Unique Whiskey Made From Ancient Grain Grown In Wyoming Called Emmer Debuts

Lex Anteinternet: Elemental activities.

Lex Anteinternet: Elemental activities.: 

Elemental activities.

Indeed, if I had power for some thirty years I would see to it that people should be allowed to follow their inbred instincts in these matters, and should hunt, drink, sing, dance, sail, and dig, and those that would not should be compelled by force. 

Hilaire Belloc

Lex Anteinternet: Bud Light, controversy, and why are you drinking that stuff anyway?

Lex Anteinternet: Bud Light, controversy, and why are you drinking t...: 

Bud Light, controversy, and why are you drinking that stuff anyway?

Real beer, made locally.

In one of the absurd American corporate efforts to get on the cutting edge of a social trend, irrespective of whether it's temporary, existentially justified, or related to the product, Budweiser released an advertisement with Dylan Mulvaney, a man claiming to be transgendered and who affects a very girlish persona, badly, in a cartoonish fashion.  Indeed, it's an example of how those who claim to be transgendered men sometime affect a much more girlish behavior than girls do, and it's accordingly more than a little cartoonish.  It's a pretty extreme example, which raises its own questions.

Mulvaney is apparently an actor, and came to prominence in the play The Book Of Mormon.  I haven't seen the play and don't care to.  I'm obviously not a Mormon, but I don't like people poking fun of, or making a satire out of, religious beliefs in that fashion.  Eye of the Tiber or The Babylon Bee are one thing, but they aren't actually hostile to religion, and indeed the Bee has come to be controversial as it has started being satirical about society in general, from a general Christian prospective.  The three person team who are responsible for The Book Of Mormon, however, are out of South Park, which is an aggressively nasty cartoon, and one of them is a stated atheist and the other, a theist who declares religion itself to be silly, something that shows a massive intellectual deficit on his part.  It's sort of like saying that you believe in cars but find transportation silly. They aren't coming out of a prospective of love, suffice it to say, and while I haven't seen The Book Of Mormon, South Park is of the National Lampoon brand of humor which is juvenile, self focused, and mean.  I don't know if Book takes a mean spirited approach to Mormons, but what I tend to find is that for people who live outside the Rocky Mountain West, the LDS faith isn't understood in any context at all, and people tend to think of them as 1) some sort of Protestant evangelistic faith, maybe like the Baptists, or 2) something that Warren Jeffs defines, or 3) a tiny silly group.  None of that would be correct, and in the Rocky Mountain West the LDS church is a major institution, not some sort of odd joke.  From a Christian prospective, particularly in from a Catholic one, there are a lot of things that could be taken on, discussed and critiqued about the LDS, but making fun of them in a sophomoric fashion is disrespectful and reflects very poorly on the people doing it and a society that finds it amusing.

My overall view of mine is that if you wouldn't feel comfortable making analogous jokes about Islam, you probably flat out avoid doing it about any other faith.  In other words, if you are going to do a Book of Mormon, you ought to follow it up with The Koran in the same fashion.

That's not going to happen, nor should it either, as The Book Of Mormon shouldn't have.

But I digress.

Mulvaney decided he would affect the appearance of a woman, sort of, at some point and has affected an Audrey Hepburn like style, which nobody in this current age does. Hepburn's style was unique to herself, but she was a genuine, lithe, woman, who genuinely defined grace in her own era, and to a large extent still does.  She wasn't girlish, but rather very mature while young at the same time, and frankly rising up in popularity as a reaction to the Playboy influenced huge boob actresses of the time, something that would actually see further influence in the 60s while really being limited, however, to movies and television.  Mulvaney on the other hand, if truth be told, looks like a really anemic guy trying to look like a girl, and failing at an attempt to affect an appearance of an actress of a prior era, something he's tried to do in a TikTok series apparently called Days of Girlhood.  It's really creepy.

For some weird reason, Budweiser thought he'd make a good spokesman for Bud Light.

Bud Light is awful, as are most of the mass-produced light beers.  I don't know why anyone drinks it, which brings me to this, something that has nothing really to do with transgenderism.

Light beer, or American Light Lager as beer aficionados like to call it, is so popular in the US that even small local breweries brew it.  Small local breweries have gotten really good, and they tend to put out a better product than huge industrial alcohol concerns like  AB InBev, which owns Budweiser.

