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Germans bought an entire town's beer supply before a white supremacist music festival

The town people and local courts worked together to dry the Nazis out.

via Polizei Sachsen/Twitter

German police at a white supremacist music festival.

If you're a white supremacist, I imagine drinking beer (or any other alcoholic beverage) is a nice way to relax and tune out the fact that you're a terrible person who's helping set human progress back at a rate the bubonic plague would be proud of. But for some self-professed white supremacists, it wasn't quite so easy on a June weekend in Germany back in 2019.

According to Newsweek, the hundreds of neo-Nazis who flocked to the "Shield and Sword Festival" in Ostritz found themselves uncomfortably dry when a court imposed a liquor ban at their gathering of hateful bigots who also like to listen to awful music together. The ban's aim was to prevent any violence that might erupt (you know it would...), and the police confiscated more than a thousand gallons of alcohol from those attending the weekend-long event. They even posted pictures on Twitter of the alcohol they'd removed from participants.

But that's only half the story.


"The alcohol ban at the meeting/event site of the Neo-Nazi meeting in Ostritz has been consistently enforced by our forces since yesterday," the force tweeted on June 22. "Alcoholic beverages are taken off before entering the premises."

Residents of the town of Ostritz, who've had to deal with the bigots before (they threw the same festival last year on Hitler's birthday), knew that the ban wouldn't stop the festival-goers from trying to obtain more alcohol while in town. So the townspeople got together a week before the festival and devised a plan which would truly make the white supremacists focus on how terrible neo-Nazi music is: They bought up the entire town's beer supply.


"We wanted to dry the Nazis out," Georg Salditt, a local activist, told reporters. "We thought, if an alcohol ban is coming, we'll empty the shelves at the Penny [supermarket]."

"For us it's important to send the message from Ostritz that there are people here who won't tolerate this, who say 'we have different values here, we're setting an example..." an unidentified local woman told ZDF Television.


At the same time the festival was going on, residents also staged two counter-protests and put on a "Peace Festival" that commemorated the 100th anniversary of the local soccer team to drive home the point that bigotry wasn't welcome. If the festival is held in the same town again next year, ticket-buyers should be aware that Ostritz isn't playing around when it says that white supremacists aren't welcome.

Michael Kretschamer, the local state premier, applauded the efforts of the locals and state officials. "I am very impressed with how in such a small town…the citizens stand up to make it clear that right-wing extremists are not wanted here," Kretschmer told the DPA news agency.

There's some good news, too: Aside from the fact that residents aren't afraid to send the message that they're intolerant of intolerance, attendance to the far-right music festival has drastically decreased in the past year. In 2018, 1,200 people attended, according to the BBC. This year? Approximately 500-600. Here's hoping the festival won't have a return engagement next year.

This article originally appeared six years ago.

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Think beer commercials are sexist? You should see these 7 labels.

Breaking news: Lots of women enjoy drinking beer.

Beer — craft beer in particular — is often thought of as a man's game, but that couldn't be further from the truth.

In fact, some experts believe women actually invented beer, though you wouldn't know it from the way it's sometimes marketed today.

GIF via matchpointHD/YouTube.

Looks like every beer ad ever, right?

It's not just the overly sexed-up commercials that are crossing lines and alienating customers. It's the names of the beers themselves.

Panty Dropper. Leg Spreader. Thong Remover.

As hard as it is to believe, those are real beer names.

Thankfully, it looks like the craft beer industry has finally had enough of sexist and offensive brew names.

Discontent with these kinds of labels has been brewing (yeah, I went there) for years, with both drinkers and brewers alike growing increasingly agitated by immaturity from a handful of breweries.

Now the Brewers Association, one of the largest industry trade bodies, has finally updated its code to crack down on offensive names and labels like these.

While it doesn't have the power to officially ban them, the association can make sure offending breweries don't use its awards, medals, or seal of approval to market beers with offensive labels. The move ought to discourage this kind of desperation to appeal to male drinkers, and it's a small gesture that represents a bigger current of change.

