Free Beer


Free Beer, originally known as Vores øl - An open source beer, is the first brand of beer with an "open"/"free" brand and recipe. The recipe and trademark elements are published under the Creative Commons CC BY-SA license.
The beer was created in 2004 by students at the IT University in Copenhagen together with artist collective Superflex, to illustrate how concepts of the FOSS movement might be applied outside the digital world. The "Free Beer" concept illustrates also the connection between the long tradition of freely sharing cooking recipes with the FOSS movement, which tries to establish this sharing tradition also for the "recipes" of software, the source code. The "Free beer" concept received an overall positive reception from international press and media for the political message, was presented on many exhibitions and conferences, and inspired many breweries in adopting the concept.

History

Vores Øl

In December 2004, a group of IT University of Copenhagen students together with Superflex brewed a 100-liter batch of a dark heavy beer in their school's cafeteria. The group labeled the beer Vores øl, after a 1994 Carlsberg beer advertisement slogan. A website was created to promote the project and the beer's recipe and label designs were published under an open source Creative Commons license, specifically the CC-BY-SA 2.5 license. Unlike software, cooking recipes aren't copyrightable, so the share-alike/copyleft licensing approach is legally questionable and untested in court.
After the publication, the project received an overall positive reception from international press and media for the political message.

Concept extension "Free Beer"

The developers of the beer stated that the beer was primarily a medium for the message of "dogmatic notions of copyright and intellectual property that are dominating our culture", and admitted that the group had only limited experience in beer production and was not made up of beer gurus.
The addition of the non-traditional beer ingredient Guaraná was also partly inspired politically by a previously in 2003 initiated Superflex project, "Guaraná Power", which focussed on the support of Brazilian guaraná farmers with Fair trade.
After the first "Vores Øl" brewing of the open-source beer concept, Superflex continued to develop the concept under the name "Free Beer". A new colorful, unusual "Free Beer" artwork should create associations with the "60's liberation" and underline the freedom aspect of the concept. The later name "Free Beer" is a play on Richard Stallman's common remark that free software is "free as in speech, not free as in beer", who suggested also the creation of "Free software beer" instead of an "open source beer".

Recipe development

While the first "Vores øl" recipe drew some technical criticism, the recipe was continuously updated and identified shortcomings were fixed. Originally, the homebrewing community complained about the quality of the process and ingredient description. Remarks were that it was not stated how much water to use in the mash, what type of yeast was to be used, the style of beer being produced, whether or not any hops were being added for aroma, fermentation temperature, or how the beer was supposed to taste. Making reference to the technical problems of when software instructions cannot be made into a functioning program, it was mentioned that if this recipe were source code, it would not compile. Because of the underlying theme of the group's message, the correction and development of this recipe is actively encouraged.
Due to the availability of the recipe and the many Free Beer brewings of breweries and individuals worldwide over the course of years, the recipe was updated several times. Later major Free Beer recipe iterations were also developed in collaboration with a local Danish and experienced brewery, Skands in Brøndby. As previous recipe shortcomings were corrected, for instance the amount of sugar was decreased by 90%, the quality of the beer improved significantly. The recipe's version, which has now reached 6.0 in 2017, illustrates the community's continuous collaborative improvement progress, made possible by the "open source" nature of Free Beer.
VersionCodenameDateBrewery/Comments
FREE BEER version 6.0"The Atlantic Brew"October 30, 2017Summerskills brewery in Devonport, Plymouth
FREE BEER version 4.1August 25, 2010Brewery in Huntington Beach, California
FREE BEER version 4.1"Artspace"October 2008Steam Brewing Company in Newton, Auckland, New Zealand
FREE BEER version 4.0"SKANDS"September 2008brewed at Skands Microbrewery in Brøndby, Danemark
FREE BEER version 3.5"Hops & Barley"March 2008By the Hops & Barley microbrewery Berlin, Germany
FREE BEER versão 3.4"Germania"November 2007Brewer: Arnaldo Ribero, Germania brewery in Sao Paulo, Brasil
FREE BEER version 3.3“Linghzi”November 2007brewed in collaboration with Everything Mushroom, Knoxville, Tennessee
FREE BEER version 3.2“St Austell”July 2007brewed at St Austell Brewery in Cornwall, England.
FREE BEER version 3.0“Skands”June 2006brewed at Skands Microbrewery in Brøndby, Danemark
FREE BEER version 2.1“Apollo”August 2006brewed at the Apollo Microbrewery in Copenhagen
FREE BEER version 2.0“Apollo”2005brewed at the Apollo Microbrewery in Copenhagen.
FREE BEER version 1.5“Samvirke”?suited for home-brewing
FREE BEER version 1.1FREE BEERMay 20, 2005first time served under the name "Free Beer" on the Volksbühne Berlin
FREE BEER version 1.0“Vores Øl”December 2004brewed by students at the IT university in Copenhagen together with Superflex

Derived beers

Under its free license, this free beer encourages others to tweak the recipe and redistribute it. Commercial or amateur brewers are able to reuse the recipe. Known derivatives include:
Others took the political idea of an "open/free beer", opened their own beer recipes and/or artwork, often under free licenses:
, a kind of Free Beer as the recipe is into the public domain.
Since its first presentation, the "Free Beer" concept was often reported by international printed and online media, and also discussed in specialist books regarding copyright.
The "Free Beer" project was also well received by the FOSS and open content movement, for instance by Richard Stallman, Cory Doctorow, and Lawrence Lessig. It was presented and sold on several technology conferences and meetings, for instance the "Isummit 2008" and the RMLL 2011, 2012, and 2014. The FSCONS 2008 resulted also in a CC-BY-SA licensed Ebook with the "Free Beer" artwork and title.
Free Beer was shown also in the context of several art exhibitions and museums, for instance the Art Basel Miami Beach 2006, the Van Abbemuseum, Netherlands 2007 or the Taipei Biennial 2010. "Free Beer" was also used in the context of anti-copyright activities and movements, illustrating the advantage of open knowledge for the society.

Gallery