Invasion of the Traditional British Pint Snatchers

The latest on beer in The Guardian: http://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2015/sep/11/brewsters-women-brewers-men-inside-micropub-world-dancing-man
All the new cliches (see http://robocono.blogspot.com/2015/06/shocking-news.html) are there: 1. Beards - 100% hit rate for all men interviewed (both of them), 2. Citrus, 3. Pale Ale: “...the beer itself... “citrusy pale ale”, 4. Passion: the head brewer “always had a passion for pubs” and 5. Fruit Beer: ...“beer that hinted at mango and papaya”.

But there is one shocking new revelation: the head microbrewer claims English hops are “dull and a bit boring”, and we are told authoritatively that “The best hops are from New Zealand, Australia and the US, with the UK catching up mainly with blends grown to mimic the more tropical foundations”.

Passing over the question of WTF the journalist imagines a “tropical foundation” might be, the implications of this confidently stated 'fact' are staggering: although we invented the Pale Ale which is the new default setting for beer, our native hops are now considered inferior and are being crossed with other strains to make them more like foreign ones (presuming that's what “blends grown to mimic” means).

So, not only are the forces of classic late model capitalism at work to stop you getting the pint you like - by which I mean the illusion of choice concealing the operation of oligarchy, in that more and more breweries are taken over by larger ones, and their beer replaced by that of the large one while still being marketed under the old name (Thwaites, Jennings and Tetley by Marston's, too many to list by Greene King) - and more foreign hops are being used here, but 
British hops are being genetically modified to produce beer that tastes like lemon juice or tropical fruit juice. 


No wonder traditional Bitter is getting harder to find and the sale of Mild is under threat, it  sounds like it will soon be impossible to brew traditional British beer any more.

(For those of you who were expecting more fashion victim revelations, normal service will resume shortly...)

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