If all of this sounds a little like the fun-police at work, take a look at these labels. Some of them are pretty hard to stomach.

The idea that the only way to appeal to men is through sexual innuendo is offensive to women and men.

We can do better.

1. Panty Peeler, Midnight Sun Brewing

Anything else ready for summer adventures to begin?

A post shared by Midnight Sun Brewing Co. (@midnightsunbrewingco) on

2. Raging Bitch, Flying Dog Brewery

Photo by Antti T. Nissinen/Flickr.

3. Naughty Girl, New Albanian Brewing

Image by New Albanian Brewing.

4. Stacked, Route 2 Brews

Image by Route 2 Brews.

5. Tramp Stamp, Clown Shoes Beer

6. Double D, Fordham & Dominion Brewing

7. Crazy Bitch, Northwest Brewing Company

And the list goes on and on. Angry yet?

The trend of beer names that degrade or objectify women is offensive and unnecessary. Besides, any beer drinker knows the best brews don't need to rely on gross marketing gimmicks to get by.

The latest move from the Brewers Association proves drinkers are ready to hold their beer makers to a higher standard.

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This beloved brewery gets electricity from its own beer. Yup: beer energy!

After more than a decade of delicious craft-beer-making, Magic Hat Brewery had grown into a major operation.

They got so big, in fact, that they ... actually couldn't get any bigger.

By 2007, Magic Hat was making more than 3.3 million gallons of beer a year. More than 90% of that final product was water, which was a major problem for the town of South Burlington, Vermont. (And that's not even counting the water used in cleaning and other aspects of production, too.)

As it was, the brewery's water bills were costing them about $200,000 a year, and the treatment facilities in their hometown were already working at full capacity. They wanted to start making more beer. But if they did, there wouldn't be any water left for the city's 18,000 residents.

Inside the "Artifactory" at the Magic Hat Brewery in South Burlington, Vermont. All photos by Thom Dunn/Upworthy, unless otherwise specified.

The brewery owners thought about building their own water treatment plant right at their brewery. But then a better idea presented itself.

PurposeEnergy, a small start-up founded by an MIT graduate named Eric Fitch, approached Magic Hat and offered to solve their water problem.

Fitch had been working on a prototype for what he called the "tribrid bioreactor." It was a hybrid of three different digester systems that would not only clean a brewery's wastewater, but also convert the biosolid waste (which is organic material such as spent grains, hops, and trub) into electricity.

Fitch had been looking for a place to put his prototype into action. Magic Hat was looking for ways to expand without ruining the city's water supply. It was a match made in Hop Heaven.

Converting their leftover beer parts into sustainable electricity? That was just an added bonus.

Hasper Kuno of PurposeEnergy inside the company's biogas generator at the Magic Hat Brewery.

How does something called a tribrid bioreactor work, exactly?

Basically, like this:

Image courtesy of Magic Hat Brewery and PurposeEnergy, used with permission.

"We basically allow Magic Hat to keep on expanding their production and not really be a burden on the local town," explained Hasper Kuno, who oversees PurposeEnergy's facility in South Burlington.

"What we send down the drain here, it’s literally cleaner than your typical household. And also we’re producing electricity on it, so it’s a no-brainer."

The thin black sludge on the left is how digested beer waste looks coming out of the digester; the clear cup on the right is how it looks after it's gone through the system's water clarifier.

According to Kuno, PurposeEnergy's tribrid bioreactor system can convert 93% of the brewery's waste into biogas and then electricity, allowing them to produce up to 220 kilowatts of energy daily — enough to power more than 200 average-size homes. Over the last five years, they've cumulatively produced more than 2.4 gigawatts of energy — which is twice as much as it took Doc Brown to power the Flux Capacitor that sent his beloved DeLorean back in time in "Back to the Future." So that's a lot.

"As far as we know, this is the most efficient digester in the world," Kuno said.

Oh, and that leftover 7% of waste that doesn't get converted into energy? It's still rich enough in nutrients to work as a hyper-concentrated fertilizer, which PurposeEnergy gives away to local farms — that is, when they're not using it as a soil substitute to grow their own hops.

