Bell's Light Hearted Ale

I'll admit it: I shamed Larry Bell into sending me a sample of this beer.

I am not embarrassed to admit that. I saw this beer on my friend John Holl's Facebook timeline, and I lusted for it. So I said in a comment, "Hey, Larry Bell! Where's the love, brother?" and tagged Larry. And sure enough, he sent me a sweet little sixpack, tightly-packaged, a thing of compact beauty, and a mere 110 calories per 3.7% 12 oz. can.

But let me tell you something. It wasn't so much the beer that made me want it, or John's loving description.

It was the name. 

Bell's Two Hearted Ale has been a favorite of mine for years. When it came out in cans, my wife and I giggled with glee, and bought cases of it. Then the Double Two Hearted Ale came out: YOW! I loved it, too, but damn, watch out, you know?

And then... Light. Hearted. Ale. Had to happen. Had to have it. So pitter patter.

Gorgeous light amber, big billowy head. Yum, say my eyes. Fresh bread and sweet citrus aromas. Damn, says my nose. Shut up and drink!, says my mouth.

It is light. Light in feel, light and bright in taste, light and crisply bitter on the finish. It is clearly Son Of Two Hearted, and on a hot day, this is going to be a crusher. And with me looking to lose weight right now? I may have found my moving buddy. It drinks easily, it's bitter without being gaggy (which, sorry, in too light a beer can definitely happen), and the flavor is light and rolling, very, very pleasant. I like the idea of a 110 calorie beer that has some real pale ale flavor.

Thanks, Larry (and thank you, John). I appreciate the sample, and I'll be sharing the other five around. This is good stuff, keep making it!

King of Beers now the duke?

Budweiser passed another milestone this week; on the way down. The iconic beer brand's 20+ year slide continued, and Coors Light passed it, headed up, moving into the #2 spot in American beer sales according to a story in Advertising Age. Budweiser hit its peak in 1988, selling 50 million barrels (50 million barrels! Of just Budweiser! All U.S. craft brewers' 2011 sales put together should be about 11 million barrels) and then sliding ever since, including a 4.6% slide in 2011...which actually represented a slowing in the rate of plummet. Total 2011 U.S. sales for Budweiser were 17.7 million barrels, an amazing decline since 1988. Of course, Bud Light's rise has pretty much made up for it, and 17.7 million barrels is still more than most of the world's breweries sell altogether...but wow.

What happened? Smarter people than I have guessed at that one. "Light beer!" is the usual answer offered, explaining it as Americans' desire to get into better shape. Well, maybe...only what's up with the boom in steakhouses, and sugary liquors, and...craft beer? As far as that goes, how the hell does "Light beer!" explain the huge growth of Yuengling Lager? Yuengling Lager, a "full-calorie premium" beer, will likely blow through 2 million barrels on its own this year, and is, if anything, accelerating. (Add'n: when I first wrote this, I forgot the other obvious example here: it's not Pabst Light the hipsters and bike messengers are drinking, it's Pabst.) "Light beer"? Bullshit.

Light beer has seen huge growth, but there are other factors here. I think some of the problem is fratricide. There has been cannibalistic action between brands in the A-B house, and Bud and Bud Light are not the only ones. When you have a number of large brands -- Budweiser, Bud Light, Bud Light Lime, Bud Select (several cases a year are still sold), Michelob Ultra, Busch, Busch Light, Natural Light, and so on -- that are this close together in taste and character (okay, granted: Bud Light Lime does taste a bit more different than the others), and require a huge expenditure on marketing merely to create an illusion of difference...success in one camp is more likely to mean failure in another. This is, I believe, a major weakness for the big brewers, and it's just now starting to crack wide open.

Does that explain how Coors Light is growing? Well, no! I'll have to cogitate on that...especially since it's one of the very few mainstream beers that is growing. Is it the blue mountains? Hey, maybe.

Bud Light Platinum -- and I thought Miller Clear was dopey

It's like Bud Light doing a pole dance...

Go read this, and come back. We need to talk.

