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Free Beer That's Free as in Speech

Posted by Zonk on from the best-of-both-worlds dept.

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)."

4 of 379 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Wired by Nakanai_de · · Score: 4, Informative

    Here's the link to the Wired story.

    --

    Sono koro, bokura wa, sore ga sekai no shinjitsu da to shinjite ita.

  2. DO NOT follow their directions by IvyMike · · Score: 5, Informative

    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 :)

  3. Coming from an ameteur brewer.. by Vellmont · · Score: 5, Informative

    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
  4. Recipes are already free by aridg · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.