malt beverage

We find no FUBAR approvals to date, but here we have WTF ale from Lagunitas, and SNAFU wine from Cartlidge & Browne. Both make liberal use of military slang. Lagunitas does so to express their dismay and confusion about the current state of world affairs. Tango and Foxtrot are well established as the military alphabet codes for T and F. Wilco famously used these codes on a 2002 album, but Whiskey, rather than Wilco, is the correct code for W. Perhaps the Petaluma, California brewer believed TTB would not allow the term “whiskey” on a malt beverage label. Or perhaps they are big Wilco fans. Or perhaps they are just very confused, further to the freewheeling text on the label (tieing in Bush v. Gore, adult videos, and imbibilisciousness). SNAFU, apart from the acronym, is California red wine bottled by Cartlidge & Browne in American Canyon, California. It claims to be the first wine to provide tasting notes via text message.

You can probably find some examples of American flags on TTB labels. But TTB usually does not allow it, and for that reason you won’t find one on this label. Manchester Brewing explains:

The feds forced us to remove part of the American flag, and replace the stars with a hammer and sickle. It’s the law, doesn’t have to make any sense. Originally, the Kombat ale was a Special Bitter, but it’s moved a bit beyond that.

A better view of the modified flag is here. Is it any wonder that TTB rejected a bunch of Manchester’s labels? Manchester goes on to explain:

Smacked Down by The Man! The TTB rejected all of our labels! One had a flag over the capitol; it was an American flag but that’s not allowed — so we put a Hammer and Sickle where the stars go, and that’s ok. Also, we used OMFG! on another label, and the government decided that was obscene, even though we protested that it meant Oh My Fairy Godmother and told them we were sticking to that story. So now it says “Censored” over the OMFG, and people tell me they find that funnier.

We were perusing some lists of shockingly exotic alcohol beverages. Nestled among the Baby Mouse Wine and the Mare’s Milk Wine, we found, at long last, the beer made with human saliva. It is otherwise known as chicha and it goes back thousands of years, to roots in the Andes region. The above video does an excellent job of describing why anyone would chew up maize, add some saliva, and then brew it into beer. The Dogfish site further explains:

The most exotic and unique component of this project, from the perspective of the American beer drinker, happens before the beer is even brewed. As per tradition, instead of germinating all of the grain to release the starches, the purple maize is milled, moistened in the chicha-makers’ mouths …, and formed into small cakes which are flattened and laid out to dry. The natural ptyalin enzymes in the saliva act as a catalyst and break the starches into more accessible fermentable sugars. On brewday the muko, or corn cakes, are added to the mash tun pre-boil along with the other grains. This method might sound strange but it is still used regularly today throughout villages in South and Central America. It is actually quite effective and totally sanitary. Since the grain-chewing (known as salivation) happens...