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Free Beer That's Free as in Speech
darkonc writes "The CBC has notes and an interview with Dane Rasmus Nielsen who decided to reduce the confusion between 'free as in speech' and 'free as in beer' by making a beer free -- in speech. The result is Vores Oel, an open source beer. The CBC site includes the recipe for the beer which is made with Guarana beans, and gives it a bit of a caffeine-like hit. The danish site downloads include the label for the beer (which is also Open Source)."
But will he send it to me free like a Ubuntu CD?
Marky Mark Killed Jason Bourne!
... or increase it???
It's already version 1.0.
If this were in the true open-source spirit it'd be 0.99_rc3_beta1.1 at most.
I guess today is a passable day to die.
Trusting the Danish for your free beer is quite another.
*ducks*
There is truth in humor.
Recipe for approx. 5*17 ltr. Vores Øl (Our Beer) (approx. 3/(2*5*5) alchohol by volume).
Malt extract
For Vores Øl we use four types malted barley:
2*3 kg pilsner malt
2*2 kg münsner malt
1 kg caramel malt
1 kg lager malt
The malt is crushed and put in 5*11-2*2*3*5C hot water for 1-2 hours.
The mixture is filtered and the liquid now contains about 2*5 kg malt extract.
Taste and sugar
Besides malt we use:
2*2*3*5 g Tetnang bitter hops
2*5*5 g Hallertaver aroma hops
2*2*3*5*5 g Guarana beans
2*2 kg sugar
(Guarana beans can typically be bought at health food stores).
The malt extact is brought to a boil in a large pot with the hops and approx. 2*5*7 ltr. of water.
After half an hour, the Guarana beans and sugar is added.
The mixture simmers for about an hour, and is then filtered and cooled in a sealed container.
Fermentation
Yeast is added and the beer is fermented at room temperature for approx. 2 weeks.
When the beer is fully fermentet it is transferred to bottles. First 2*2 g sugar is added per liter and some yeast from the bottom of the fermentation tanks for priming.
Vores Øl is then left in the bottles at room temperature for 2*2*2-2*5 days for carbonation. Then the beer is ready to enjoy; cold and refreshing.
So...is there some kind of General Public License for beer similar to the GNU?
As everyone knows free beer will make you drink more and get drunk. When you get drunk you will speak more freely. So it will be free speach by free beer. How does this help anyone?
;D
Except that it helps us get drunk, and that's not a bad thing, is it?
If pro and con are opposites, what is the opposite of progress?
In theory there is no difference between theory and practice.
In practice, however, there is.
umm... guarana HAS caffeine. in fact it is one of the richest natural sources of our beloved caffeine!
Freedom - free as in free beer and free as in free speech. I bet RMS is happy.
Wired had the same story a couple of days ago. Their article is a bit longer and with a bit more background.
Where's the .torrent?
Now, I have to admit that this is a really cool idea! Free as in speech-beer.
But, did anyone else notice that the recipe provided on the CBC website was somewhat lacking? I mean: How much 55-60 degree water? What kind of filter? How much yeast?
I'd love to try this, but I can't seem to find a complete version of the recipe. Can anyone who speaks Danish tell me if a more complete recipe is availble on the site? Cheers!
Until I'm drinking it, there is no buzz.
I wonder if I can make a version that is suitable for coeliacs...
And other drinks over at the Cat's Meow 3 lots of beer related stuff. Of course it will cost you some money to brew a batch, but hey it could be worth it.
I do not vouch for specific recipies there, as I haven't done any brewing in years.
Erlang Developer and podcaster
The minute folks have got their heads around free beer , they are drunk and stand little chance of grasping the differences between Libra and gratis .
The only things certain in war are Propaganda and Death. You can never be sure which is which though
So I can download the recipe, but not the ingredients. Isn't that rather like being able to download the makefile for a software project, but having to write the code yourself?
Any fool can talk, but it takes a wise man to listen.
Here is the GNU definition:
``Free software'' is a matter of liberty, not price. To understand the concept, you should think of ``free'' as in ``free speech,'' not as in ``free beer.'' Free software is a matter of the users' freedom to run, copy, distribute, study, change and improve the software. More precisely, it refers to four kinds of freedom, for the users of the software:
* The freedom to run the program, for any purpose (freedom 0).
* The freedom to study how the program works, and adapt it to your needs (freedom 1). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
* The freedom to redistribute copies so you can help your neighbor (freedom 2).
* The freedom to improve the program, and release your improvements to the public, so that the whole community benefits (freedom 3). Access to the source code is a precondition for this.
http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/free-sw.html
The process of brewing beer is easy, but not quite THAT easy.
