DiS Beer Wankers 2.0

Picked this lot up over the weekend. The Yellow Belly is perilously close to looking like the Klan’s favourite beer, isn’t it? Hope it doesn’t make it to the US of A.

People say this a lot but think there’s something about racist being yellow bellies on the inner packaging… which makes not quite as bad. But probably still inadvisable.

Had the Christmas cake stout this year after holding it for 12 months.

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Dark Star bought by Fullers!

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As others will point out, it’s meant to look like a Klansman and there’s a message on the bottle about how the whole thing is meant to be an anti-racist message.

However the more I think about it the less comfortable I am with it.

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Yeah, same here. I see why they’ve done it and how they’ve done it but I’m not sure they should have done it.
I might be wrong on this, though.

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I keep imagining myself trying to articulate it to say an American PoC who had experienced racism and I can’t see how I could really do it.

Plus, maybe some would hate the idea of the bottle, while others would think it was funny. It’s not like opinion is monolithic across groups.

How do you feel about this, @rich-t?

It’s a nice beer, but the bottle makes me cringe. Firing shots at the KKK via a £9 bottle of beer made in Derbyshire. I don’t see what the connection is. It’s like they thought of the packaging first, and worked backwards from there so it feels really tenuous.

Blimey. Probably a good thing? I dunno. Fullers seem like decent people. Imagine Dark Star will continue as usual but with their backing.

That’s basically what happened iirc. I think it was originally brewed as part of a collaboration project themed around a rainbow, with each brewery given a colour. They were given yellow, and then came up with idea of yellow being about cowardice, then somehow went on to racism, then the KKK, etc etc. It’s a stretch.

Especially since with a few minor adjustments you could turn the packaging into a ghost and still have broadly the same concept (yellow belly being a coward afraid of spooky ghosts). Let’s face it, it’s the paper wrapping that makes it stand out on a shelf.

Think that’ll work out alright, fullers reasonably well respected, enable dark Star to expand. Don’t see much of dark Star these days up in Manchester, but when I first started drinking ale/‘craft’ beer, dark Star American Pale ale was defo a gateway drug. Plus the evening star pub is ace.

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Apparently the DS pubs will continue to be run separately and aren’t part of the deal.

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Ahhh, right. But yeah, definitely a stretch.

My hope with this is Fullers is a big brewery but is bothered about beer quality.

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Remember when the Duke of York in Shoreham by sea was bought by DS (think they got rid recently). Going back to my old underage drinking haunt over Xmas and getting pints of revelation was quite something

I considered giving my brother a bottle as a makeshift present after something else didn’t turn up but I felt a bit weird giving him a bottle that looks like that and then having to explain how its all about cowardice.

I’m conflicted. I suppose they’ll still operate seperately and look to expand Dark Star. And it’s not exactly as if Fullers are a multinational like InBev or whatever. Still makes me nervous mind