How Bad is Beer??

I enjoy beer or two after climbing as much as the next guy or gal, but do you know what is in your beer? When you drink beer, there is a 100% chance that you don't know what you are drinking as the ingredients in beer are not required to be listed anywhere on the label and manufacturers have no legal obligation to disclose what ingredients are in the beer.
That's right the Department of the Treasury (the folks that collect taxes) regulate alcoholic beverages, NOT the Food and Drug Administration (FDA)!!
That explains why we know more about what in a can of Coke a Cola than a can of Budweiser.

Chemical Additives in Beer: (this short list is but a sample)

Monosodium Glutamate (MSG) you don't like it in your Chinese food, why put it in your beer?

GMO sugars (Genetically Modified Organisms) - Dextrose and Corn Syrup

Carmel Coloring (made from ammonia and a carcinogen) - colors dark beers like Newcastle.

Unfortunately, caring about what you eat doesn't necessarily translate into caring (or knowing) about what you drink and that could be a HUGE MISTAKE!!

And its oh so delicious. I love MSG in my chinese.

A wise man once said, "don't ever let your climbing get in the way of your drinking, nor your drinking in the way of your climbing."

I enjoy beer or two are climbing?

Is that a riddle?

Only drink good beer then, there's more and more quality breweries everyday....

Alchemist, Coronado, North Coast, Russian River, Maine Beer Co, Green Flash, etc etc etc

I understand your concerns.

I will drink all of your beer for you.

Em Cos wrote:I understand your concerns. I will drink all of your beer for you.

Win

Yep, bad stuff in American beers like coors, bud, climbers favorite pbr...

Drink micro brews, or euro like suggested. Better regs.

Fortunately, there are a few beers that don't have additives. For example, Sierra Nevada, Heineken, and Amstel Light are pretty clean and claim to NOT use GMO grains, artificial ingredients, stabilizers, or carcinogenic preservatives.
German Beers are also a good bet, as the Germans are very serious about the purity of their beers and have enacted a purity law called "Reinheitsgebot" that requires beers to be produced with core ingredients; water, hops, yeast, malted barley or wheat. Also, consider Certified Organic Beers. These are required by law to not include GMOs and other harmful additives.

fortnoy wrote: It also has alcohol, which is also carcinogenic (as well as synergistic for other diseases), and acutely toxic at higher levels.

In case this was missed the first time.

The alcohol itself is the biggest risk factor in the beer, so I don't know why you're concerned about a few additives, coloring or preservatives.

I'm pretty sure most of us are aware that were slowly posionong ourselves whenever we drink, and I'm pretty sure that's why we do...

Call your local brewery, speak to a brewer and chances are he'll tell you cut and dry what goes into each batch. Eating out at the local restaurant is far more scary than any commercial brewery on any level, whether that be 700 or 70,000BBL's of beer a year.

If you had any idea of the brewing process you understand the strict need to adhere to a sanitary environment. Grain is mashed in, wort is boiled (sanitary) and transferred to a large fermentor where yeast goes to work (btw, yeast is super finicky and its not in the businesses best interest to ruin hundreds, if not thousands of dollars of yeast). Then it's conditioned in another sanitized tank thats blanketed with a layer of co2 (sanitary), and then finally carbonated with, you guessed it, co2! The entire system HAS to be sanitary, otherwise it'll poison people, like really fuck them up poison. And if GMO corn is of your concern then ante up and buy some craft product, otherwise stop bitching about your concerns with the free pbr that you mooch at the bbq.

• *Edit- Also, I know first hand how far the ATF is up a brewery's ass if/when the time comes, Each recipe is documented, PH levels, gravities are all taken, from start to finish each brewery knows what their base hot liquor PH is, what their mash PH is and then finally gravities throughout the rest of the process. ATF is no joke and they will make a breweries life a living hell if they see bad record keeping.

Yup

A nice view on the subject.

http://www.sciencebasedmedicine.org/vani-hari-a-k-a-the-food-babe-the-jenny-mccarthy-of-food/

PBR, my favorite daily driver is full of GMO's... was pretty disappointed to learn that recently too. Trying to switch to amstel light but its kinda tough.

GMO's are fine. I swear crunchy, granola natural types are the climate change deniers of the left with regards to ignoring science for dogma, mistruths, and fear-mongering.

THE SBM link is required reading.

Ben Circello wrote:GMO's are fine. I swear crunchy, granola natural types are the climate change deniers of the left with regards to ignoring science for dogma, mistruths, and fear-mongering. THE SBM link is required reading.

And they banned them in Europe just because of some hippies in the USA?

Morgan Patterson wrote:PBR, my favorite daily driver is full of GMO's... was pretty disappointed to learn that recently too. Trying to switch to amstel light but its kinda tough.

PBR? Seriously?

You are going to die!

Seriously, smoke marijuana. Problem solved!

If I understand all of this correctly then, if I want to go sport climbing then I drink beer containing chicken shit. If I want to tell lies around the camp fire then I drink beers containing turkey shit. And if I want to go trad climbing then I drink beer containing bull shit... To quote one Dirty Dingus McGee from this same conversation more than a decade ago.

divnamite wrote: PBR? Seriously?

Yup... I even emailed them to confirm. I asked if they used GMO products in their beer after reading it somewhere and this is the response I received:

"Thank you for taking the time in contacting Pabst Brewing Company.
Pabst Blue Ribbon is made from the best Malted Barley, Cereal Grains, Hops, Yeast and purest water available. Our beer is processed without the addition of chemicals or additives, and is made in the finest traditions since 1844. Whenever possible, we source raw materials locally and support the local farmer."

To which I responded and never received a response...

"Well thank you for taking the time to respond, like a politician might I add... keenly ignoring the point of my email entirely and substituting a topic you can speak positively about....

I will take your omission of the topic as confirmation your brewery does use products containing GMO's and that PBR does contain GMOs."