:)
A good introduction to brewing is How To Brew by John Palmer. The entire 1st edition of the book is available on the web for free at the URL above. (Perhaps predictably, it's free as in beer, not as in speech
Uh-oh ... I hope "Vores øl" doesn't get in trouble for this (but then again, it's not like this is the US, so there is hope).
The thing is, a few years ago one of the two major Danish beer labels had a series of commercials in which "Vores øl" was the signature. They might not see this site as such a "free speech" win, though I hope they'll let it pass without raising a fuss.
"Good news, everyone!"
Now
Well now
Recipe for approx. 85 ltr. Vores Øl (Our Beer) (approx. 6% alchohol by volume).
Malt extract
For Vores Øl we use four types malted barley:
6 kg pilsner malt
4 kg münsner malt
1 kg caramel malt
1 kg lager malt
The malt is crushed and put in 55-60C hot water for 1-2 hours.
The mixture is filtered and the liquid now contains about 10 kg malt extract.
Taste and sugar Besides malt we use:
60 g Tetnang bitter hops
50 g Hallertaver aroma hops
300 g Guarana beans
4 kg sugar
(Guarana beans can typically be bought at health food stores).
The malt extact is brought to a boil in a large pot with the hops and approx. 70 ltr. of water.
After half an hour, the Guarana beans and sugar are added.
The mixture simmers for about an hour, and is then filtered and cooled in a sealed container.
Fermentation
Yeast is added and the beer is fermented at room temperature for approx. 2 weeks.
When the beer is fully fermented it is transferred to bottles. First 4 g sugar is added per liter and some yeast from the bottom of the fermentation tanks for priming.
Vores Øl is then left in the bottles at room temperature for 8-10 days for carbonation. Then the beer is ready to enjoy; cold and refreshing.
There is truth in humor.
Did you know that it is legal to beat the crap of anyone who tries to explain something to you with free as in beer/free as in speech?
Hopefully someday the ass kicking won't just be legal, but compulsory.
What a bunch of beer noobs. True beer geeks brew all grain.
What a painful response to read! What the hell were you thinking?
As a Heineken representative, I'd just like to remind you all that THERE ARE NO ADVANTAGES to open source beer.
See our website for zillions of usless statistics and reports (compiled by and independent organisation (funded by us)), that disprove the so called benefits of open source beer.
As well as conveniently digging up all those old patents we also plan to file numourous lawsuits against the open source beer community - if you are a user of open source beer, watch out - you may be prosecuted.
"Who says nothing is impossible? Some people do it every day!" - Alfred E. Neuman
This recipe is terrible. The most glaring error is they don't specify the type of yeast. Is this an Ale or a Lager? There's a big difference beween the two. Given the room temperature fermenting, you'd assume an Ale, but some Lager yeasts can ferment at room temperature too. Among those two major yeast types there's a huge difference among the various strains that produces very different end products.
The recipe calls for armoma hops and bitter hops. The only difference between the two is the length of the boil. Bitter hops are boiled on the order of 30 minutes, Aroma hops are boiled on the order of 5 minutes. But no boil times are specified at all. The boiling time of hops impacts the hop level of the beer, which has a major impacts on the flavor of the beer.
If this recipe were code, it wouldn't compile. You'd have to guess at the yeast type and boil times for the hops. The massive 85 liter batch size isn't terribly usefull either. Most homebrewers do 5-6 gallon batches.
AccountKiller
it's free as in beer label
They add stuff besides barley malt, yeast, hops and water to the brew and _dare_ to call it beer ?
Blasphemy !
Well, if you'd RTFA
http://www.voresoel.dk/main.php?id=70
It has a Creative Commons License, so if you change it you have to publish your modyfied version as well
The beer is currently sold by the art performing group SuperFlex's(http://www.superflex.net/) shop. The shop is called COPYSHOP. Press info:
"COPYSHOP CHALLENGES INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.
COPYSHOP is a place where you can photocopy everything from text to images. We use this name for a shop and information forum which will investigate the phenomena of copying. In COPYSHOP you will find products that challenges intellectual property. It can be modified originals, improved copies, political anti-brands. - or a SUPERCOPY as the new original. COPYSHOP will discuss the control of value in the same place where it is produced and distributed: the market. As an active player the function of COPYSHOP will be as an ordinary shop. Furthermore, COPYSHOP will function as a gathering point and network "
Sorry folks, but that's just plainly stupid. All IP issues with recipe for beer should be settled with Hildegard of Bingen. This German Benedictine nun was the first author to suggest that adding hops to the disgusting fluid hitherto known as beer will be generally a good idea. Since the age of Hildegard (12 century), no significant progress has been made in this topic - she has described the beer as we know it today. And as it was with many medieval philospophers, Hildegard created her "intellectual property" just "ad maiorem Dei gloriam", feel free to copy for the greater God's glory. So there is no need to make "open source beer" today - it was open source since last eight centuries.