I really don't think average companies have any place in social movements of any kind. I'll make an exception for companies particularly associated with some sort of institution. So, for example, a company that makes backpacking equipment being involved in conservation, etc., makes sense to me. But beer is just beer.  If there was a cause associated with beer, it would be combating alcoholism, but a cause like that wouldn't exactly sell more beer.

Here the decision was blisteringly odd.  Is AB InBev trying to show its hip cool and down with the times, in a Justice Kennedy type fashion?  The beer market is saturated (no pun), and therefore the only real option left is to try to grab somebody else's market share, but do people who claim to be transgendered constitute a self-conscious body when they buy beer, or are they just people buying beer?

I'm guessing they're just people buying beer.

Obviously AB InBev thought there was some market share to grab there, while not losing some, but as market decisions go, it seems like a rather odd one.

Oh well, it's worth noting that this is the same beer brand that once sent out paintings of Custer's Last Stand, although they probably had their actual market right at that time.

Anyhow, just buy local.  If a microbrewery is boosting a cause, it's probably a local one, or one that's more focused, and it probably doesn't involve a cynical marketing effort like this does.

And indeed, just this past week I went to a local microbrewery and bought two small growlers of their beer.  It actually did have a beer that it had brewed boosting a cause.  I didn't buy it, but I did buy two of their other beers, to go with the first grilling attempt of the season.  The brots I bought were from a local butcher.

There are other options out there, and given that there are, why would a person, causes aside, go with a bad massed produced beer, ever?

Lex Anteinternet: Another reason to be a distributist. Remote cooperation with evil.

Lex Anteinternet: Another reason to be a distributist. Remote coope...: 

Another reason to be a distributist. Remote cooperation with evil.

I'm not drinking Heineken.

I'm not drinking because I'm boycotting it for Ukraine, however.  I just don't like it.  It's skunky, in my view.  The same, I'd note, is true of Stella Artois, in my view, fairly frequently.  I love Stella's ads, but the beer. . . not so much.

I will say that Heineken's "NA", alcohol free, beer, if that's truly a beer, is really good.  This is probably explained by the fact that Heineken's trademark green bottles allow real beer to deteriorate, while the NA beer does not.  It's the effect of ultraviolet light on the beer, through the bottles, and is why most beer is bottled in dark brown bottles.  Heineken knows this and could bottle its beer in better bottles, but apparently its fans like to drink skunk water.

Canned Heineken, on the other hand, is pretty good.

Anyhow, I'm actually not drinking any beer at all right now as it is, as I've suspended doing so for Lent.

Others are foregoing Heineken for Ukraine, however.

Recent protest internet poster (I guess it's a poster), very cleverly done.

In March 2022, Heineken promised to leave Russia.  Lots of businesses were doing so at the time.  This fall, however, its Russian unit. . . yes the Dutch brewer has a Russian unit, instead launched 61 new soft drinks in the country which Coca Cola nad Pepsi Cola had excited.

Heineken set to launch soft drinks in Russia 

Sep 22, 2022 — Heineken is going to launch a range of carbonated soft drinks in Russia, where both The Coca-Cola Co. and PepsiCo have halted operations.

And now, a Boycott Heineken movement is on.

Let's be fair, let's hear from Heineken first.

Update on our exit from Russia 

Timeline of decision to exit Russia and where we are now 

24 February 2023

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In early March 2022, we announced that HEINEKEN would stop new investments and exports to Russia, ended the production, sale and advertising of the Heineken® brand, and announced that we will not accept any net financial benefits or profit (ring-fencing) from our business in Russia. 

At the end of March 2022, we made the decision to leave Russia. We were the first global brewer to do so. At the time, we were clear that the process of leaving would need to be handled very carefully with the ongoing safety and wellbeing of our employees at the front of our minds. We also faced – and continue to do so today – the very real risk that if we were to stop our operations or become insolvent, the Russian Government would take action against employees or decide to nationalise our business. 

Why the concern about nationalisation?

Shortly after we announced our decision to remove the Heineken® brand from the market, local operations in Russia received official warnings from Russian prosecutors that if this decision led to the suspension or closure of our business, it would be deemed to be an 'intentional bankruptcy’, which continues to be a criminal offence in Russia to this day.

At the same time, the Russian Government was drafting legislation that would make ‘intentional bankruptcy’ a trigger for nationalisation. While that legislation hasn’t yet been passed, the local laws still allow the government to appoint external management in the case of an ‘intentional bankruptcy.’ Insolvency is also a form of bankruptcy and would likely lead to the same outcome. We continue to interpret this risk to our people and business as significant.

