If you can’t solve your insurmountable smog problem (not surprising when these are your anti-smog measures), you may as well get a laugh out of it, right? Enter ‘Airpocalypse IPA,’ a new brew by Beijing-based Jing-A Brewing, whose price depends on the amount of fine particulates in the air. The WSJ reports:
One of Beijing’s micro-brew companies, Jing-A Brewing, was rolling out its latest brew, an IPA called the Airpocalypse, the price of which would be based on the amount of fine particulates in Beijing’s air. If the AQI hit 500 or above, a measurement identified on the U.S. Embassy’s Beijing Air Twitter feed as “beyond index,” the beer would be free.
“It’s a strange phenomenon to hope for a bad air day for beer,” says Mr. Goldstein, a teacher at an international school in Beijing. “I was checking the AQI all day – but I think I do that anyway.”
The release of the beer is just the latest expression of a kind of gallows humor expatriate residents of Beijing have developed in response to the city’s notoriously bad air pollution.
And we have to say it demonstrates a lot better sense of humor than CCTV’s “5 Benefits of Smog” article, which we suspect was only half-joking, half-trying to get the masses to believe that smog was beneficial so they’d quit their “bellyaching.”
Perhaps Jing-A Brewery will also release a Black Lung Lager, Emphysema Ale, the aforementioned beer’s darker cousin, the Air-Bock-alypse, and other beers where the cops have to use a PM2.5 monitor rather than a breathalyzer to detect how much you’ve drunk.