Personally, I think the idea of adding guarana to beer is just plainly insane. Beer is meant to relax people. If I want to stay alert and awake I can drink coffee or energy drinks. Beer is something to drink when the work is over and you can relax. Guarana beer is like coffee with sleeping pills.
can a person under the legal drinking age purchase these ingrediants without anyone asking for ID?
I know that malt can be used for other things (although I doubt lager malt has other uses), and hops have properties that stop bacterial reaction (although I have never heard of their use for anything else). Yeast, of course, is used for bread. So for thoes with experience in home bewing, what's the verdict?
Vol~
Being a home brewer I can spot a lousy beer when I see one. Too much alcohol comes from the sugar, it probably tastes something like Carlsberg Elephant. Now that is bad shit! I know the Danish has Carlsberg, the largest producer of crap in the world, but I also know they have some small micro brewers which really know their stuff. So there should be no reason to make it this bad.
A typical pest in those hot sunny long afternoons!
I am eagerly awaiting Beerzilla.
Seriously, this completely confuses the whole issue:
Someone: Its free folks!
Folks: Free as in Free Rights or free beer?
Someone: Erm, Free Beer?
Folks: Is that free beer or Free Beer?
Someone: erm, well...
#hostfile 0.0.0.0 primidi.com 0.0.0.0 www.primidi.com 0.0.0.0 radio.weblogs.com
Considering that alcohol can quite easily have someone out cold, and coffee can barely keep me awake through a bad lecture, would the net effect of such a drink be significantly different?
If beer leaves a sour taste in your mouth, you may find Wine to be much tastier.
Now I just need debian support to fulfill my dreams:
apt-get pour beer
or
apt-get drink --to-death beer
Long live to open source!
This beer has a viral license.
After you drink it you are running embedded beer and you will have to open all your internals for free
(small fee for sending your intestines is acceptable)
This "molecular manufacturing device on every desktop" will eventually enable anyone to reproduce any desired object using a combination of free stored solar energy, recycled, abundant component molecules, and open (or closed) source "3D blueprints".
Also, a nice side effect of a "make anything replicator" will be to reduce the incentive to want to make source artificially scarce in the first place, since there's no more worries about putting food on the table. Self-sufficiency is very liberating.
Power to the Peaceful
At least in Sweden, recipes don't have "verkshöjd" (which means they are not unique enough to be covered by the copyright system). I suspect Danish law is rather similar.
...
So you can probably put any license you want on this stuff, and it won't matter. You can treat it like American-style public domain anyway.
I understand this is a joke, but the long rants about how the open source concept works for beer (as if there were such a thing as 'proprietary beer') might be lost on some people who are unaware of this. There are so many other things that this would have worked on: movies, music,
Ingredients per gallon of water (scale as appropriate):
Method:
Boil the acorns in a 1/4 pint of water, until the water turns yellow. Strain out the acorns. Boil the gallon of water separately, then let it cool slightly. Add the honey, tea, the water from the acorns and the lemon juice. Stir gently. It is recommended to remove the scum off the top, but I never do. Allow the water to cool to just above blood-warm and pour all but 1/4 pint into a brewing jar.
Heat 1/2 pint of water in a jug until blood-warm and dissolve into it the maltose. Add the yeast and stir. Let to sit until the yeast is active and a good froth has formed.
Pour the yeast mix into the brewing jar, then rinse the jug with the remaining 1/4 pint to get the remaining yeast. Also pour into the brewing jar. Shake the brewing jar to ensure a good mix, but not so much as to lose any of the mixture out of the top.
Fill the air-lock with water (assuming it is a type that uses water) and stopper the brewing jar. Place somewhere warm (most yeasts do best around 78'F). Regardless of what anyone else says, I do recommend direct sunlight.
Wait until fully fermented, then use the wine siphoning kit to siphon the mead into the empty brewing jar, minus the sludge. Stopper it again and let it settle for a day. Clean the original brewing jar carefully. Place the full brewing jar in a cool, dark location.
After six months, siphon back to the original brewing jar, stopper it up, and place it back in the dark. After another six months, bottle into dark glass bottles.
Mead is "best" after being left for 4-5 years, but is extremely drinkable within a day or two of being bottled.
