'Free' Danish beer makes a splash
By Clark Boyd
Technology correspondent
The Danes love their beer, but increasingly they are looking beyond the old
Danish standby, Carlsberg, to quench their thirst.
Students from the Information Technology University in Copenhagen are trying to
help by releasing what they are calling the world's first open source beer
recipe.
It is called Vores Oel, or Our Beer, and the recipe is proving to be a worldwide
hit.
The idea behind the beer comes from open source software. This is software whose
code is made publicly available for anyone to change and improve, provided that
those changes and improvements are then shared in turn.
Perhaps the most well-known example of open source software is the Linux
operating system.
Microsoft, on the other hand, creates proprietary software, meaning the company
does not tend to let others see how its software works.
The Danish brewer Carlsberg takes a similar approach to beer.
Rasmus Nielsen, who runs a Copenhagen-based artist collective called Superflex,
wanted to challenge the idea of "proprietary" beer.
Software and alcohol
He was teaching a workshop on intellectual property and copyright at the
Information Technology University in Copenhagen.
Mr Nielsen asked his students to think about applying open source ideas to the
non-digital world.
"Why not take those ideas back to the old world, and try to apply them to other
things as well?" asks Nielsen.
Why beer? As the Vores Oel website says, why not?
"It's a universal commodity that we like to think of as free, but unfortunately
it isn't," says Mr Nielsen. "So, I thought it was an appropriate medium to
confront these issues."
A group of about 15 students at the university agreed.
"Beer is an amusing subject in a university environment," says Thorarinn
Stefansson, one of the students who signed up for the open source beer project.
"It's something more stimulating than perhaps making something non-edible or
non-drinkable."
Heavy brew
To get started, the students met with the author of a Danish book on
home-brewing.
Then, they came to an agreement on what kind of beer they wanted. They bought
the ingredients, and brewed up 100 litres of it in the university cafeteria.
Mr Stefansson says he and the other students decided to call it Our Beer,
version 1.0.
"Like in the software industry, the first version is named version 1.0. It
leaves room for improvement."
Our Beer turned out to be a darker, heavier brew than your typical Danish lager.
"It's the kind of beer that you feel afterwards that you've eaten a steak or
something. I mean, it's not the kind of beer you'd want to be drinking for a
bachelor party or something," says Mr Nielsen.
The students did supply an extra kick to their beer. They added guarana, a South
American berry that packs a caffeine-like punch.
The students also created a label for the beer, and a website that comes
complete with catchy, open source music and sound effects.
Global interest
Most important, the students released the recipe under what is called a Creative
Commons licence.
"You're free to change it," says Mr Nielsen. "But if you use our recipe as the
basis for your beer, you have to be open with your recipe as well. That's the
legal framework that follows the beer."
You can even sell your own version, as long as you credit Our Beer for the
recipe.
The tipple has proved a hit. The Our Beer website has been a busy place, says Mr
Nielsen.
"We got loads of questions from small beer brewers in Mexico, Brazil, and even
Afghanistan," he says. "Afghanistan, that was weird."
One smaller Danish brewer is even planning on brewing up some of Our Beer to
sell in the autumn.
Both Mr Nielsen and his students hope that what people take away from the Our
Beer project is that open source is not just for the digital world.
Mr Nielsen says there is no reason that developing countries could not use the
idea to manufacture, for example, their own HIV/AIDS drugs.
Clark Boyd is technology correspondent for The World, a BBC World Service and
WGBH-Boston co-production
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