Fort Collins’ Fat Tire Launches Torched Earth Ale: A Beer from a Climate-Ravaged Future that Tastes Awful
By The Denver Egotist / /
This Earth Day, Fat Tire is releasing “Torched Earth Ale” — a beer made with smoke-tainted water, dandelions and drought-resistant grains – some of the less-than-ideal ingredients that would be available and affordable to brewers in a climate-ravaged future without aggressive action now to confront the climate crisis. The resulting dark starchy liquid with smokey aromatics is not likely to win any awards, but does highlight the stakes of climate change for beer lovers everywhere.
In addition, Fat Tire is launching a sustained campaign asking beer drinkers to make a “Last Call for Climate” by demanding their favorite brands adopt 2030 climate plans. As of this year, 70 percent of Fortune 500 companies lack a meaningful climate action plan (one that will help companies achieve or be well on the way to achieving net-zero emissions by 2030, the year scientists say that catastrophic climate change could be irreversible without bold action). To make it easy, Fat Tire has created a seamless online tool allowing users to see which Fortune 500 companies have plans already — and which do not — and reach out directly to those that don’t.
Last year, Fat Tire – the flagship beer from New Belgium Brewing — became America’s first certified carbon neutral beer. New Belgium also announced plans to achieve net-zero emissions across the entire company by 2030.
Fat Tire commissioned Torched Earth’s apocalyptic label artwork from Kelly Malka, a Los Angeles-based artist and first-generation Moroccan immigrant who has experienced firsthand the devastating direct impacts of climate change, including worsening wildfires and air pollution, in her own community. For inspiration, Malka drew on neo-futuristic worlds in popular films and television to depict the iconic Fat Tire bicycle in an uninhabitable world swirling with flames.
Fat Tire’s Earth Day edition “Torched Earth Ale” will be available through New Belgium liquid centers in Fort Collins, Colo., and Asheville, N.C., as well as in limited quantities online at newbelgium.com. Online orders will include two four-packs of 16-ounce cans for $39.99.
Agency: Red & Co.
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