The headline caught my eye immediately, and not just because it had "beer" in it. Okay, that was a big part of it, but mostly it was the contention it made.
Mead has a long history and a future as a sustainable beer alternative.
Um, a what?
Suggesting that mead would be a suitable alternative to beer strongly suggests you've never had beer. Or mead. Or maybe both, or any beverage for that matter that wasn't sparkling water or possibly grape Kool-Aid.
I had to check out the author, Tony Rehagen, and found his website.
Rehagen is a freelancer out of St. Louis, MO, and, to my enduring astonishment, not only does he write about beer, he has an entire tab on his website dedicated to it.
My curiosity now racing, I clicked through.
I'm sorry, did I say he wrote about beer? I meant to say he wrote about "beer," or at least what he appears to think is beer (perhaps the result of a college prank his roommate played on him freshman year, and he never caught on).
This became increasingly clear as I took a closer look at what he chose to highlight in his piece on "The 13 best beers we drank this year."
Let's take a look at that third one from the left first.
Yeah, dude. That's hard cider.
Hard cider is not beer. It's hard cider. In fact, that's why we use different words for it. We use different words for lots of things, and for good reason. For example, we have a different word for "bathroom" than we do for "casserole." This is so we can avoid potentially awkward social situations like were you to ask a dinner hostess, "Excuse me, I really need to pee, could you tell me where your casserole is?"
You'd think they would have taught him that in journalisming school (University of Missouri for future résumé culling purposes).
How did a hard cider even make this list? According to the the website it's "beer inspired."
Well, I suppose when you abandon any pretense of objective reality, a hard cider can be anything it wants!
The one immediately to the left of that? Now that's a beer. Sort of.
This is supposed to be "brunch mimosa inspired" which I guess makes sense, given it appears to be less a beer and more a fruit cocktail.
Rehagen's confusion regarding mead and beer is becoming clearer.
Even the two more beer-like examples he uses are a bit on the precious side. There's Pulling Nails, a "blend of sour and wild ales aged in French Oak for 10 months to 3 years," and Corylus, a "Bourbon Barrel Aged Imperial Stout with Hazelnuts, Cacao & Coffee."
But these aren't beers so much as they are flavored novelties, and I don't say that as someone who drinks Pabst Blue Ribbon (not when I'm employed anyway), but someone who routinely purchases craft ales from local breweries. It's just that when you fuss that much over a beer or ale you are trying to make it into something it isn't, like the person who says they like "coffee" and then orders a caramel macchiato with two pumps of vanilla, whipped cream, and a Pirouline.
You don't like coffee. You like dessert.
Unfortunately, the full article is behind a Bloomberg paywall, so I don't know what the other choices were (but I would not be surprised to learn that at least one was Yoo-hoo).
But hey, to each his own. However, given Rehagen's rather expansive definition of what beer is, perhaps it would have been wise to assign a different writer to this story.
Of course, abandoning the beer angle would be to abandon the climate hysteria angle as almost the entirety of the article is about how very bad beer is for the environment and how very good mead is, not to mention how very deep, heartfelt, and possibly pathological is the commitment to sustainability on the part of the subjects of the article, a couple named Brett and Megan Hines who started Buzz Meadery in Berlin, Maryland.
"We wanted to go with our values of sourcing as much local product as we could," says Megan Hines. "We wanted to make a truly local beverage. And a lot of grain is grown far away at a big commercial scale. Bringing grain in from across the country is not a sustainable long-term thing."
Bad news for those of us who like bread.
And don't live in Kansas.
"Mead is perhaps headed to be the drink that, if it's made as it can be and stays in its own environment, can be the lowest carbon-footprint beverage there is," says Ken Schramm, owner of the renowned Michigan-based Schramm's Mead
That's what I want in a beverage, the lowest carbon footprint. That, and equity, I guess. Right? Something like that, I'm sure.
Of course, if your principle motivation in making a beverage is its impact on the environment and not its impact on consumer satisfaction, you are probably going to get substandard results.
That's how you end up with products like the Chevy Chevette.
The article is truly relentless on how very much better mead is for the environment in pretty much every way.
Barley, along with other adjuncts in beer, such as corn, rice and wheat, is an annual crop. That means every year, farmers plow and plant, releasing CO2 and carbon into the atmosphere. Those commercial crops often require use of potentially harmful herbicides and pesticides. Perhaps most important: In times of drought, these fields require irrigation.
Irrigation? You mean one of the most important innovations in the history of humankind and without which civilization would probably not be possible?
The fruits generally used in making mead, on the other hand, grow from perennial trees and vines. And the honey?
"You don't have to irrigate plants that rely on bees," says Ayla Guild, beekeeper and co-owner of The Hive Taproom meadery, in East Troy, Wis. "During drought, bees are scrappy. They figure it out. Certain plants thrive in drought, and the bees know how to find them."
Please make it stop.