I use just about any old mead or champagne yeast, but the one that seems to be the most popular is Wyeast's #3632 Dry Mead yeast. If you want something that'll give you an extra kick, START with that until it finishes, then pour out 1/4 pint to make a fresh starter kit. This time, use a high-tolerence yeast (champagne will go to 17 or 18%, but there are yeasts now that'll go to 25%). Once started, pour back into the main brewing jar and let it finish.
If you want a slightly fruitier flavor, add 1 lb. of blueberries or some other soft fruit, when making the original mix.
If you want a "cleaner", softer flavor, don't use the acorns.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
i would have still preferred free beer thats free as in "free beer" ....
If it contains guarana it is not adhering to the Reinheitsgebot. This is not beer, but a beer-like liquid substance. It might be just suitable for Americans. Sucks to be you.
Unlike coffee beans which are an unnatural source of .... wait, what? ... never mind.
I do not need to drink coffee afterwards to get a bit more sober again? Hum, just as with other "free" stuff, the fun is taken out of it by integrating the product just a bit too much.
My wife's sketchblog Blob[p]: Gastrono-me
I would like the inform all who might try this to avoid it!
The name "Vores Øl"/"Our Beer" is a slogan used by a major danish brewery (Tuborg I think). So the beer may be very nice and the recipe free but expect a name change if it becomes popular.
Any sufficiently advanced libertarian utopia is indistinguishable from government.
I assume it understands "./configure" + "make install"?
-Filik
The name "Vores Øl"/"Our Beer" is a slogan used by a major danish brewery (Tuborg I think).
Yup! That's Carlsberg's slogan, in fact. Though, we like Tuborg better. ;-)
zWhat would an EWOULDBLOCK block, if an EWOULDBLOCK could block would? -- me
These are the times it's great to be a Dane!
Der er et yndigt land,
det står med brede bøge
nær salten østerstrand
nær salten østerstrand...
Open all closed beers! Now!
Free food? :)
Beta testing must be really fun. :-)
I'm sorry, the number you have dialed is an imaginary number. Please rotate your phone 90 degrees and dial again.
As a Budweiser representative, I am going to be filing a lawsuit on this open source beer thingy. I think we contributed to the SVR4 version of this recipe & hence this recipe partly belongs to us. We are going to be filing lawsuits on anybody who gets drunk on this beer.
"Yeah, sure, just remove the top of the beer barrel, let everyone pour in what they want" and then think of a man peeing into the barrel?
Justice is the sheep getting arrested while an impartial judge declares the vote void.
From an article posted a year ago
Yay me!
You can make wine even more easily.
If this recipe were code, it wouldn't compile.
Don't whine. Just fix the bugs in the recipe & check
in the fix. That's what open source beer is all about.
In the US anyway, and probably in other countries with similar intellectual property laws, recipes are not covered by copyright.
Why do you think Coca-Cola keeps their recipes under strict secrecy?
So brew away -- and feel free to ignore the licensing restrictions of the CC license, at least for the recipe.
"Vores Øl" used to be Carlsberg's slogan in Denmark.
if you change it you have to publish your modyfied version as well
Most of the modifications I make to beer involve kidneys, liver and bladder. There have been a few occasions where I have made their products freely available, but most people seemed more annoyed than grateful.
"I've got more toys than Teruhisa Kitahara."
I suspect Carlsberg would have something to say about marketing a beer as "Vores Øl". They had a major marketing campaign under that name in Denmark.
Anybody remember that? This, like that seems like a good idea. It's a pity that OpenCola isn't being sold anymore.
Check out:
Skotrat
Beer Town(home of the Asscoiation of Brewers)
Tasty Brew
Stout Billy's
Brett
"Creating a free beer sounds fun but frivolous - one may ask what meaning this really has concerning food, or other physical products. I believe it is quite the opposite; that is, that Vores Øl has given us the freedom to protect our ideas and promote innovation. Already many recipes, cooking methods, ingredients, even entire species of plants and animals are patented and copyrighted. Vores Øl aims to publicize the fact that there is an alternative to the monopolistic act of traditional copyright law - and a simple alternative at that. Share and share alike is the mantra here. So how about you share some of your beer with me?"
-I wrote this on my food blog last week about the Free beer. Too many real world physical things are becoming patented. Innovation is being stifled and aggressive capitalism is preventing creativity. I think the best part of this project is that it simply raises awareness of the fact that copyright, trademark, int. property law, etc. don't have to continue going the way they are going.
-Aaron
http://aliment.blogspot.com/
Next someone will actually start arming bears.
Ok, I like free speech and free beer as much as the next guy but it's already law that you can't copyright a list of ingredients and as long as you change the wording on the directions, you're in the clear.
