 13th September 2019 18:07 GMT Grikath
Ummm the belgian fruit beers start with beer.. Quite solid stuff alcohol-wise as well.. In which then fruit is soaked ( traditionally the sour cherries they call "krieken" ), originally to preserve it, the added taste to the beer is a bonus.
Later the added-flavour thing was done with fruit juice added to the still-quite-potent beer. Mort Subite ( sudden death ) and Verboden Vrucht ( forbidden fruit ) come to mind as well-known brands. Handle with care, they tend to trip up the unwary..
I don't know what to call the unholy concoction featured in the article, but beer it is not, nor would it be allowed to be called that in the civilised parts of the mainland. ( The uncivilised parts deal with this hipster shyte in a more time-honoured and more terminal way...)
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Tuesday 17th September 2019 12:52 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
belgian fruit beers start with beer..
T'missus quite likes one of the fruit-flavoured Belgian beers sold by our local emporium - I haven't drawn her attention to the ABV figue on the label..
Mind you, she tends to go to sleep after about half a bottle - being somewhat of an alcohol lightweight. Unlike myself and my nephew - as the recycling box indicates after he's been staying for the weekend.
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Friday 13th September 2019 17:13 GMT Mage
Vegan Beer
Unless you are using mysterious processing and ingredients to "clarify" or "remove sediment", most beers are vegan.
I thought a beer / ale / stout as minimum is a malted grain (almost any grain is possible, not just barley), yeast and water. Hops is an almost modern innovation and actually optional.
Almost anything with carbohydrate (sugars) can be fermented, though not all fermentation is alcoholic. However being alcoholic doesn't make it be a "beer". This sounds more like a thickened wine? It's absolutely not beer.
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Friday 13th September 2019 17:57 GMT jake
Re: Vegan Beer
Finings aren't mysterious. And there are several vegan options[0], as I discovered back when I dated a vegan and thought that clarified beer was somehow important. (Hey, I was in my late teens / early 20s once!)
[0] I settled on Irish Moss after testing a couple of different options.
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Tuesday 17th September 2019 18:21 GMT jake
Re: Vegan Beer
I've made Cock Ale, it's actually drinkable ... Translating the recipe into more modern terms: First you brew a strong ale (your choice), to make ten gallons. Next, boil a cock (old rooster works well for this!). Bust the boiled bird up with a mortar and pestle (food processor), bones & all. Stick the result into a fine cheesecloth bag with some mace (I use three or four flakes) and cloves (I use 8), and some mashed dates and raisins, about 8oz each. Soak the lot in a couple quarts of fortified wine (I use a young (cheap) version of Oloroso), until the ale is ready to come out of the primary. Discard the bird+spice bag, and decant the fortified wine into the secondary with the ale, discarding the sediment. Allow to sit and clarify for a couple weeks/month(s) before bottling. It's ready to drink after 6 or 8 months in the botttle at cellar temperature (42F, plus or minus).
The added sugar from the raisins & dates makes for a bit more fermentation in the secondary. The gelatin from the bird seems to work as finings to clarify the brew. You can't taste the chicken in the final product, but the head is affected (more protein) (the head is minimal, but there). You can leave out the mace and clove.
Frankly, while the end result is usually quite drinkable, I don't find it to be worth the effort ... I make it once in a while (eight times in 30 years) just to blow people's minds.
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Monday 16th September 2019 08:45 GMT Trixr
Re: Vegan Beer
Bollocks. Many (most?) beers are clarified with gelatin, casein, albumen or isinglas. These are not vegan.
Personally, I don't care, but if you don't want a hint of animal product, none of those will be suitable for vegans.
Casein is also a milk byproduct, and it's in common use. I think it's a bit silly to brand your beer as being "lactose free" rather than just including the fact somewhere on the label, and of course the actual percentage of lactose would be negligable in the final result. But I don't have a milk allergy so I don't know how serious trace amounts might be. Yes, it's mostly a branding exercise, but who cares? At least it's not like "low calorie water" in terms of being representing something that is not a "thing".
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Tuesday 17th September 2019 12:17 GMT Spamfast
Re: Vegan Beer
Many (most?) beers are clarified with gelatin, casein, albumen or isinglas.
You're probably right, commercially speaking. But it's not mandatory.
Copper finings.
Or if you're into mineral rights I'm told certain types of seaweed work.
Still pretty vegan as far as I can see.
Not a vegan myself and do occassionally get tired of the proseletizing ones (same as any religion) but I don't really understand from where the hatred comes.
Each to their own.
In my case, mostly veg but with the occassional bacon buttie.
