sparking curious mind

Montreal culture jammers Rob Maguire and Ezra Winton, the cofounders of the anticorporate activist collective berculture began sharing their recipe for berbr , an all-natural hemp ale, with Canadian microbrewers as a way of spreading a message and funding their work.

Two microbreweries in Montreal and Vancouver are making the "uncorporate" beer, and about a dozen bars and cafés are selling it. The profits are split with berculture, which produces political documentaries and film festivals, and campaigns against corporate giants like Wal-Mart. Like open-source software code, the ale's recipe is free for anyone to use and modify, so long as users in turn share any changes.
To support local enterprise and cut down on pollution from shipping, Maguire and Winton want berbr to be made locally, from mostly local ingredients, wherever it is sold.



Überbr isn't the world's only open-source beer, nor is it the first. That title is claimed by Vores Øl (Our Beer), a meaty brew with a caffeine boost from South American guarana beans. The beer was created last year by a group of students at Copenhagen's IT University in a workshop on copyright and intellectual property taught by artist Rasmus Nielsen. The project applies the logic behind open-source software, which flouts Microsoft's corporate hegemony by tapping the creativity of the masses to design ever-evolving programs like the Linux operating system.