If you are into homebrewing, there are plenty of places to get recipes. Goto just about any of the online brewing forums and say, "I want a beer that tastes like..." and then insert your favorite beer. You can then use that recipe to your hearts content.
I and a few friends had lunch on Jesus recently, in Oxford. The churches of the city were running a "feeding of the 5000" - basically a giant free BBQ outside. Were some tasty burgers, and we managed to get away before the worship music started.
As they said on The Simpsons... And yet, I learn nothing!
This is the NFL, which stands for "Not For Long" if you keep making those bulls*** calls.
Well, if I ever go suicide-bombing, I'll fit something like a heartbeat sensor to the bomb. That way, even if they shoot to kill me, the bomb will still go off. The system will obviously need a time constant for safety -- this might be just right for detonating the device right in the face of anybody who comes to check I'm really dead.
OTOH, you only get one try at suicide-bombing -- and if you cock it up, you will have no recourse against the people who will invariably say nasty things about you. So I think I might just sell these devices to aspiring suicide-bombers. I could even offer a money back guarantee with confidence. Is there some sort of paper that these people read, with a classified adverts section at the rear, perhaps?
Or you could take the free as in speech thing one step sideways... and brew using Linux - http://nerdbrew.com/ .... (shameless plug, sorry :P)
~
NerdBrew.com
Beer through technology through beer through technology through beer through beer through beer
I used to work for Chuck Hahn in Australia at his Maltshovel Brewery and he used to say "Inovation in Brewing is copying quickly "
.
There is also a open source beer company in Australia called Brewtopia and their "Blowfly Beer" has been developed useing open source marketing
I was involved with this company as a consultant when they where researching the bussiness.
http:www.blowfly.com.au//
deja vu. I swear I saw this same story on slashdot, almost a year ago... a really old dupe maybe? unless a whole lot has changed, but it seems like the exact same article to me. of course, i could be hallucinating, but its all the same to me.
--- Caffeine is directly responsible for some of my greatest ideas, and some of my most embarrassing moments...
http://paul.frields.org/?p=500
So how does this qualify as "news"?
It better be a fucking HUGE pot to hold 70 liters of water and 20 lbs of gunk. I think maybe they should have scaled the recipe down to something more manageable for the average person. Note: I said average person, not average slashdotter. The average slashdotter probably doesn't have a 2 quart saucepan let alone a pot that will hold over 70 liters. You can't make beer in a pizzabox or a mac & cheese box :D
Well, it's been tried with cola -- why not beer?
Oh, and as for that "bit of a caffeine-like hit", that's no surprise, since guarana, like mate, is a source of the actual real thing, not some imaginary-elf-land "more natural/healthy" alternative.
I propose the name "Open Sauce" for this beer.
We have two Latin words that explain the concept just fine.
Liberty: freedom (free as is speech).
Gratis: without charge or payment (free as in beer).
227-3517
These guys have either never heard of the Gambrinus' Mug and its illustrious forbear, the Cat's Meow, or are really picky about licensing agreements.
I propose the name "Open Sauce" for this beer.
It already is...in Boston.
The laws of probability forbid it!
...the new free initiative. We have looked at the cooperation between large IT-companies (specifically IBM and Oracle) and the OSS community and are now considering the possibilities in a similar cooperation on the beer market.
Carlsberg - probably the best beer in the universe...
the one from Budvar...
This letter is placing you on notice that you are in posession of an infringing substance. In the creation of the Vores Oel source, they made use of a combination of ingredients which I have held copyright of since the acquiring of a brewery some years ago. For reasons which will remain private, I will not disclose WHICH ingredients are infringing upon my IP rights.
For a limited time, however, I am prepared to offer licenses to those Vores Oel drinkers who wish to be in compliance with Intellectual Property laws. For the low price of $100/bottle, I will provide a license allowing you to posess and consume the beverage in question.
For those wishing to purchase licenses, payment should be sent via Western Union to the following recipient:
Sorin Sitkovetsky
Bucharest, Romania
BEER 1.0
If you run this app for too long, it causes system glitches (hangover) a while after quitting it.
(ok, I know, that's not a bug, that's a feature. workaround: non-alcoholic hack)
Circumcision is child abuse.
cd /pub
more beer
Superflex seems to have started a similar project (another beer), FREE BEER, or maybe they're just renaming Vores Øl. I can't quite figure out what the purpose is, but check it out yourself
Also, Superflex has started another interesting project (somewhat unrelated), Guarana Power. From the site:
If you don't like this distribution, fork your own.
