All the talk about ‘traces’ of horse DNA in beefburgers reminded me of the puzzle of Kaliber.
This is a brand of ‘alcohol-free’ lager (made by Guinness) which, unlike many similar products, actually has an acceptable taste. But I was puzzled about why it could be bought only from licensed premises.
I was told that it was because it started out as normal strength lager, from which the alcohol was then removed. But the process meant that, by law, it had to be treated the same as other ‘brewed’ liquors.
The label declared the alcohol content to be less than 0.05 per cent. What continued to puzzle me however was that a version of shandy – popular from my childhood days & still then widely available, though it seems now to have disappeared from the supermarkets - contained more alcohol but was sold alongside cola & other soft drinks, with no licensing restrictions at all.
A toxicologist friend who worked in the area of food safety told me that the declared alcohol content meant that it was below the limit of detection but that, in order to comply with the relevant regulations, they had allowed for the possibility that there might be traces left over from the production process.
But then why, a few years later, was Billy Connolly allowed to advertise it on the telly with the assurance that it contained absolutely no alcohol at all?
Link
YouTube: Kaliber Ad