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Tuesday 17th September 2019 13:08 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: Vegan Beer
percentage of lactose would be negligable in the final result
Fun feline Fact of the day:
A lot of cats become lactose-intolerant, just like quite a few humans do. So various vendors produce Cat Milk which, despite its title, isn't milk harvested from cats [1] but is rather ordinary cows milk with the lactose removed.
It also has taurine [2] added as well as a few other cat-specific suppliments. Out of our 7 cats, three can tolerate regular cows' milk and 4 can't and so get offered cat milk.
[1] Doing that would be a fairly high-risk endeavour without appropriate PPE [3]
[2] Cats require taurine but don't produce it themselves but get it from their prey. Modern cat food contains added taurine. 'Vegan' cat food [4] didn't at first and cats fed on that went blind.
[3] Not the utterly useless degree from Oxbridge which seems to be the only degree needed to get to high office in government.
[4] If vegans were that dedicated to not having animals killed for their convenience maybe they shouldn't select as a pet an animal that is a primary carnivore and that has to eat meat in order to be healthy. Maybe get a hamster instead? Although those have been known to eat meat in the wild.. (as do most pure herbivores - especially when breeding. Admittedly, only in very small quantites and only under very specific circumstances)
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Tuesday 17th September 2019 17:37 GMT jake
Re: Vegan Beer
"A lot of cats become lactose-intolerant"
You do know that "milk" is built for baby bovines, not your adult cats, right? Unless you can show me where bovines nurse felines "in the wild", of course.
Spot on about idiots trying to feed carnivores a vegan diet. I;ve listened to some pretty wild convoluted bullshit trying to justify the mistreatment of their supposedly "loved" pets. I view such stupidity as proof that a purely vegan diet rots the human brain.
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Saturday 14th September 2019 16:40 GMT Muscleguy
I was initially confused by the lactose. I have brewed my own and currently make my own Lactose free Ice Creams and Sorbets* so I understand the processes.
I suspect they use lactose so it won’t be ‘worked on’ by the yeast.
I’m not susceptible to hipster beers. They are acting like nobody ever brewed anything before they were hatched or tried stuff. Spare me the hair shirt ‘triple hopped’ things. They are seriously unbalanced brews.
I’m also partial to a good Belgian fruit beer now and again. I’ve even made an ice cream with one.
*Currently I have a white choc ice cream with raspberry ripple (from fresh berries) and a blackberry sorbet is in the works. I’ll give you a tip for free, you can make a rocquefort ice cream and it will taste strange on its own, but pair it with anything apple: pie, crumble or just stewed and the combination is absolutely sensational.
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Saturday 14th September 2019 10:11 GMT Mage
Re: made with flowers and fruits
At bit pedantic:
They are herbal infusions unless based on Camellia Sinensis. There are real teas with added fruit, blossoms or spices, they have Camellia Sinensis as the main ingredient. Many herbal infusions actually have Hibiscus as the main base, even if not in the branding. Wikipedia seems to use "tea" for herbal beverages with no Camellia Sinensis in them, so perhaps it's OK in the USA to call them teas, though nowadays most herbal infusions in Irish & UK shops do have "Tea" in the name.
It's true that beer doesn't need hops. Both dandelion and also burdock were used before hops, or nothing at all extra.
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Friday 13th September 2019 18:12 GMT Anonymous Coward
You're thinking..
Of German beers. Even then, the German purity laws aren't.
Alot of damn fine beers use oats in the grist these days and wheat is no stranger. As for your 'traditional malt, yeast, hops and water', North brewing do plenty of them upto and including a beer that managed to hit 18.6% abv.
The things they could teach you about using hops would boggle the traditionalist back to the 70's.
(also worth noting the Gose beers tend to be purchased by the fairer sex which is maybe where all the indignation is coming from?).
Anon because I'm going to be down voted anyway.
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Tuesday 17th September 2019 12:28 GMT Spamfast
Re: You're thinking..
I'd still rather drink German lager than British.
The Reinheitsgebot has been blamed for stiffling variety but these days getting an exception for a (God help us) "craft" beer is fairly straightforward.
It does mean you know what you're getting though, rather than the "under license" swill that comes out of Dorchester or wherever.
In winter in the UK I do prefer a decent bitter though.
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Tuesday 17th September 2019 18:32 GMT jake
Re: You're thinking..
Don't think of Bud as beer. Think of it as preserved water. I find a tall can of bud light in he shower after a long, hot day of mowing (or other ranch work) to be quite refreshing. No residual sugars, no sticky mouth feel, no off flavo(u)rs, not too much carbonation, no alcohol to speak of (it's actually 4.2%, Bud is 5%) ... Don't get me wrong, I'm glad real beers/ales exist! But the cheep & cheerful American lagers have their place, too.
