Beerection day!

I have noticed lately that every fourth year is a lot longer than the intervening three. This is partially due to the fact that this is the leap year and therefore contains an extra day – February has the cheek to add an extra day even though it’s in the middle of winter – but the real reason this particular year is so incredibly long is that it happens to be the year when Americans elect their president. Now don’t get me wrong, I’m a big fan of democracy and the idea of chucking your ballot into a box to say “good luck” to your chosen candidate and “bugger off” to the rest, but for some reason or other, the good people residing in the United States of America have decided to make this contest into a year-long event. This would not be so bad were it not for the fact that the rest of the world, containing 95% of the members of the human species, also decides to fill 95% of available space in their newspapers with speculation and analysis concerning the aforementioned American election. In contrast, the main (parliamentary) election in my own home country of Norway, home to almost 0.07% of the world’s population, has never generated as much as a comma in any foreign newspaper.

Now I am also, through this very blog, part of the world’s media, so it would seem foolish not to write about the election at all. As you may have noticed by now, the main topic of the blog is beer, which also happens to be the most wonderful and diverse drink on the planet. It has therefore surprised me very much that neither of the two main candidates have, as far as I can tell, ever mentioned what their policies are regarding the juice of the barley. It is therefore my duty, dear readers, to investigate this important issue, and to write about it.

I had no idea how to approach this task, so I basically googled “how should I approach this task”. Evidently, Google has some clever algorithms, because it simply suggested “google it”, which I really ought to have thought of myself. Anyway, having been enlightened, I proceeded to google “Trump beer” and “Clinton beer”.

Trump’s first google hit was that gay bars in Pennsylvania and Maryland have apparently decided to boycott Yuengling beer because of the brewery’s support for Trump – it seems that Yuengling has taken the step of actually endorsing Trump, and that this has caused a bit of a backlash amongst the drinkers who don’t share the brewery’s view on this matter. Next comes the story of a Chicago brewery not quite as fond of Trump that renamed some leftover beer they had “Chinga Tu Pelo”, which is Spanish and translates to “fuck you hair”. Nice.

Clinton’s results weren’t quite so interesting. She apparently went for a beer sometime in May to showcase the fantastic American craft brewing industry, and was pictured pretending to like some mysterious concoction that looked a bit like a chunk of black hole in a glass. The only other noteworthy hit on the first place was that someone had come up with the ultimate election night accessory – a Chillary Clinton Can Holder. What more could beer drinkers want whilst either celebrating or drowning their sorrows?

So there you have it – neither candidate has made a big effort to win the beer drinker’s vote, and neither seems to have spent much time in pubs drinking beer. Herein lies the problem, I think. The campaign will be remembered mostly for being the nastiest in democratic history, with each candidate spending most of the time telling the unfortunate voters what a terrible person the other candidate is. Beer drinkers don’t tend to act like that, mostly because we’re a sensible bunch, but also because we realize that there are more important things in life than politics, such as beer. In fact, I am convinced that televised political debates would be much less venomous, as well as much more fun, if they were conducted in a pub serving great beer. You only hear the truth from children and drunk people, they say, and I could imagine the debate ending after like the seventh pint when Clinton and Trump embrace and declare their love for one another whilst agreeing to move the White House to an old brewery in Wisconsin from where they will share the presidency and brew great beer. Then they would invite all the world leaders over for a giant beer festival where, simultaneously, no boring lager would be served and all the world’s problems would be solved.

On this optimistic (though perhaps ever so slightly unrealistic) note I shall wish you all a happy November 8^th, regardless of which country you may reside in and whether you have the opportunity to vote today or not. Remember, though, that if you’re in the supermarket, the pub, or perhaps somewhere else where different beers are on offer, you can always vote for your favourite beer by exercising your power as a consumer. Vote and drink wisely, my friends! Cheers!

The Norwegian Rant

Well, dear readers, it’s come to this. I’ve had enough. I need to let out steam. Therefore, I shall proceed to write a blog entry about my home and native land, which happens to be Norway. If you have no idea where this might be, here’s a tip: look for a smallish ultra-rich country stuck up in the very north of Europe, most of it so far north that you wonder why anyone would want to live there, because it’s windy and cold for most of the year, especially in summer, except in good summers, and the skiing is much better in the Alps. That’s not the point. The point is: on September 9^th this year, the people of Norway who have the right to vote (myself included despite the fact I’ve lived abroad for almost 18 years) will elect a new parliament, which is likely to include at least 6, possibly as many as 9 different political parties, all of which seemingly agree on only one single issue: beer is the root of all evil. 

Norway has a fairly proud brewing heritage. Sure, in comparison with the great brewing nations in Europe it’s not much to drink about, but there used to be many small, family-owned breweries dotted around the county that would brew half-decent beers to quench the thirst of the populace, at affordable prices. That is, until the politicians decided that beer is evil, and raised taxes to such eye-watering levels that today you’re lucky to get a half litre of beer for less than 10 euros in a bar or a restaurant. To put this into perspective: I just had a pizza AND a beer in my local German restaurant, conveniently located in the neighbouring building. The total bill was 8 euros, though to be fair this is slightly cheaper than the average for Germany. In the shops in Norway, the cheapest half-litre can of beer will set you back about 3 euros. I just bought a can of pretty decent German beer for 39 cents. You see my pint: somewhere, something is wrong and that’s not right.

To add insult to injury, the Norwegian politicians have decided that the breweries are not allowed to provide information about their various beers on the web. Unsurprisingly, Carlsberg and Heineken think this rule is fantastic, because internet-savvy Norwegians have discovered that they can easily reach foreign-hosted web sites by typing in a web address that’s doesn’t end in “.no”, whereas the Norwegian breweries cannot even display a picture of a glass of beer on their sites. This makes absolutely .no sense, and it makes me somewhat angry. To be fair, I think the world, and possibly even Norway, has greater problems, but since I’m perhaps ever so slightly above averagely interested in beer it makes my blood boil at whichever temperature blood boils (which reminds me that I need to look this information up).

There have been positive developments. Enterprising individuals have succeeded in opening up microbreweries that brew interesting beers of various types, and some of them are very good. These beers are so expensive that they single-handedly have caused a shift in the Norwegian beer drinking culture: it’s now socially acceptable to buy only one or two of these and call it an evening, since you’ve made a massive dent in your bank account anyway. My feelings towards this are ambivalent, though I’m not sure if that’s good or bad.

Nevertheless, the fact is that most Norwegians regard beer as something to get you drunk on the weekend, and not a nice drink that you can drink after exercise or when you’re heading home on the train after a hard day’s work. Sure, this attitude is also slowly shifting, but my point is that this is despite, and certainly not because of, the politicians’ anti-beer legislation over the last 30 years.

OK, so this does perhaps sound like a luxury problem, I admit. With climate change, over-population, poverty and war rampant all over the planet, a great big rant about the Norwegian beer situation seems to somehow fade into insignificance. This, of course, could be wrong. Just like a butterfly that flaps its tiny little wings somewhere in the Pacific could cause a gale in Ireland 12 days later, the complexity of the world is such that the insane Norwegian anti-beer legislation could directly or indirectly cause all the world’s problems – which makes it even more important that the voters in Norway turn out for the election. Shame there isn’t a party to vote for, since they all hate beer. There’s probably even a law banning the sale of beer on Election Day. On this depressing note, I shall bid you all a fond beerwell and crack open a bottle of my favourite brew, which will probably lift my spirit level and cause me to horizontally regret posting this negative drivel. Cheers!