US Brewer to send ‘same-sex’ beer to Putin at the Sochi Olympics

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A brewer from the US state of Utah is to send a selection of its newly released “same-sex” beer to Russian President Vladimir Putin and organisers of the Sochi Winter Olympics.

The beer will be sent by the Wasatch Brewery in order to protest an anti-gay law introduced in Russia last June.

The beer is called ‘Live and Let Live’ and is a blonde pale ale made from “two beautiful malts and two wonderful hops, all fermented with a pair of yeasts,” said brewer Dan Burick.

The label of the beer appears to show a couple embracing on a ski-lift. The design means the couple could be identified as same or opposite-sex.

Wasatch founder Greg Schirf said: “I am thinking Vladimir Putin needs to lay off the vodka and drink about a case of this stuff.”

Putin caused an intentional outcry when he signed the law last June which bans the promotion of “non-traditional sexual relations”.

Among many other protest items, Elton John, Stephen Fry, George Michael, Graham Norton, and Tom Daley, were immortalised by the Russian (or matryoshka) dolls, and sent to the Russian embassy in London. The embassy refused to take the items.