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Tuesday 17th September 2019 19:04 GMT Charles 9
Re: You're thinking..
Which is why they're so popular in America. Just recall: America is a lot hotter than Europe, especially in the summer. Most won't care if it's close to water; so long as it isn't actually water; they just wanna cool off and get a buzz.
And PS. If you think the big brand names are close to water, you might want to stay away from the thought experiment which is low-point beer (as in 3.2% ABV)...or worse, near-beer (attempts to have all the taste but none of the alcohol--most are held in low regard).
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Friday 13th September 2019 21:41 GMT jake
A traditional brew with 52% alcohol?
Last time I checked, the most tolerant strain of yeast topped out at just under 30% before suiciding on their own alcohol ... You can add things to the mash to force the yeast higher than that (potassium salts come to mind), but the results aren't drinkable, and are primarily used for biofuel.
The only way to get past this natural block is distillation of one form or another. Most brewers of ultra-high alcohol "beers" use fractional distillation by crystallization ...
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Friday 13th September 2019 21:55 GMT Charles 9
Re: A traditional brew with 52% alcohol?
Eisbocks (ice beers), IOW. Stuff like Tactical Nuclear Penguin is usually jacked (freeze-distilled). The best known super-strong all-fermented beer is Samuel Adams Utopias (from an American craft brewer). Their custom yeast IINM tops out at about 25% ABV.
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Saturday 14th September 2019 08:57 GMT Rol
Re: A traditional brew with 52% alcohol?
It was my investigations into freeze distillation that uncovered my ignorance of methanol. An ignorance that has been allowed to perpetuate throughout the population and at times encouraged by vested parties.
Distillation does not create dangerously toxic alcohol. A fermented brew will have no more methanol in it after distillation than it started with, and if you discard the first lot of vapours coming off the brew, you will end up with less methanol, as it boils at a slightly lower temperature than ethanol.
And so a 2 litre carton of supermarket plonk can be placed in a domestic freezer and the unfrozen alcohol drained off leaving the frozen water behind. The result having exactly the same ratio of good to bad alcohol that was in the wine to start with. Connoisseur brandy it will not be, but it's marginally better than Brut 33/Old Spice/lighter fuel.
It's obvious when you think about it, but the industry and health bodies are quite happy to have us believe distillation is somehow dangerous, when in actual fact, it is the fermentation process where the most care needs to be taken.
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Saturday 14th September 2019 16:39 GMT Paul Crawford
Re: A traditional brew with 52% alcohol?
True, methanol is not created by distillation, etc, but by something seriously wrong with what you started out with.
But anther very important point is you can't separate methanol and ethanol by distillation beyond a certain point, so if you have something that was tainted with methanol (.e.g methylated spirits) you might get rid of the colour and majority of taste by distallation, but it will still be toxic.
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Saturday 14th September 2019 16:52 GMT Muscleguy
Re: A traditional brew with 52% alcohol?
New Zealand a couple of decades ago abolished strictures against home distilling. By accident and there hasn’t been an epidemic of methanol poisoning.
What happened was that during a government economy drive Customs and Excise offered up the still inspection regime as a ‘we’re trying’ attempt to not have to cut anything but govt took them seriously and it went. The main thrust was things like the water still we had in the lab during my PhD. Two in fact for single and double distilled H2O. They had lead seals on them so we couldn’t drain them and put hooch in there. Once a year the inspector would come, check the old seals with intact and put new ones on with the new date.
Home distilling fell out of savings from stopping that and home brew shops in NZ stock a range of home all in one stills, and methanol test kits. But home brew is pretty common and brewers know how not to screw up.
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Tuesday 17th September 2019 13:13 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: A traditional brew with 52% alcohol?
is distillation of one form or another
OldestBrother tried freeze-distillation of his home-made wiine at one point and got to a reasonable (40%?) ABV. It was a load of faff and he gave up in the end.
He tried it because it was the only legal distillation method not requiring a license.
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Sunday 15th September 2019 07:46 GMT Stork
Don't you miss a decimal point there?
Generally, yeasts start getting dizzy by their own output when it reaches the late teens which is probably why you rarely find wines much over 15% (the local http://www.quintadator.com/en/ does one at 17%, yummy).
You may get higher, but is it drinkable
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Sunday 15th September 2019 08:34 GMT James R Grinter
Brodies’ Elizabethan
Was officially 22%, though when it was still being drunk a few years later it’s hard to say. It was very nice, though.