Will the sale lead to a financial benefit to HEINEKEN?

No. First, HEINEKEN will not receive any royalties in the future related to the Russia business. Regarding the anticipated negative financial impact related to the sale of the business, on 28th March 2022, HEINEKEN expected an impairment and other non-cash exceptional charges of approximately EUR 0.4 billion in total. The final loss will be determined at the moment we transfer our business to a new owner. The amount will also partially depend on the Rouble vs. € exchange rate at the time of transfer. As stated in our 2022 Full Year Results press release (page 14), an impairment of €88 million was recorded for the period ended 31 December 2022. At the moment of disposal, the cumulative foreign exchange losses relating to Russia currently recorded in equity (€0.2 billion as per 31 December 2022) will be recognised in the income statement. The €88 million in addition to the €0.2 billion adds up to our current best estimate of circa €300 million of negative financial impact.

Will you return to Russia some day?

Our main focus right now is exiting Russia responsibly. We never comment on the details of ongoing negotiations. We have been clear from the outset that we will not profit from any sale or transfer of ownership of our business nor do we profit from the ongoing operations while we seek a buyer.

Humanitarian support for Ukraine

We thank all of our employees for the ongoing efforts to support the Ukrainian people. From opening their homes to refugees, raising funds and arranging donations, we are very proud of the response of our colleagues.  HEINEKEN has already donated over 1 million Euro via the company and employees to Habitat for Humanity to support humanitarian assistance for refugees. In addition, 700,000 Euro was granted via five local operating companies bordering Ukraine, who identified over 25 local NGOs that could provide immediate relief efforts. 

Next steps

As we move forward, we continue to prioritize care for our people during this transition while finding a suitable buyer in line with our values and in full compliance with international and local laws. Throughout, we have sought to balance our responsibilities in three areas: to protect our employees; to respect the law; and to find the best possible buyer that can give employees the best chance of secure future employment.

It is challenging to close a transaction in Russia at the moment as rules continue to shift. We aren’t dragging our feet and do wish things would move more quickly. With that said, all things remaining the same, we aim to reach an agreement in the first half of this year.

So, in essence, Heineken decided to leave, but the fear of its assets being taken combined with a fear that it'd be declared by Russia to be bankrupt has caused it to stay.  It's selling its holdings there.

Fair enough.

But how did Heineken get in this mess?  Did it just decide to ship some of its skunky green bottled product to Moscow and sell it on the streets?

Not hardly.  Heineken is a giant international suds manufacturer with "global" and local brands.  It's global ones are:

Amstel, billed, bizarrely, as “The world’s most local beer.” 

Sol, its Mexican beer.

Dos Equis, another Mexican beer.

Laguinitas, a once time local California microbrew.

Tiger, its Singaporean beer.

Birra Moretti, its Italiani beer.

Edelweiss, whose name recalls the Alps.

Red Stripe, a one time Jamaican brand.

Dačický, a Czech brand that had been independent from 1573 until Heineken bought it and closed the brewery that had been in operation all that time.

According to Wikipedia, it owns the following breweries:

Brasseries du Maroc, Morocco

Al Ahram Beverages Company, Egypt

Amstel Brewery, Jordan

Harar Brewery, Ethiopia

Bralirwa, Rwanda

Brarudi, Burundi

Brasserie Almaza, Lebanon

Brasseries de Bourbon, Réunion

Bralima, Democratic Republic of the Congo

Consolidated Breweries, Nigeria

Groupe Castel Algérie, Algeria

Nigerian Breweries, Nigeria

Société nouvelles des Brasseries SONOBRA, Tunisia

Sierra Leone Brewery Limited, Sierra Leone

Sedibeng Brewery, South Africa

Tango Brewery, Algeria

Cambodia Brewery Ltd (CBL) in Cambodia

Shanghai Asia Pacific Brewery in China

Hainan Asia Pacific Brewery Company Ltd in China

Guangzhou Asia Pacific Brewery in China (under construction)

Multi Bintang Indonesia in Indonesia

Lao Asia Pacific Brewery in Laos

Sungai Way Brewery in Malaysia

DB Breweries in New Zealand

South Pacific Brewery Ltd (SPB) in Papua New Guinea

Asia Pacific Breweries in Singapore

Asia Pacific Brewery Lanka Limited (APB Lanka) in Sri Lanka

Thai Asia Pacific Brewery in Thailand

Heineken Vietnam Brewery Co Ltd in Vietnam

Heineken Hanoi Brewery Co Ltd in Vietnam

United Breweries Ltd Bangalore in India

Brau Union Österreich in Austria

Syabar Brewing Company in Belarus

Alken-Maes in Belgium

Zagorka Brewery in Bulgaria

Karlovačka pivovara in Croatia

Starobrno in the Czech Republic

Federation Breweries in Gateshead, England (closed 2010)[23]