It seems like people are slapping the term "Open Source" on anything in order to sound profound or at least fashionable. I remember when inventor of the Internet Al Gore (who later rode the sand worm) said that his website was open source...
A beer recipe is open source? For $DEITY sake, people have been swapping recipes since we discovered fire.
I just came back from sixteen days in Europe pretty recently (my first visit) and it's true - though the majority of places at which I drank beer kept it in refrigerators, their temperature was nowhere near as low as we keep them in the US. (This was nice when you go to butter your bread in the morning, incidentally). German beer tastes pretty good warm. You should give it a try sometime.
I get really sick of this crap that's posted around here though about how we only keep ours cold to kill the flavor. It's not true. As the wise man a few posts below me indicated, we just like cold beverages around here. (In Nebraska, it has been over 40 degrees Celsius for the past week if you need an idea of why that might be) Beer snobbery is HUGE on Slashdot, among both Americans and Europeans and pretty much everyone else here. Snobbery would really lose its effectiveness if you didn't have a great story you completely made up so that you could more verbosely look down on something, right?
I had by far the best beer I have ever had during those days in Germany and Belgium. (In fact, if anyone knows where I can get a bottle of Chimay for less than $6 I would love to know about it). When I got back to Nebraska, however, the first thing I wanted to drink was an ice cold Pabst Blue Ribbon. There's nothing wrong with a little variety, and I'm just not quite enough of an elitist asshole to complain about a national tradition, I guess.
because you have to do a bunch of crap, invest time and money, and you may or may not get your reward.
www.protestwarrior.com... now conservatives can be as annoying as those inevitable "hey hey, ho ho, has got to go!"
Yes kids, it's protestwarrior! Pre-fab protest templates so that now *you* don't have to think about your message either!
w00t!
Mark Johnson, CEO of Budweiser had this to say about the open source beer ...
"We have conclusive results from independent studies that show the total cost of ownership for 'Our Beer' is 50% higher than Budweiser.
Brewers of Our Beer cost 25% more to employ and the maintenance associated with the women you bring home after drinking too much Our Beer is an outrageous %50! Thus, negating the initial reduced cost for the recipe."
The less confident you are, the more serious you have to act.
...than free as in speech.
I appreciate the cuteness of these guys' efforts. But really the homebrew culture has practiced free and/or open source values for a good 30 years. In homebrewing circles, what I've noticed is a huge number of true hackers working in both hardware and software (equipment, recipes) and something else--methods and techniques. It's this last that I feel is the most "free." It gives the willing learner or enthusiastic amateur serious tools to make really world class beer through better knowledge of the various factors involved. This knowledge transfer circumvents--even disrupts--the whole copyright/IP issue.
Lots of people, myself included, recommend John Palmer's book on how to brew. It's available online for anyone to read. Since he's kept the copyright, clearly noted on the home page, it's only "free as in beer." But it embraces so much learning that a person could walk away from it, make several dozen batches of beer and write their own dang book. Then they could open source that if they really had the gumption to, I suppose.
But the point is, there's so much practical knowledge available online for free that anyone can become a brewer, and they subsequently couldn't be stopped from teaching other people how to brew--either through direct contact or through an open source/GPL/Creative Commons licensed document of their own. Functionally, that seems about as "free as in speech" as something can be.
I basically had to cheat to pass my high school chemistry final and was only moderately decent at things like physics. But I'm now quite a bit more comfortable with water chemistry, thermodynamics, electrical engineering, the chemistry involved in starch conversion, the biology of yeasts and microbial life forms, etc. All on a very practical level. And with a noble goal, too!
There's a lot of great hackers in the beer world and they're not being particularly protective or proprietary about their methods. It's a pretty impressive hack to look at a 10 gallon water cooler and say, "Hey I could use that for holding 10 pounds of ground malted grain and 1.2 qt of hot water per pound for 60 minutes at about 152F. If someone did that, heck, all those starches in the malted grain would probably turn into sugars. Then if I've thought ahead and built a manifold inside that cooler that outlets thru where the spigot used to be, I could drain out just the water and sugar into a big pot on my stove. Boil with some hops, cool, add yeast and keep everything sanitary... I gotta tell a bunch of other guys on the internet about this!" Hack complete, information shared with the world, copyrights never get involved. Sure you can buy a Phil's Phalse Bottom for convenience and there's a place for that kind of "licensed hardware" but if you wanted it, the info is out there to DIY. The knowledge is loose, and there's not much can be done about it. The information wanted to be free pretty badly, and for good reason! (40-80 cents per 12 oz. serving of beer that rivals Guinness, Paulaner or SNPA? I'm all over finding out about that!)
yes. that's all I'm going to say in all comments from now on.