Proximity is a key differentiator for mead when it comes to carbon footprint. The primary ingredients in beer are barley and hops, the production of which are both mainly concentrated in the western and northwestern regions of the U.S. According to the Hop Growers of America, Washington state produces more than twice the amount of hops than does the rest of the country; and the USDA says that most domestic barley production — three-fourths of which is used for malting — is in Idaho, Montana and North Dakota.
They aren't going to stop, are they? No, they are not. This is a concerted attack on prosperity, on transportation, on the notion of comparative advantage, and of modernity's history of expanding horizons so that an average guy living somewhere in New England can enjoy a Narragansett that was made with hops grown a continent away.
Meanwhile, honey can be produced virtually anywhere, with North Dakota apiaries churning out about 31 million pounds, followed by a far-flung array of regions, including California (11.5 million pounds), Texas (8.32 million), Montana (7.5 million), Florida (7.35 million), South Dakota (7.2 million) and Minnesota (5.2 million).
They won't stop, but I will.
You have likely noticed by now that mead uses honey as its primary ingredient, not grain, and yet they want to convince you that it could substitute for beer, I guess in the same way key lime pie could substitute for lasagna.
Hey, they both use … an oven.
And they really want to convince you, that like tavern pizza, mead is pretty much sweeping the nation, if slowly.
Mead has ancient roots, predating human agriculture, with origins at least as far back as the New Stone Age.
Our betters sure like the olden days, at least when it serves their purpose.
I am personally looking forward to sustainably sourced artisanal hard tack which I understand pairs really well with maggots.
Over the past decade-plus, the beverage has found a foothold in the ongoing craft beverage movement — a recent report from Technavio research group projected mead to be a $2.26 billion global market by 2026. And while Europe, steeped in the mead-making tradition, still holds the largest chunk of that market, the United States is closing fast.
Mead's modern resurgence...
Resurgence!
... can be linked to several factors, appealing to gluten-free drinkers, an association with mainstream fantasy fiction like "Game of Thrones" or even sheer novelty.
That's a shaky foundation upon which to build a corporate empire.
Long-standing industry leaders such as Michigan's B. Nektar (founded in 2006) and Colorado's Redstone Meadery (2001) have turned their niche followings into well-known national brands.
Really? Well known among whom? Hobbits?
For the record, clearly there are fans of mead out there. It's a real, if small, industry with devoted followers, connoisseurs, and no doubt message boards where people argue passionately over minutia and where marriages have been ended over the relative merits of north Wisconsin bees vs. northeast Wisconsin bees.
But is it really "starting to catch on" and experiencing a "resurgence?"
But whatever the reason for its current popularity,...
You're the reason for its current level of popularity, but please do carry on.
... the ancient drink might owe its future to the fact that, in many ways, it's better for the Earth than beer.
Oh, right, this is why they are so desperate to manufacture a groundswell of consumer demand for mead.
But okay, you know what? I'm going to go with it and hop on this sustainably sourced bandwagon.
And so, newly excited over the vast selection of mead products that surely awaited me, I headed out to my local Total Wine & More, which is part of a chain of wine and beer superstores. These are typically the size of large supermarkets, and in fact, the one I go to was a former grocery store and stocks endless aisles of wine, beer, hard cider, mixers, snacks and … one shelf and change of mead. A really short shelf.
Yep, that's it, literally shoved in a lonely back corner of the store. I turned around.
This is how big this store is, a celebration of all that is alcohol save for spirits (we have ABC stores in Virginia). It doesn't just stock well-known brands, either, or go for pure volume plays, but is rather known for featuring large selections from smaller makers. The one I was in has the better part of an aisle featuring scores of Virginia craft breweries.
And yet here I was standing in a corner all but blowing the dust off the bottles. This was truly the land of misfit beverages.
I would never have found this on my own. They guy who helped me kind of apologized, "It's not much," he said.
No, it wasn't.
As I checked out the selections, something popped out at me, something I had completely forgotten until this moment.
I've had mead before, but it was quite a while ago, and I recall my reaction at the time being along the lines of, "Oh, so that's why no one drinks this anymore." But I didn't think about it much beyond that, certainly not much beyond the fact that it was nothing like beer.
That's because it's not beer.
What is it?
It's honey wine.
It says so right on the label.
Hold on to that thought for a moment.
My choices were obviously limited, and most were from Europe where mead is relatively more popular. Still, I was pretty sure "Viking Blood" was not in keeping with the modern ethos of this new trend in locally made, environmentally conscious, micro meaderies, so I ended up going with this one from Charm City Meadworks:
It seemed to best capture the, um, buzz, around Buzz Meadery from the Post article. It is located right up the road in Baltimore, Maryland, is hand crafted, has a similar line of products, and bonus, is way less preachy. I also liked this particular one in that it wasn't smothered in added fruit flavors and so perhaps a good honest look at mead.
The back of the bottle suggests it be served at room temperature or slightly chilled. I went with slightly chilled assuming it would arrive at room temperature as I drank it so I'd ultimately get to sample both presentations.
