A Warning

Posted by Lewis on September 06, 2004

In Reply to: Church Key posted by ESC on September 03, 2004

: : : In Medieval Europe, Monks and Nobility were the only brewers. Lagering Cellars in the Monasteries were locked, as the Monks guarded the secrets to their craft. The monks carried keys to these lagering cellars on their cinch - or belts. It was this key from which the "Church Key" opener gets its name.

: : : Source: Anheuser-Busch Knowledge Base; Internal Dbase

: : I was just explaining to my kids what a "church key" was. In the time before pull-tabs and twist-off caps, a devoted beer-drinker would wear a beer opener on a string/chain around his neck.

: www.dvrbs.com/ Camden-Beer/Opener-001.jpg

A-B is a world-dominating purveyor of popular, but low quality lager - made with the cheapest ingredients and matured for the shortest possible time that their taste-deficient punters will accept. "Fresh Beer" and "Does your beer have a born on date?" are two ad campaigns trying to make a virtue out of a vice. A-B know that their ingredients would not pass German purity laws (the world standard for lager) and that the lagering process is poorly skipped over by them. That is why they have been trying to drive Czech Budweiser Budvar (the original 'Bud') out of business by suing them in almost every country they sell beer to ruin them with legal fees, which A-B can easily afford. thankfully, Budvar has won and has survived, but having lost so often, A-B appear to be biding their time until the Czech government sells its controlling stake in Budvar, following which, A-B will doubtless buy them out and close them down so that nobody can tell how inferior the much-promoted Bud is compared to the original.

A few weeks ago I bought somebody a Budvar, just so they could taste the difference - irony is that it was exactly the same price as the chilled rice-water fizz.

Lager beer should be made from malted barley and left to lager. it should not be made primarily from rice and pumped through fresh.

You cannot trust A-B in the big things, so why trust them in the small?