Stuart Howe, then of Sharps, did brew his Turbo Yeast Abomination from Hell, https://brewingreality.blogspot.com/2010/01/3-turbo-yeast-abomination-from-hell.html, I did get to try some but I don’t remember what it’s final gravity was.
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Saturday 14th September 2019 17:01 GMT Muscleguy
Re: Thick as a smoothie & sour?
It will be a summer beer. Making a 2.5-3% light beer for summer is not an easy thing as the lack of malt to keep it light and the alcohol low makes it hard to balance. I’ve had a few unbalanced versions and only a couple of good ones.
Stuff like this is easier than trying to brew a proper beer. One of my favourite brewers is Harviestoun of Alloa. Every one of their brews is very good. Their Schiehallion Pilsner is fantastic on a hot day and their Old Engine Oil Porter on a cold one or in a slow cooked oxtail stew.
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Saturday 14th September 2019 17:04 GMT Muscleguy
Re: we rely upon readers to tell us what colour it turns your, er, you know.
That is not as far fetched as it might seem since it has fruit in it. The most common sugar in the substance is in fact fructose and since we cannot make it the male body squirrels fructose from the diet away to the prostate.
So eat your fruit guys.
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Tuesday 17th September 2019 13:28 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: we rely upon readers to tell us what colour it turns your, er, you know.
since we cannot make it the male body squirrels fructose from the diet away to the prostate
There is so much fail in that post that I can hardly think about where to start:
1. In general, the human body doesn't make any of the sugars (absent some very specfic conditions). What it does do is take the carbohydrates that you eat and, eventually, break them down into glucose that then gets stored - either in the liver (stored as glycogen) or the muscles and fat.
2. Fructose, being one of the simple sugars, gets stored in the liver in the same way as glucose does. Table sugar is generally a compund of glucose and fructose. As the name suggests, the primary source of fructose is fruit (although it's also contained in honey). It's sweeter than glucose - which is why it's used a lot in foods in the US (the dreaded 'high fructose corn syrup'). Over consumption is directly indicated in some forms of T2 diabetes. It also has no taste other than being sweet. Any fruit flavours come from the organic volatiles and oils rather than the fructose (which only gives sweetness).
In short - maybe learn something about human biology *before* displaying your ignorance quite so publically?
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Saturday 21st September 2019 11:35 GMT Spamfast
Re: we rely upon readers to tell us what colour it turns your, er, you know.
There is so much fail in that post that I can hardly think about where to start
Dead on. Glad you posted to save me having to.
One additional point. Fructose (and sucrose - table sugar) can be metabolized and can have the same negative effects as glucose on the body but our pancreases don't react to it in the same way as glucose. To see why this is a problem, read the article on WebMD.
Eating fruit is good for you in moderation because the levels of sugar are low compared to those in processed food and fruit has lots of other benefits. But just because fructose has Latin for fruit in it doesn't make it healthier than sucrose or glycose.
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Friday 13th September 2019 15:32 GMT JohnFen
I would have said that differently
"pushes the boundaries of taste, flavour and colour".
When I read that, I can't help but think it's code for "this stuff is disgusting".
I don't know if it is or not (and I can't drink beer or wine anyway -- I have to stick with liquor), but that's how the copy reads to me.
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Friday 13th September 2019 18:19 GMT jake
Re: lactose-free alternatives for thickening their fruited sour beers
Relax. The thickener is just fruit pulp.
The "lactose free" thing comes from the idiots not knowing where the lactobacillus (one of the bugs that sours the beer) comes from. It's all about marketing, and playing on the fears of the ignorant. Kinda like religion, no?
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Friday 13th September 2019 18:06 GMT jake
Re: I'm off
I fry mine in pork fat. It's part of my "everything but the oink, and we're working on that" philosophy.
Agree that duck fat is tasty for chips (both Brit and Yank meaning of chip!). Unfortunately, I rarely have several gallons of the stuff, so I use it more as a finishing oil. Try drizzling it on steak instead of butter or blue cheese ...
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Friday 13th September 2019 18:16 GMT jake
Re: I'm off
Speaking of bloody vegans ... A friend of mine had to defend himself from a vegan wielding a plackard at an anti-meat demonstration once. Only had to hit him once (after being hit by the sign four times ... we have it on video). Connected with him squarely on the nose, and the vegan went down. My friend was later heard to comment "Vegans bleed! Who knew?" ...
No, we weren't out to find trouble. We had just finished a late lunch at the House of Prime Rib in San Francisco, and the bastards were waiting for us as we exited the building ... The maître de gave us a copy of the security tapes "just in case".