It looks like beer, to the extent apple cider looks like beer.
I took a sip.
It was not awful, not at all, but it was not beer, chilled or otherwise.
Not. At. All.
It reminded me of a sweet sherry, or a straight up dessert wine. In fact, that corner it was stashed in featured both sherry and port.
And here's the thing, Charm City really plays up how they make "light and dry" mead, and yet there's no getting around this stuff is made out of honey. It's only ever going to be so "dry." In fact, it's downright cloying. No one is going to sit around with his friends downing a six-pack of mead watching the game.
This is wine. Sweet syrupy wine at that. That's just what it is.
It's not even carbonated, not typically. It has no hops, either. How could this possibly be considered a substitute for beer? It would be like trying to convince a coffee drinker that Mountain Dew is a perfectly suitable substitute for a Starbucks Venti. Yes, they share a handful of commonalities in that they both contain caffeine and both are wet, but that's about it.
Some meaderies do add carbonation and hops, but that's like Lia Thomas throwing on a dress and expecting to be welcome in the women's locker room.
You're not convincing anybody.
I went back to the Post. You know what phrase does not appear once in the article?
"Honey wine."
This is despite the fact that, according to Sound Brewery, a home brewing site, that is exactly what it is.
Now, what is the difference between mead and honey wine? Are there any variations between the two? Not really. Mead is honey wine. Honey wine is mead. But mead is the favored terminology, because it helps differentiate between wine, beer, and mead.
Apparently, mead being honey wine was a problem for the people pushing mead because let's face it, drinking mead really does sound all Game of Thrones-ish; whereas, drinking honey wine sounds all Gay of Thrones-ish.
(And yes, that was a thing.)
Ah, but there was a solution to that.
In the United States, the confusion between honey wine vs mead has a lot to do with legalities. The federal regulator of alcohol, also known as the Alcohol & Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB). Even in present day, the TTB must approve of all alcohol labels, and for many years, the labeling division chose honey wine over mead. Around 2016, producers were legally required to label mead as honey wine. Now, thanks to the American Mead Makers Association, the TTB has allowed mead and honey wine to be used interchangeably.
While "honey wine" may not appear at all in the Post article, you know what does appear in the article? Seven times?
Carbon.
This is not education.
It's inculcation.
"Carbon-footprint," "carbon-positive," "carbon-eating forests," and "carbon-sequestering prairies."
That's pretty much an entire musical festival of band names right there.
The Post article definitely brought out the mead fans in force, pitchforks in hand. Well, maybe not pitchforks. A Widow's Wail and Longclaw perhaps?
Regardless, I thought this guy nailed it:
There are lots of reasons to drink mead with the most important one being it is delicious. Sustainability is not one of them. The cost of moving grain for brewing beer is insignificant relative to the overall cost of production. The sustainability of honey and mead only works if just a handful of residents drink alcohol and that's simply just not the case. Drink mead because you like it not because you want to save the world.
Of course, this is Washington, D.C. so you also had exchanges like this one as well.
What crazy talk is this? You can take my pilsner from my cold dead hands!
A joke, obviously.
But not everyone can take a joke, or even understand when one is being told.
Who is trying to take your pilsner from you? Not everyone enjoys beer. De gustibus non disputandum est.
Rough translation: "I'm an insufferable twit."
Okay, that's not word for word, but that's pretty much the gist of it.
A lot of people like that in D.C. A lot.
What is behind this new mead-for-wine "replacement theory" being foisted upon us by the power elite and their media puppets?
It's not about the environment, of course, that's just a panic-inducing mechanism for the accumulation of power and has been under way for decades.
It's part of the hyper-localization of everything. Trying to limit the movement of goods, to limit our access to items beyond our backyards, is part of the same intention as the 15-Minute City, where everything you "need" as defined by state and corporate powers, is within 15 minutes walking or biking distance. You won't "need" a car, and if you want to go further, you can use mass transportation, which is also controlled by state and corporate powers and which determine when it runs, where it goes, and even whether you are permitted to use it.
The climate "crisis" is a ruse; their increasing desperation to incite panic over it tells you everything you need to know. The goal is control. Shrink your world, put you in little pods. Use deep-state actors embedded in social media to control what you can see beyond your little world.
At Buzz, which this summer will release its first cans of carbonated session mead made with Maryland honey, Megan Hines says the calculus is simple: "I think everyone should be hyperlocal and lower environmental impact. Just support your local people."
I guess parochialism is in, again?
Of course, that's just for you, not for the rich and powerful. They are important people with important things to do. They still need access to private jets, and all the finest things in life from around the world, the better to be able to make decisions for you.
Something else interesting to note: They want to replace beer with honey wine.
If sustainability is so important, if localizing production is so critical to our collective futures, why not go after wine instead, or at at least together with wine? Swapping in one kind of wine for another makes much more sense than swapping it in for beer.
Perhaps it's because beer is more popular among people who don't typically fly private?
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