FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Hackney-based craft brewery The Fermented Algorithm has announced it will cease trading next month after exhausting the entire list of things that can be added to beer.
The brewery, which opened in 2019 in a railway arch that previously housed a different craft brewery, has been forced to admit defeat in what managing director Tom Harrison describes as an “unprecedented supply crisis affecting the entire sector”.
“We’ve tried everything,” Harrison said in a statement released this morning. “Coffee. Vanilla. Chocolate. Lactose. Seventeen types of citrus fruit. Marshmallows. Oysters. Breakfast cereals. Toast. Actual toast. We did one with Marmite. We did one with bacon. We even did one with other, smaller beers in it.”
The Fermented Algorithm made headlines in 2022 with its Crypto Winter IPA, which contained Bitcoin mining equipment and a sense of regret. Last year’s controversial Christmas release, a 14% imperial stout brewed with Terry’s Chocolate Orange and existential dread, sold out in minutes despite nobody actually enjoying it.
Industry insiders say the crisis has been brewing for years. The craft beer sector, which began as a noble rebellion against bland lager, has evolved into an arms race of increasingly desperate innovation.
“There are only so many adjuncts,” explained Sarah Mitchell, editor of What’s In This Beer Then? magazine. “They’ve done all the fruits. They’ve done all the spices. Someone did one with a leather jacket in it. Another brewery claimed theirs contained ‘the concept of nostalgia’. We’ve reached the end of the road.”
The Fermented Algorithm’s final release, a hazy pale ale brewed with pencil shavings, cardboard and the disappointment of everyone who ever said they’d “pop round sometime”, will be available at the taproom until stocks last, which based on previous releases should be until about Thursday.
Harrison admitted the writing had been on the wall since the brewery’s head brewer spent three weeks researching whether they could legally add asbestos to a porter. “He said it would give it a ‘mineral quality’,” Harrison recalled. “That’s when I knew we were in trouble.”
The closure affects twelve staff members, all of whom have impressive beards and strong opinions about hop varieties. The brewery’s railway arch will reportedly be taken over by another craft brewery that claims to have “cracked it” with a session IPA containing NFTs and optimism.
When asked what he’ll do next, Harrison said he’s considering opening a craft brewery that just makes normal beer. He was laughed out of the building.