All up to speed? Okay. The quote that stands out there (other than "higher-alcoholic beer," what the hell, fella, was there something too tame (and accurate) about "higher-alcohol"?) for me is this one: "Bud Light Platinum is a trendy blue-bottle line extension that appeals to a key group of beer drinkers and expands consumer occasions.”

WTF?

• Blue bottles are trendy?
• Blue bottles are a type of beer?
• Blue bottles appeal to a key group of beer drinkers? WHO?

You guys should know by now that I don't slap AB around just for fun, but this idea's got "cognitive disaster" stamped all over it. A 137 calorie "light beer" with 6% ABV? Right, pound these like 4.2% 105 calorie Bud Light (because it does say BUD LIGHT right on it), and you'll be knee-walking -- knee-walking and fat -- in no time.

I'm seeing a lot of people -- beer geeks -- saying this is a shot at the craft market. I'm sorry: you're stoned. You guys think everything is about craft beer: it's not. Craft beer is still under 6% of the market. It's growing, it's profitable, and you've got Dark Lord in your cellar, but 7 out of 8 beer drinkers are still pounding mainstream suds, okay?

What we have here is yet another attempt to get people to pay more for light beer. I'm not sure how making "Bud Light" stronger than Bud (at 5.0%) and only 8 calories "lighter" per 12 oz. can is gonna do that, but that's what they're doing. It's crazy, and it's going to fail. Everyone in the media knows it's going to fail, you know it's going to fail. This is going to be another Bud Select, a big fat expensive FAIL. Why are they doing this? Did all the smart people quit or get laid off?

Ah, well. Sit back and watch the follies.

An addition that was too good to pass up. Convenience Store News notes in their story on Bud Light Platinum that it "...has the chance to be a trailblazer in the light beer market. Most beers in that category deliver fewer calories and carbohydrates than standard beers, while providing a lower alcohol content." Oh, CSN, if I didn't know better, I'd think you having some fun with these guys! 

MGD 64 Lemonade: I'm not kidding

"MillerCoors Plans Lemonade Beer"

That's an actual headline from the Wall Street Journal. I'm not making this up. Let's get a couple relevant quotes, and then shred this. Here's a  beauty from the Chicago Tribune:

The company expects the brew to attract new consumers to the beer category and to capitalize “on the growing consumer interest in flavored beers,” Andy England, chief marketing officer for Chicago-based MillerCoors, said in a memo to employees Friday.

They better hope something works, because:

Miller Genuine Draft 64, named for the number of calories it contains, got off to an auspicious start after its national rollout in 2008. But sales have cooled. The brand’s unit sales to retailers fell by a double-digit rate in the third quarter, the company said in November, while MillerCoors’s overall sales to retailers declined 4 percent. 

Does that sound familiar? Chillingly familiar? That's right!

MillerCoors, a joint venture of U.K. beer giant SABMiller PLC and U.S.-Canadian brewer Molson Coors Brewing Co., has struggled with another fruit-flavored brand: Miller Chill. The lime-infused light lager enjoyed a strong debut in 2007, but its sales slid after larger rival Anheuser-Busch Inc. unveiled Bud Light Lime the next year.

Hey, if ABIB 'steals' lime (i.e., does it better, which Bud Light Lime did: Chill was poorly executed), just go to lemon! They'll never think of copying that! 

The two/three (your call: is "MillerCoors" one big brewer, or two?) big brewers are having a bad time of it. The economy is clobbering their main consumers, and craft beer has apparently reached a tipping point that has consumers across the spectrum interested, despite higher prices. Mainstream beer is taking an ass-whipping, even light beer sales are down (they're actually up over the last two quarters, I believe...but only because the previous year's numbers were so bad), and the mainstream imports are having their damned lunch eaten (and getting kicked around the schoolyard to boot). 

No, wait...Yuengling is pretty much mainstream -- a bit out of it, but it's essentially a light lager made with a substantial amount of corn, and they do have a light beer -- and they're kicking ass and looking for a new production plant. Could it be that it's actually...the big brewers' marketing that sucks? Oh, man, if the marketing fails...

Here's what happens when the marketing fails. ABIB's sales dropped 3.1% last year (MillerCoors fell 3.4% over that period). But things are not unhappy at the big brewers. Why?

