"The Shocking Ingredients In Beer"

I like how she is trying to educate people to not be ignorant about the food and drink they consume yet doesn't seem to realize that high fructose corn syrup is still fructose and will therefore be transformed into carbon dioxide and alcohol......same as every organic fermentable sugar in the world.

 

Ever tried to use a logical rebuttal on one of these people? Forget about it.

 

It's not even a real law anymore though, right?

 

Dark Horse is brewing a beer for MI Summer Beerfest made with baby formula.

Called Über Boober.


Wut.

 

From what I remember from my geology courses (many beers ago...), Isinglass has nothing to do with fish bladders - it's a transparent, glass-like product made up of sheets of the mineral Mica, very heat-resistant, used to make view ports on furnaces, etc. I don't want that in my beer, either. But it makes me wonder about her credibility...

 

I stopped reading when I got to:

Ethyl glycol is in antifreeze. Propylene glycol is a normal food additive. Found in drink mixes, soft drinks, ice cream, frosting, etc...

Dope

 

Blue Moon was created by Coors to appear as though it were a separate company. It's always been a Coors product
.

Isinglass in reference to beer production is a fish's swim bladder derivative. Isinglass in reference to heat resistant sight glass on a furnace is mica.

 

Partly true. Here us what Meriam Webster says:

Definition of ISINGLASS

1
: a semitransparent whitish very pure gelatin prepared from the air bladders of fishes (as sturgeons) and used especially as a clarifying agent and in jellies and glue
2
: mica especially when in thin transparent sheets; especially : muscovite 2

However, I can guarantee that isinglass in the food industry is of piscine origin. Muscovite is used in paint, mostly, and was a substitute for glass panes back in the day.

 

Blue moon was never independent, it was created in-house by millercoors' sandlot brewery.

 

I wish I could make money being a moron. Maybe it's an acquired skill. I'll drink copious amounts GMO beer, read her blog, and report back the findings my discover.

Huh. Maybe it's already working.

 

Beat me to it...food grade PPG is all over the place in foods. Great carrier and solvent for flavors, controls moisture, and a bunch of other things. It does make a good coolant too. We use it in heat exchangers where product contact is a remote possibility because....wait for it....it is harmless if it does get into the product. To cause harm, it would have to be injected or someone would have to consume an impossible quantity. The body basically treats it as a carbohydrate.

 

Does it use real babies?

 

Ignorance is bliss for me, I tried my hand at homebrewing and I suck at it and don't derive enough utility from the process to try and improve at it. I'm not overtly interested in the exact ingredients that go into my beer just like I don't need the walkthrough of how exactly the dead animal got onto my plate. If it's delicious I'm going to enjoy it, stop being a buzzkill.

 

As has been pointed out, you're rather wrong on both counts--isinglass is fish bladder and it is a processing (clarifying) ingredient in beer making, not an actual ingredient used for flavor/substance. Mineral isinglass was so named for superficial resemblance to the fish-bladder product.

Reminds me of the local (MA) milk wars about a decade back. Garelick used shark-derived Vitamin D as an additive and Hood got a hold of this information and used it in its aggressive commercials. They showed a kid grimacing when told that Garelick milk has "fish oil" in it. Proved very effective, until Garelick reformulated its milk to remove "shark oil"--not only was this an important psychological point, but to that point Garelick milk was also not Kosher (from shark). On a similar point, sturgeon is no longer used as a source of isinglass, as it is endangered, which also has the side benefit of the resulting beer less likely to be un-Kosher (sturgeon, like shark, is not Kosher).

It may stifle creativity, but it also keeps adjunct out of their beer. Of course, this would not stop Beck's bottled in the US from using corn/rice.

Well... no! The fact that something is found in mass-produced soft drinks, etc., does not make it good. Also, the description is not quite accurate. Both ethylene glycol and propylene glycol are used as antifreeze. Ethylene glycol is an industrial antifreeze, used in factory cooling system as well as an additive to large-scale water-based central heating units (e.g., in old office buildings, universities, apartment complexes). It is toxic to humans--we once got a university in trouble with OSHA by pointing out that they openly stored ethylene glycol containers within a couple of doors from the local childcare. Propylene glycol is the automotive antifreeze that is only mildly toxic to humans (that is, toxic in large quantities--ever watched House? long-term exposure leads to brain damage, potentially to organ failure) but it is lethal to cats who love the sweet taste. It is a generally accepted food additive, but with some caveats. Austrian wines were banned for several years and a number of Northern Italian vintners prosecuted over using propylene glycol as artificial sweetener in their wines back in the 1980s (following a similar scandal in the 1970s). Although the actual harm was negligible, the perception/optics was awful. Austrian wine industry did not fully recover until about a decade ago. It may be considered harmless, but it's not something I want in my beer (OK, maybe in Mountain Dew... ) But the blogger blows the whole thing completely out of proportion--classic alarmist zealot.

 

None of these are shocking – I thought that only draft Guiness had isinglass in it.

Indeed the above listed stuff is far from limited to commercial beers – there is just as much additives in craft & German beers for that matter for those ***** are bringing up the Reinheitsgebot.

Some of us have no issues with GMO’s.

 

Beer drinkers should have few issues with GMOs--they should either have issue with corn products as adjunct or none at all, as it all decomposes with no discernible genetic material left in the consumable product. The only issues might be moral (and even then, mostly ecological), but, for the most part, GMO objections come from Frankenstein villagers with pitchforks. Some caution may be justified, but universal bans and neo-luddite protests are ridiculous.

 

I don't like corn products or adjuncts in beer.
I was more referring to the author's blatant fear of GMO's in her food - evident from the other articles on her site.

It must be said that I live in the part of the world with the most strict GMO regulations imaginable.

 

I hope this thread gets deleted so she stops getting money from people clicking the link giving her page hits

 

Bottles of corona here have listed under ingredients: acqua(water,) malto d'orzo(malted barley,) granturco/riso(corn/rice,) luppolo(hops,) antiossidante E300(antioxidant E300,) addensante E405(thickening agent E405.)
So while I agree that that article is quite misleading and not all that informative, there is something to be said for the use of non 'natural' ingredients in some mass-produced beers.

 

Apparently, the Reinheitsgebot allows beers brewed for export to use adjuncts (except for those brewed in the state of Bavaria). Jim Koch, during his early days of promoting his Samuel Adams aiming directly at the big Euro imports in the late '80s, secretly sent one of his contract brewmasters to tour the Beck's brewery in Bremen and the latter found evidence of adjunct use (specifically corn syrup and starch) in both the brewhouse design and in the spent grains, for US export Beck's and/or St. Pauli Girl.

Today, both brands, of course, are now owned by ABInBev, and distributed through the AB network in the US, or soon will be dependent on state franchise laws, etc. Previously Beck's and St. Pauli Girl were always brought in by different importers.

US domestically brewed Beck's claims it is "Brewed in accordance with the “Reinheitsgebot,” the German Purity Law of 1516" and St. Pauli Girl's old Crown (previous US importer) website states "St. Pauli Girl is brewed according to an ancient food regulation still in force throughout Germany today...The German Purity Law of 1516 ."