Didn’t read all that but Glyphosate is a herbicide, not a pesticide.
Small piece from scotchwhisky.com
The Scotch Whisky Association (SWA) points out that distilled spirits are considered as being very low-risk with regard to pesticide residues. No Scotch whisky, it adds, has ever tested positive for these residues. In addition, the overarching regulations governing Scotch whisky production mean it has to adhere to UK/EU laws on food safety – which obviously cover pesticides.
Thank you as well for that. Reassuring to hear. Benromach is an organic single malt – and delicious. Had some last week.
I reckon quite a few distilleries use a proportion of organic barley but do not say so (because ‘organic’ is not a selling point with quite a few people). Springbank would be one, at a guess.
Deanston do a 15yo organic single malt, which I have never tasted. The distillery itself would not be a stellar one.
Springbank, a stellar distillery, did 1992 Da Mhile 7yo, which I liked nearly 20 years ago, and now do Springbank Green, which I have yet to enjoy. Bruichladdich do a couple of organic expressions as well. Also never tasted.
Excitingly, Waterford Distillery is maturing both organic whiskey and biodynamic whiskey. One of the reasons I hope to live a good bit longer is to taste Waterford’s distillate when it is mature.
What’s that now?
Both aim to kill healthy cell life.
It’s the farmers field and he has a right to choose.
Biodynamic is like uber organic, working with the land’s specifics and being guided by lunar cycles for planting and harvesting. This method has become far more common with top end wine.
Interesting.
You would obviously find out all about this topic online. I drank a lot of biodynamic wine 2007-09 because there was a local shop that specialized in it. Have to say the bottles were impressive.
I see there is a fully organic Scottish distillery, Ncn’ean, as of 2017. Initial distillate will be whisky some time in 2020. Could be interesting.
Trouble brewing as hipsters take on Camra’s old peculiars
Jack Blackburn
March 2 2019, 12:01am, The Times
Younger drinkers want the definition of real ale changed to include craft beersGETTY IMAGES
It might seem like small beer to some, but to the warring factions of the Campaign for Real Ale the battle for the organisation’s future is anything but.
In one corner of the pub are the long-serving members, often caricatured as a hardcore of bearded men in T-shirts who would be an asset to any tug-of-war team. In the other are the hipster reformers, younger, perhaps cooler and more likely to be female.
The disagreement between them has gone public after a group of seven reformers warned that Camra, as it is abbreviated, was “riddled with accusations of sexism and cronyism” and without change risked becoming a “pensioners’ drinking club”. In a letter published in this month’s What’s Brewing , the organisation’s newsletter, the members, all in their early forties or younger, said that they were feeling increasingly disenfranchised.
“We need to see a campaign thinking more seriously about the next generation of pubgoers — a campaign whose public image is not riddled with accusations of sexism,” they wrote.
At the root is a row over the definition of real ale, which Camra insists must be served from a barrel in which it is fermenting and must not be served with “extraneous carbon dioxide”. This excludes many craft beers that are served from a keg from which the yeast has been filtered, made by breweries such as Brewdog and Camden Town.
Craft beer has exploded in popularity recently, with 500 million pints from independent breweries sold last year. Thousands of smaller breweries have sprung up, reversing 70 years of consolidation in the industry.
Lucy Cousins, 41, a signatory to the letter, said that conservatism was hurting recruitment at a time when 18 pubs a week were closing. “If we don’t start getting younger people interested now, it’s basically a time bomb,” she said.
Younger members have also questioned some of Camra’s imagery, including a poster for its Peterborough Beer Festival in August, which featured a man and woman astride a barrel. While the man was holding a pint of beer the woman had a glass of wine.
Peter Holt, a landlord, said that it does not matter if beer is in a cask or a kegTIMES PHOTOGRAPHER JACK HILL
Peter Holt, landlord of the Southampton Arms in Kentish Town, north London, and winner of Camra awards, said that excluding craft beers over their storage missed the point. “It’s about good beer and shit beer, and it doesn’t actually matter whether it’s in a cask or a keg.”
He said that if Camra members had the choice of going to Brewdog or a Greene King pub, they would find the cask beer more bland. “It doesn’t make sense. The cask beer they’re drinking is the equivalent of the stuff they were campaigning against 40 years ago.”
The reformers believe that Camra is betraying its founding ideals. It was set up in the 1970s to fight against lager and bland ales. It published its first Good Beer Guide in 1974, held its first festival in 1977 and has 187,000 members.
Tom Stainer, Camra’s chief executive, said he had sympathy for reformers but that it was important to maintain standards. “It’s a poor analogy but you wouldn’t expect the Cat Protection League to spend much of their resources promoting dog ownership,” he said. “We’re not saying we won’t support craft breweries. We are involved in a lot of industry-wide campaigns.”
He said that old-fashioned views of women were a problem in the industry. In 2014 Camra withdrew leaflets featuring blonde models holding pints while dressed in corsets. Two years earlier the House of Commons stopped selling Top Totty, a beer advertised by a woman in a bikini and bunny ears.
“Sadly, there probably are elements of that sexist culture across the beer and pub industry,” Mr Stainer said.
Camra defines real ale as “a beer brewed from traditional ingredients . . . and matured by secondary fermentation in the container from which it is dispensed”.
In layman’s terms, this means that there is yeast in the cask from which the beer is served: the beer is live. Camra also prohibits serving it with “extraneous carbon dioxide”. This definition was agreed by Camra shortly after it was founded in 1971.
Craft beers may be brewed in a number of ways, but many differ from real ales only in that they filter out the yeast before being put into a keg for serving. They are usually made by smaller breweries, which benefited from tax relief introduced by Gordon Brown as chancellor in 2002.
Looks like a can of lemonade. Does it have a very strong “citrusy” taste?
I’m a fan of the green one. A big fan.
Had a couple of the O’Haras 51st state over the weekend. Very tasty.
Yeah fairly citrussy. Light enough. Would make a nice sunny day drink.
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I had three bottles of Howling Gale Pale Ale with my supper in Monty’s of Kathmandu and two pints of Cute Hoor Pale Ale in the Olympia. All were nice.
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Getting the haemochromotosis under control has given you a new lease of lager and pale ale life.
A cute hoor would be the drink for you alright.