The two brewers, which together account for nearly four out of every five beers sold in the U.S., still have managed to record steady profit growth, offsetting their weaker sales volumes by raising prices and cutting costs. 

Sound business practice, leading to expansion...well, no. What this really leads to is retiring debt, and then going to look for other breweries to buy and ravage -- sorry, lead to new heights of world domination. Rumors are rife that Diageo may finally be ready to unload Guinness (there are even some rumors that ABIB might be ready to just eat Diageo whole), and Grupo Modelo is a likely target. Carlsberg and Heineken are probably safe from takeover because of their ownership structure, but analysts are predicting that the final round of consolidation may at last be upon us, as the signs from the Book of Revelations appear. (It's getting tighter in spirits, too: Diageo, Pernod Ricard, Bacardi, LVMH (who seems more interested in buying up more luxury goods than booze lately), United, and Gruppo Campari are circling like wrasslers in a huge cage match, while Brown-Forman and Fortune hang out in the corners. That one's gonna get bloody.)

Who will win? I guarantee it won't be the consumer, and government anti-monopoly agencies seem to be nowhere in sight.

Meanwhile, that "growing consumer interest in flavored beers"? Like the smartass fish used to tell Charlie the Tuna, consumers aren't interested in flavored beer, they're interested in beer with flavor.
 

How Things Have Changed

Saw this piece in Slate's The Big Money (thanks to a tweet-link from Beer Business Daily's Harry Schumacher (who just started following me on Twitter, so I returned the favor...and immediately reaped more benefit than I suspect he ever will)) about Bud Light Golden Wheat buying up all the ad time on an SNL episode back on October.

Old news, right? Wrong. Here's the little bit of relevance that makes this a year-story rather than a week-story. Blogger Dan Mitchell says this about the description of BLGW:

The campaign, like so many campaigns aimed at drinkers of mass-produced American beer, emphasizes the brew's "drinkability," which can be translated as "wateriness."

Now...can you imagine seeing that kind of flippancy in the news ten years ago? I couldn't, so I checked (thanks, Google): Bud Light and watery. The only hits I got were three: a taste test of Bud vs. Budvar in the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, a piece by my good buddy and fellow beer writer Ron "The King" Givens in the Daily News where he says old-time ballpark suds were "the cheapest, most watery stuff that could be poured into a cup" but doesn't actually tag Bud Light as that, and, well, a piece by St. Michael Jackson about how not all American beers are watery.

Sea change time. The whole paradigm has shifted. Smart, bright journalists now say mainstream beer is "watery." Do we call this the "Arrogant Bastard Effect," or the "Sam Adams Shuffle"? How about The Great Awakening? How about Truth Setting You Free?

American mainstream beer. I still do drink it, if only from regional brewers: I'll definitely still drink a Lager or a Straub, and I've said here I enjoyed slamming a 16 oz. Narragansett. But...is it flavorful? No. Is it something I drink regularly? No. Is it refreshing? Yeah, for the most part, it is. And is it sweet to hear a mainstream journalist casually refer to it in terms of 'wateriness?' Yeah. Definitely. One more indication that we've hit that tipping point.

Bud Light Golden Wheat

That, believe it or not, is a Bud Light. The head didn't last too long (though I won't swear it was the beer's fault; I may have gotten a little grease on the inside of the glass), but it's cloudy, and it definitely smells of orange and a hint of fresh grassiness.

Okay, it's a Bud Light Golden Wheat. I got some samples, and I will give it the same shot I did the Miller Lite Craft beers. Gotta admit, I'm impressed with this more than with those already, just on the look and the aroma.

Well...there's not a lot here. Light body -- though not as thin as a Bud Light -- and they certainly didn't overdo the orange like Miller did; it's there, but it's unobtrusive to the point of understatement. It's not sweet, and that's good. It's not thin, it's not cloying, it's not really flawed.

And if that sounds like I'm damning with faint praise, well, I guess I am. BLGW fails in the classic manner of light beers: there's nothing wrong with it, but there's not a lot right, either. A beer's got to be something good, it's not enough to not be something bad. BLGW succeeds in one thing: it is easy to drink. Plain boiled white rice is easy to eat, but I don't often make a meal of it. I suspect I'll be having Bud Light Golden Wheat even less often.

