Intentionally Low-Quality Beers

To mark Earth Day, Colorado-based brewery New Belgium Brewing created a new beer called Torched Earth Ale with intentionally awful additions to imagine the kind of ingredients that brewers may be forced to use in a dystopian future. Torched Earth Ale is a spinoff of the brewery's flagship Fat Tire (America's first certified carbon-neutral beer) and it is said to play with "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."

Touted as the beer of the climate-ravaged future, Torched Earth Ale features smoke-tainted water, hardy grains like millet and buckwheat, plus shelf-stable extracts and dandelion weeds. With this beer, which isn't supposed to taste great, the brewery is calling for businesses to take action to support a brighter future with better beer in it.