"To swindle, cheat, hoodwink, or hoax." Craft?

Remember when only the evil big-boy brewers used high fructose corn syrup in their beers? Not the good 'craft' brewers!

Oh, wait. Except when they do.

Thanks to a 'craft' brewery, a beer made to taste like Oreo cookies —because the beer is manufactured with high-fructose-syrup-baked-Oreos in it — is now a thing:

The Veil Brewing Company in Richmond, Virginia, has just released a chocolate milk stout called Hornswoggler ($17 per 4-pack) that is ‘conditioned’ (fermented) with "hundreds of pounds of Oreo cookies."

—Popsugar

And what exactly are the other wholesome ingredients in Oreo cookies, the 'craft' ingredients?

• Sugar
• Unbleached Enriched Flour
  • Wheat Flour
  • Niacin
  • Reduced Iron
  • Thiamine Mononitrate [Vitamin B1]
  • Riboflavin [Vitamin B2]
  • Folic Acid
• High Oleic Canola and/or Palm and/or Canola Oil
• Cocoa (processed with Alkali)
• High Fructose Corn Syrup
• Leavening (Baking Soda and/or Calcium Phosphate)
• Cornstarch
• Salt
• Soy Lecithin
• Artificial flavoring vanillin
• Chocolate

Do you really want all of those in your 'craft' beer?

By the way, a 19.1-ounce bag of Oreos costs $3.56 (at 'craft' shop Walmart); a 6-pack of a good milk stout, say Left Hand, costs $9.99-$10.99. Four bottles of this Hornswaggler will set you back $17. Hornswaggle: "To swindle, cheat, hoodwink, or hoax."

So as not to single out this particular apostasy, I submit this next example (or this item or these, or ... the damn roll of adulterated 'craft' goes on and on):

When the big-boy breweries add flavorings to their beers, they are derided as morally deficient by 'craft' beer poohbahs, their beers demoted to flavored malt beverage status. When 'craft' breweries do the same, they are praised for innovation. But it's all about increasing the sales, isn't it?

A non-trivial portion of the double-digit growth of 'craft' beer has been fed by hiding the flavor of malt. Hiding the inherent, inconvenient flavors of beer. Making alco-pops. Making beers for folk who don't like the taste of 'beer.' (Even hoppy beers can be touted as only tasting of hop: juicy, tropical, dank, etc.)

And when a 'craft' brewery is local, all bets are off. Due merely to propinquity, local brewery deficiencies are fulsomely transmogrified into beatified facets. New 'craft' drinkers are hornswaggled into thinking off-flavors are innovative flavors.

I recently asked a clerk at a local, well-stocked beer store for a suggestion of a beer without extraneous "cocoa-puffs and dingleberries." "Oh, you're looking for a simple beer," he replied.

Good is simple. Bad is innovative. Quality is trumped (ha!) by local. Pandering to make sales.

-----more-----

• Read the original story at PopSugar.
• A couple of years ago, the 'craft' world exploded with praise for Not Your Father's Root Beer, a 'beer' that tasted, to the drop, like a sweet soft drink, and had dubious 'craft' provenance.
• Count Chocula, Wheaties, Reese’s Puffs, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Fruity Pebbles, Corn Flakes, Rice Krispies, Apple Cinnamon Breakfast Cereal. Craft Brewing and Beer has described a few more such 'beers.'
• I cannot claim ownership of the clever scatologicum, "cocoa-puffs and dingleberries." It was coined by Joseph Marunowski, past brewer at Boston Beer (Cincinnati, Ohio) and past Director of Brewing Operations at Heavy Seas Beer (Baltimore, Maryland).


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