New Belgium is providing us with a thought experiment in beer form with Torched Earth.
If the glut of books and movies set in a future that is barren and hard scrabble, the Colorado brewery has made a beer to match it. It’s not good—the beer is made with water that has been tainted with smoke (probably the least of our water worries), with dandelion weeds and drought-resistant millet and buckwheat grains as the main ingredients.
New Belgium is releasing this beer knowing full well that it is going to cause a reaction, most likely of yuck. But that is why we SHOULD drink it. Maybe if we don’t want to end up with that as beer, we might work harder at preserving our planet.