I only mention that because with that kind of comment, you owe me a new one. I hope you have some money saved up.
Beer (which I am indeed having for breakfast) is not easy to clean off of a PowerBook keyboard.
"Empathise with stupidity, and you're halfway to thinking like an idiot." - Iain M. Banks
decided to reduce the confusion between 'free as in speech' and 'free as in beer'
Free (of charge) or Free (of licensing restrictions) -- IT'S THE SAME MEANING OF THE WORD.
In any case, it's a needlessly misleading word. "Open source", folks, since 1998. Get with the program.
I baked some bread just last week using trub off a batch of brown ale. It didn't taste any different from using bread yeast. A friend of mine once didn't realize he was out of beer yeast until he was ready to pitch. He used bread yeast instead, and the ale turned out fine. There can be a lot of nuances between yeast strains, but fundamentally they're all the same critter.
On the other hand, I was chatting with a Slashdotter the other day who works at a lab that studies yeast prions. He said the beer his coworker tried making from the lab yeast turned out quite funky.
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
This is great.
...when do we get Open Source Free Speech?
Bye, slashdot. I'm sick of your 'tude. Hello
...as a factual news site!
Following Microsoft's inclusion of a real red screen of death in Longhorn/Vista/Foo, yet another perfectly good piece of satire is rendered pointless by real news.
Maybe BBspot should market itself as a prescient news source rather than a humour site.
I suppose you speak Esperanto and use a metric clock? Grams and liters are OK for rocketry or robotics, but homebrewing should definitely be done in pounds and pints.
"My car gets fourty rods to the hogshead and that's the way I likes it." - Grandpa Simpson
"Give a man a fish and he will ask for tartar sauce and French fries!"
People have been freely sharing homebrew recipes -- in person, in publications, by mail, by Usenet, and on the web -- for a long, long time. This isn't anything even slightly new or clever.
That story was in Wired mag 2 weeks ago. One of the reasons I pay no attention to CNN.
good point. I think the largest they should have done the recipe is as a 50 liter batch for full size kegs. Many home brewers use 19L (5 gal us) kegs, at my work we have some 8gal us kegs. Most canadians (in my experience) use 5 gal imp (23 L) carboys while americans use 5 gal us (19L) carboys. So this batch should really be scaled down. I'd have to use 3 fermentors and 3 carboys.
Also another poster had a good point: this beer contains a fair amount of sugar. Since they aren't going for a belgian triple or the likes it really isn't going to help the recipe (sugar thins a beer out and if more than 30% of the fermentables are dextrose or sucrose you can get a cidery taste).
Of course this is a move in the right direction. There are some amazing beers out there that aren't available to some markets. With open recipes it would allow others to make the great beer.
"If you are going through hell, keep going." - Winston Churchill
You do have a good point about mixing caffeine and alcohol. The only time to do that is when you're still drunk and have to roll outta bed and get to work.
I don't believe chain grocery stores would sell Guarana beverages such as Antarctica Guarana Champagne if the FDA had qualms with the safety of the source. Risks-shmisks, its just another fruit drink. So long as the fermentables are of the sort produce "bad" alcohol, guarana beer should be plenty safe.
I'll be your candy shop of infinite deliciousity if you'll be my discotheque of endless rump-shaking.
After seeing something like that, I tend to stop reading the ends of sentences.
Besides being a dupe, this story is a dupe of a what is essentially a lie.
This isn't the "world's first open source beer." That claim is so ridiculous it's amazing that this story got submitted twice. I myself have had "open source" beer recipes publicly available since 1995! And since 1999 under an FSF and OSI approved license! Take any of my recipes and copy, distribute, modify, commercialize, fold, spindle and mutilate my recipes. You have my permission.
Hell, if anyone has a claim to be first in this regard, it might be me! That's because to the best of my knowledge (I could be wrong) I came out with the first Open Source homebrewing software.It predates Vores Øl, and came with several recipes under the Free and Open Source BSD license. My CVS logs will attest that I was earlier than they.
Besides, recipes are quite unlike software. Hardly anyone copyrights a recipe, unless you're writing a cook book. You don't have to be exact with recipes, and the beer (cake, bread, chili, fruit salad) will still turn out fine. And they're trivial to reverse engineer. "Cloning" beers is done all the time, to the point that there's even a popular homebrewing book out there with recipes to duplicate your favorite commercial beer. Claiming to be the first open source beer is as silly as claiming to be the first open source peanut butter and jelly sandwich.
Their claim that they were first is not only a lie, it's stupid.
Don't blame me, I didn't vote for either of them!