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Tuesday 17th September 2019 13:32 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
Re: Free samples
If I won't drink my own piss
Apparently, you can recycle is 3-4 times before it becomes toxic. And no, I don't know how they tested that and I probably really, really don't want to know.
Middle Ages doctors sometimes would take a sip of a patients' urine in order to do a diagnosis. Hence their name for T2 diabetes "the sugar disease" because the body tries to dump the excess glucose out into the urine.
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Friday 13th September 2019 18:00 GMT Mage
Re: You can make beer with milk?
Certainly you can put some milk into malt when fermenting beer. However it simply sweetens it.
"Mackeson Stout is a milk stout first brewed in 1907. It contains lactose, a sugar derived from milk. Because lactose cannot be fermented by beer yeast, it adds sweetness, body, and energy to the finished beer."
I prefer Murphy. Proper Stout.
Milk on its own would be tricky, though yogurt and cheese are lower lactose (the milk sugars) than the source milk due to the creation process converting it. However fermenting milk into yogurt is using a bacteria not a yeast, so it's not alcoholic.
I don't know of any yeast that will convert lactose to alcohol, though such might exist.
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Friday 13th September 2019 21:00 GMT Anonymous Coward
"Yorkshire rhubarb" .... got given a taster set of minature gin bottles for Christmas last year - one was "Yorkshire Rhubarb Gin" .... definitely glad that it was only a minature as I never want to experience that flavour combo again ... I suspect Yorkshire rhubarb beer might share some of the same properties so I won't be giving it a try.
A year or two earlier someone gave me a box of "UK micro-brewery bottled beer" .... again sounded interesting but was a huge disappointment and I concluded that while a couple of decades ago home-brew bores were restricted to inflicting their dire products on friends and neighbours that now with web sites etc they feel able to target everyone.
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Saturday 14th September 2019 09:51 GMT Anonymous Coward
My fortnightly trip to Leeds for comics and coffee is next week, so I may well swing by the brewery tap and give this a go.
However, I'm a bit leery of any collabs that North Brewing undertake these days, especially after the utter catastrophe that was 'Sour Bru', the beer they did with Brewdog for the 2016(?) Collabfest. Jesus H. Tittyfucking Christ, that stuff tasted like vinegar (and I _like_ sours, gueuze in particular)
Also, as several people have pointed out already, if a beer is unfined or doesn't using isinglass finings then there's a better than even chance that it is vegan anyway.
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Monday 16th September 2019 00:10 GMT John Geek
real beer has no lactose and is vegan inherently, as its just made from water, barley, hops and a bit of yeast. I prefer my brews with minimal to no adjuncts. ok, a bit of oatmeal in an oatmeal stout is OK whomever started putting chocolate and/or coffee in stouts and porters should be taken out at a dawn and summarily shot
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Monday 16th September 2019 01:14 GMT Gordon 8
Waste of a bullet
No don't shoot them.... Send them to Leeds to drink Pink 'Beer'.
I have a Chocolate beer in the Fridge (A gift from a friend) I just can't face the utter disappointment that I know it will be.
I never realised that value of the Education I got from joining RADSOC @ Birmingham University. The pub crawls were an education (and almost got in the way of my Education...). Thanks guys.
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Monday 16th September 2019 19:35 GMT Anonymous Coward
Re: Waste of a bullet
I have a Chocolate beer in the Fridge (A gift from a friend) I just can't face the utter disappointment that I know it will be.
Depends what it is.
One of the best chocolate beers out there, IMO, is Sam Smith's Chocolate Stout .... better still, the brewery is about 6 miles down the road from me. The Brooklyn Brewery did (still do?) a pretty decent chocolate stout too.
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Monday 16th September 2019 10:47 GMT Rosie Davies
I've made a chocolate stout (from grain with all the hassle and mess that implies) and no chocolate was used in the mix. It's due to the roating of the malt, a bit more than amber (that gives you your 'biscuit' flavours') and a bit less than black malt (_really_ astringent, too much makes your mouth hurt).
I don't know what the real brewers get up to but cocoa is much more expensive that chocolate malt and you'd need a LOT of it to get a reasonable flavour (I know, I've tried). I'd be surprised if they did this but am probably as wrong about that as I am about so many things.
Rosie
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Tuesday 17th September 2019 12:45 GMT CrazyOldCatMan
"manly bright pink"
Well, to the Victorians, pink *was* the colour for boys (and blue for girls)..
I think it was in the 1940s that things changed - and, as a warning that the end times were coming, the change was driven more by retailer marketing than anything else.
Of course, nowadays I'd like to think we were prone to less stereotyping/ I'm known as an optimistic soul..