Hops growing up the side of the water treatment tank behind the Magic Hat Brewery — with no actual soil, just a plant bed of leftover biowaste. So far, the hops are only being used for homebrewing, not commercial beer.

Since 2010, several other major U.S. breweries have adopted PurposeEnergy's epically sustainable brewing system too.

The bioreactor at Delaware's Dogfish Head Brewery is twice the size of the one at Magic Hat. The 1 million gallon system was built in 2014, and it has enabled the brewery to reduce its overall water consumption by more than half.

And in March 2016, PurposeEnergy broke ground on another new facility at Kona Brewing Company in Hawaii.

Kuno believes that big breweries will eventually hop on board with this trend, too. Companies like Molson Coors already have their own water treatment facilities on-premises, but the systems at those breweries have a life span of around 50 years.

"When that time is up, then we’ll come in and get them a new digester," Kuno said.

"No parking" because this is where the burn-off from the gas-to-energy conversion happens — meaning that big copper pipe sometimes shoots out fireballs, which are much less tasty than beer.

The best part about this whole thing? This sustainability system isn't limited to just beer.

As long as there's some kind of organic waste in a system, the bioreactor can convert it into energy.

"We’ve got a couple of dairies that we’re hoping to install some systems," Kuno said. "Acid whey makes a lot of electricity, and that’s the byproduct of Greek yogurt, which is huge right now."

If a brewery could power an entire neighborhood with just its own beer, who knows what other amazing ways we can find to make our world more sustainable?

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This beer made from old food is the perfect way to drink responsibly.

Summer is the perfect time for stress-free relaxation with a beer in hand.

It's in those summer moments that nagging, worrisome questions weighing on you throughout the rest of the year suddenly become smaller and less heavy.

Questions like, "How am I going to pay rent next month?" and "What is my parent's Netflix password again?" just melt away as you sit back in your lawn chair, crack open a cold brew, and enjoy the statistically too-warm weather.

Beer has no labels. Photo via iStock.

But here's a question you probably don't consider in those moments: What if that beer you're drinking could help cut down on food waste?

This summer, thanks to a brewery in England, that might seriously be an option. 

Stay with me because this is actually really cool.

The beer is called "Wasted," and it's a pear-flavored ale crafted by Northern Monk Brewery in Leeds. 

It's made of overripe pears and discarded croissants and brioche. 

Why would anyone make a beer out of old food?

To make the beer, Northern Monk partnered with The Real Junk Food Project, a "pay as you feel" organization that runs cafes that make meals out of discarded food. 

As such, "Wasted" is an aptly-named zero-waste beer.

Even the glass bottle it comes in is 100% recyclable and the used hops from the beer making process are donated to local farms where they are repurposed as fertilizer. 

"Brewing beer naturally creates waste, so we wanted to find a way to change that," brewery founder Russell Bisset told Metro. "We saw this as an opportunity to challenge pre-conceived notions of what beer can be made with and highlight the kinds of products that go to waste on a daily basis."

A zero-waste beer is all well and good, but how does it taste?

According to Daniel Tapper at The Guardian, it tastes "incredible." And the Beer O'Clock Show, a beer-reviewing podcast in the U.K., calls it "well balanced" with "slight fruit flavors and an easy soft finish." 

Even if you're not a fan of hoppy beers, you have to admit a zero-waste beer is an intriguing idea.

In the U.S. alone, over 6 billion pounds of food is wasted every year. We don't often think about it when we throw out an old(ish) banana or refuse to eat the weird, crusty end-slice of a bread loaf — but it all adds up. 

Food that was pulled out of a single garbage can in Manhattan in 2007. Photo by Don Emmert/AFP/Getty Images.

Committing to a zero-waste lifestyle is an exhaustive and difficult process, and it certainly isn't manageable for everyone. But there are little things you can do to help reduce the insane amount of waste piling up all over the world. 

One of those things involves drinking a pear-flavored beer. Which, you know, ... doesn't sound too bad.

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