In my experience homebrew is cheaper then store bought. IIRC, my first two batches of beer (made from kits and malt extract) paid for the initial outlay for the equipment includeing cheap plastic bottles. Beer kits easily taste better then commercial beer, and some microbrews. The only thing it costs is the time.
I've been wanting to get into home brewing for a while. Can you recommend some good books to look at for beginners? What do you think about the mixes they sell with the kits? Is it worth buying a kit at all or are the tools easy to get elsewhere?
Stone Brewing Company, from San Diego, CA, releases the new Verticle Epic beers every year one day, one month, and one year later than the previous year, e.g. 05/05/05, 06/06/06 etc... Each year they have a contest where homebrewers can make their own versions and compete to see who can make the best replication. Recipes are available here. So Stone gives back to the homebrewing community. I don't work for Stone, but my homebrew club does meet there.
Nice Marmot
Unless the source for beer (hops, other incredients) become free.
I'm brewing a modified version of the Vores brew for the intern party at the end of the summer. Check out our blog post here.
"Nobody ever went broke underestimating the intelligence of the American Public." - H.L. Mencken
"Free Beer That's Free as in Speech"
What country's speech rights are we talking about here? I can imagine it now..
Modifying the contents of this beer will result in military police hunting you down, bludgeoning you into unconsciousness, then awakening you and shooting you in the head.
"Free Beer That is Free as in China's Free Speech"
Oh right. Like there's no difference between a hefeweizen and a pilsner. How many batches of beer have you brewed, genius? Ever tried brewing two batches whith the exact same ingredients and two different strains of yeast? Even two different ale yeasts? If so, did they taste the same?
That recipe is worthless. I agree with previous posters that beer has been pretty much "open source" for the past 5000-6000 years. Just take a big pot of gruel, or porridge, or hell, even soggy bread, and let it sit for a couple of weeks -- POW! you've got beer! It'll taste like s**t, but technically, it's beer. Follow their recipe, and you have pretty much the same thing.
Or take advantage of what people have learned in the past few thousand years. The Internet is your friend. Usenet is your friend. Google is your friend. Your local homebrew club is a tremendous resource. It isn't that hard to make a really tasty brew, and it's much cheaper than what you get in the liquor store after the initial investment in equipment. Most of the price of commercial beer is transportation/storage, advertising, and tax.
Try to "roll your own". Just consider that each time you change one parameter and recompile, it takes about a month to get the result. Even the mistakes can be fun, though.
Sec. 109.21. HOME PRODUCTION OF WINE, ALE, MALT LIQUOR, OR BEER.
(a) The head of a family or an unmarried adult may produce for the use of his family or himself not more than 200 gallons of wine, ale, malt liquor, or beer, per year. No license or permit is required.
(b) The commission may prohibit the use of any ingredient it finds detrimental to health or susceptible of use to evade this code. Only wine made from the normal alcoholic fermentation of the juices of dandelions or grapes, raisins, or other fruits may be produced under this section. Only ale, malt liquor, or beer made from the normal alcoholic fermentation of malted barley with hops, or their products, and with or without other malted or unmalted cereals, may be produced under this section. The possession of wine, ale, malt liquor, or beer produced under this section is not an offense if the person making it complies with all provisions of this section and the wine, ale, malt liquor, or beer is not distilled, fortified, or otherwise altered to increase its alcohol content.
(c) An offense under this section is a Class A misdemeanor.
Sec. 106.04. CONSUMPTION OF ALCOHOL BY A MINOR.
(a) A minor commits an offense if he consumes an alcoholic beverage.
(b) It is an affirmative defense to prosecution under this section that the alcoholic beverage was consumed in the visible presence of the minor's adult parent, guardian, or spouse.
For the record, I could not find any provision that defines what the minimum age for the "Head of Household." I lack the patience to look for it elsewhere.
...is don't mix uppers and downers, right?
I am serious.. what does it mean.. free as in beer? Honestly?
So far in the comments we have seen many other examples of beer that's Free as in speech so this is far from the first.
However I have yet to encounter a single beer that is "free as in beer". Where can I find an example?
Oh well. Just like battered fish, analogies are rarely perfect I guess.
"Nine times out of ten, starting a fire is not the best way to solve the problem." - my wife
cold is always better, especially on a hot day
if you want to taste the beer,
you keep it in your mouth longer
You do realise that encrypting your recipe goes against the spirit of the GPL, right?
;-)
Please decrypt it, so that all those mysterious 'gallons', 'tbsp', 'lbs' and other forms of encryption are translated in something the average person outside the field of anglo-saxon living can understand.
--- "To pee or not to pee, that is the question." ---