H. P. Bulmer in Hereford in England

John Smith's in Tadcaster, England

Royal Brewery in Manchester, England

Heineken France:

Brasserie de l'Espérance in Schiltigheim

Brasserie Pelforth in Mons-en-Baroeul

Brasserie de la Valentine in Marseille

Brasserie Fischer in Schiltigheim (closed 2009)

Brasserie Adelshoffen in Schiltigheim (closed 2000)

Brasserie Mutzig in Mutzig (closed 1989)

Athenian Brewery in Greece

Heineken Hungária in Hungary

Heineken Ireland at Lady's Well Brewery in Cork, Ireland

Heineken Italia in Italy

Heineken Nederland in the Netherlands

Żywiec Brewery in Poland

Central de Cervejas in Portugal

Heineken Romania in Romania

Heineken Brewery LLC in Russia

Heineken Srbija in Serbia

Caledonian Brewery, Edinburgh, Scotland

Heineken Slovensko in Slovakia

Heineken España in Spain, with breweries in Seville, Valencia, Jaén and Madrid

Heineken Switzerland in Switzerland

Calanda Bräu in Switzerland

Pivovarna Laško Union in Slovenia

Brasserie Nationale d'Haiti in Haiti

Commonwealth Brewery in the Bahamas

Cervejarias Kaiser in Brazil

Cervecería Cuauhtémoc Moctezuma in Mexico

Cervecerías Barú-Panama, S.A. in Panama

Desnoes & Geddes in Jamaica

Lagunitas Brewing Company in the United States

Windward & Leeward Brewery in Saint Lucia

Surinaamse Brouwerij in Suriname

And hence its problem.

Pity poor Heineken, it's so freaking big that it can't really do much.  If it decides to back up and go back to Holland, the Russians will cause it all sorts of problems.  Now it has to sell at something like a loss just not to have more of a loss.  And in Russia where all opposition to Putin and the war has been shut up, which has sent its army into a neighboring land to kill and rape, as Russian troops seem to commonly do, and which is kidnapping children, at least the locals can still order a bottle of skunk.

Now, its not as if the Russians couldn't get a beer, if they wanted one, anyhow, although reportedly the Russians are very bad at brewing beer.  Given that, actually, they might very well not get a beer but for Western companies with actual know how coming in to do it for them.  Goodness knows that current Russian industry seems to have not moved on much from decades ago in actual technology, so there's no real reason to figure to suppose they would have figured beer out, which everyone else on earth seems to have done.

Now, I don't think depriving Russians of a bad bottle of beer is going to win the war in Ukraine, but it is an interesting example of the remote cooperation with evil.  Once things get too big, their choices are too painful. They can't pull back, or out, without potentially falling to their deaths, much like certain Russians have been doing recently.

And, oddly, by pulling the top on a glass of Dos Equis in Denver, you are helping to keep things sort of normal, just a bit, in Russia.

A problem that wouldn't arise at all if you just bought a draft of beer brewed by your local friends and neighbors, which is now perfectly possible to do.

And that's just one reason to buy local beer.

Could you do Thanksgiving like it's 1621? An Agrarian Thanksgiving

I wrote out a blog entry for Lex Anteinternet on what the first Thanksgiving Dinner in 1621 must have been like.

Pheasants.

It really surprised me, even though it shouldn't.  We modern Americans are so used to the "poverty of resources of our ancestors" story that, well, we believe it.  In reality, that first gathering in English North America to celebrate God's bounty and give thanks for it, no matter how imperfect the Church of England and Puritan celebrants, and the native ones as well, was a really bountiful feast.  I've joked in the past that it probably consisted of salt cod, but in fact it seems likely to have featured waterfowl, maybe turkey, deer, mussels and quite an abundance of other foods stuffs.

Unlike now, what it didn't feature was pie, probably, even though pies of all sorts were a feature of the English diet, although at this point I frankly wonder. What would have kept there from being pie would have been a lack of wheat, as that crop wouldn't have come around for at least a few years. And the lack of a grain crop meant that there wouldn't have been beer, if that's something your Thanksgiving usually features (mine does).  It's an open question if there would have been wine.  There would have been a lot of fresh vegetables, however, as well as fresh foul, venison and fresh fish.

