Yeuch!

Will it really look like this?

Our American cousins have devised a solution to that perennial problem of having a beer when you are backpacking in the wilds of, say, Lancashire. As they suggest, you may feel like having a beer after a long walk, but carrying a sufficient supply of tinned or bottled beer isn't practical. Pat's Backcountry Beverages has the answer: a concentrate to which you add water and, using a portable carbonation system, create beer. They say that it's not dehydrated beer; it is apparently brewed with very little water using their special technology - patent applied for - and produces a beer that supposedly tastes like a premium micro brew. Each pack makes a 16 oz. pint, which gives away its American origin, a British pint being 20 fl oz.

There has to be a catch, of course: if you're hiking along the Leeds-Liverpool canal and fancy a beer, the only source of water would be the canal itself, in which case I suggest you either carry a stomach pump or take a supply of fresh water with you, which rather negates the selling point of the product. And if you're hiking nowhere near water? Wait for rain, I suppose.

So what we are talking about is a sludge that resembles Marmite to which you add water, assuming you can find any, and then use a device to carbonate it and thus make it into beer; it sounds delicious. British microbreweries will be quaking in their boots.