It would have been a good meal, in some ways one we'd recognize, but also one in which we might note some things were missing.  No potatoes, for example.

This set me to wondering what a killetarian/agrarian like me might end up with if allowed to do a  Thanksgiving Dinner all of stuff I'd shot or gathered.  Could I do it?

Well, there'd be no mussels on my table, but most years there would be fare similar to what the first celebrants had.  There are wild turkeys in my region, although I failed to get one this year.  Events conspired against me and I didn't get a deer (at least yet) either.  But if I had a major dinner, and time, I think I could muster it.  It might be pheasant rather than turkey, or a wild turkey, which is really no different in taste, only in bulk, from the domestic ones.

The challenge, however, would be vegetables, depending upon how feral I'd take this endeavor.  If I went full hunter/gatherer, here I'd really be in trouble.  I frankly know next to nothing about edible wild plants.

Now, starting off, I'd note that in my region, like the rest of the globe, a vegetarian would have starved to death in a few days prior to production agriculture.  It's not only an unnatural diet, but it's impossible up until that time.  Indeed, one of the ironies of agriculture has been the introduction of unnatural diets.  When you read, for example, of the Irish poor living on potatoes and oatmeal, while that's not what their Celtic ancestors had eaten prior to 1) row crop agriculture, and 2) the English.  Shoot, potatoes aren't even native to Ireland.

Anyhow, I note that as the native peoples of the plains were more heavily meat eaters than anything else, as that's what there was to eat.  But there is some edible vegetation.

I just don't know much about it.

I guess I'd start off with that I knwo that there's a collection of native berries you can eat.  I mostly know about this as my mohter used to collect some and make wine with them, and I've had syrup and jelly made with them as well. UW publishes a short pamphlet on them, which is available here.  There are also wild leeks, which my mother and father, and at least one of my boyhood friends would recognize, which my mother inaccurately called "wild onions".

And that's about all I know about that.

Which isn't enough to make much of a meal.

Now, a person could probably research this and learn more, and I should, simply because I'd like to know.  Indeed, on the Wind River Indian Reservation there's a "food sovereignty" movement which seeks to reintroduce native foods to the residents there in order to combat health problems, which is a really interesting idea and I hope it has some success.  I hope that they also publish some things on this topic, assuming that they haven't already.

So, in short, at least based on what the present state of my knowledge is, the Thanksgiving fare would be pretty limited, vegetable wise.

Now, what about grow your own?

Well, if expanded out to include what I can grow myself, well now we're on to something else indeed. . . assuming that I can get my pump fixed, which I haven't, solely due to me.

If I were to do that, then I'm almost fully there for a traditional Thanksgiving Dinner, omitting only the bread and cranberry sauce.

And I'm not omitting the cranberry sauce.

I'm not omitting the bread, either.

Frankly, I think the modern "bread is bad for you" story is a pile of crap.  People have incorporated grains into their diet for thousands of years.  To the extent that its bad for you, it's likely because Americans don't eat bread, they eat cake.  That's what American bread is.

Of course, I think the keto diet is a pile of crap too, which I discuss on another Lex Anteinternet post.  So here, I'd have to make bread, or buy it, and I'd prefer to make it. Soda bread more particularly.

On this, I'd be inclined, if I could to have an alcoholic beverage for the table, which is another thing, albeit a dangerous one, that humans have been doing since . . . well too long to tell.  The Mayflower sojourners started off their voyage with a stock of beer. . . ironically in a ship that had once been used to haul wine, but they were out when they put in at Plymouth Rock.  By the fall of 1621 it's unlikely that they'd brewed any. as they lacked grain.  The could have vinted wine, however.  If they did, we don't know about it.

So in my hypothetical, if I stuck to local stocks, I could probably do the same.  I don't know how to do it, but I could learn.  But I'm not going to do so, as frankly my recollections of that wine aren't sufficiently warm to cause me to bother with it, and I recall it took tons of sugar, which obviously isn't something I'm going to produce myself.

I'm not going to brew beer either, although plenty of people do.  I don't have the time, or the inclination, and either I'd end up with way too much or not enough.

And this reflects the nature of agrarianism, really.  A life focused on nature with agriculture as part of that.  I don't have to make everything myself, but I have to be focused on the land, have a land ethic, and focus on what's real.

Maybe next year I'll try this.