What about the commerical prospects? I mean, I'm hardly the target market, and most of you aren't either, most likely. I think it's going to fall between the rails. It's too cloudy and heavy (too mouthy?) for light beer drinkers. Bud Light Lime has been a big success, but it's light and clear, where this isn't. What's more, this is another summertime kind of beer. Can't see this one working in the wintertime, which means even if it is successful, it's going to cannibalize BLL. And Blue Moon drinkers will kick it aside quickly as watery next to their tipple...though there may be some siphoning off of drinkers who are looking for a Blue Moon light. If that happens, well, how long do you think it's going to take Coors to do a Blue Moon Light, maybe a Half Moon? (I actually believe Coors is smart enough to let that go, and they should; it would deflate the brand's image.) I don't see this one working.

One other thing...it bothers me that the success of Blue Moon has led wannabe competitors to just class these beers as "wheat" beers. Guys, you're working for a brewery, one with world-wide connections and a huge staff of highly-trained brewers, and I've met and talked with some of them: you know damned well that there is more than one type of wheat beer. So why do you let the marketeers be stupid about this? It's not just a wheat beer, it's a --

Oh. My. God. It just hit me. Of course. It's a witbier-inspired beer...a Belgian-inspired beer. Is it that InBud doesn't want people making the Leuven connection, doesn't want to in-their-face American customers with the Belgian-based dark overlords of Budweiser? I don't know, but it is a consideration.

Still irks me.

Bud Light Morphs Again: takes on Blue Moon

Fresh off last year's apparently successful challenge to Corona with Bud Light Lime, another Bud Light line extension is in the works: Bud Light Golden Wheat. I missed the announcement on this back in mid-June, but the launch is coming up on October 5, so I'm still ahead a little...

Anyway, as you can clearly see by the graphic, this is a definite line extension keying off the BLL success...and it appears to have the same kind of targeting. Though the name might lead you to believe this is primarily a wheat beer, and the cloudiness might lead you to believe it's an "American hefeweizen," it's not. Check this out, from the St. Louis Business Journal:

The beer will use unfiltered wheat so it will look cloudier than its Bud Light counterpart and will have orange and coriander, also known as cilantro [no, actually, it's not], as ingredients to give it a bigger, sweeter taste, according to [vp of marketing Keith] Levy.

Uh-huh. I'm hoping Levy didn't say "The beer will use unfiltered wheat," because I hate when all that field dirt and bugs and such get into the mash... Kidding aside, clearly what we have here is yet another shot at Blue Moon that isn't Shocktop Light. Good idea to set it in the Bud Light family: what's Shocktop to most people?

Still, I'm guessing that this is going to cannibalize more Bud Light Lime than it eats Blue Moon. What these guys need to find is a winter Bud Light to balance the summer strength of Bud Light Lime, not another summer seller. Bud Light Posh Spice? Hey, I dunno, I'm just thinking out loud here...

Miller Lite Brewers Collection

Miller Lite Brewers Collection.

"Craft Beer. Done Lite."

I got 'em. They're going in the fridge. Miller Lite Amber, Wheat, and Blonde Ale. They're in test markets in Baltimore, Charlotte, Minneapolis, and San Diego now. All 4.2% ABV, all 110 calories per 12 oz. bottle, all 6.2 grams of carbohydrates...for those of you who are counting.

"Real craft beer taste and true light beer refreshment." Well... we'll see.

Miller Chill: someone else's beer

Well, I figured I should try the other 'Latinized' beer on the market, the one in national distribution: Miller Chill. Chill is doing very well, blew through trial runs and went national with a promotional budget that should be in the $50 million range according to what I was told. So when I stopped for ice in Portland last month and saw a bottle in the cooler, I figured I should try one.

You'll notice it's been a month, and I haven't done that until now.

I've been putting it off, and the only reason I drank it tonight is because I'm doing a piece on these beers and had to talk about it. I mean, a light beer with lime and salt? Yeah, well, I was right. It's not even a crisp, sharp lime flavor, and I didn't really taste any salt at all. It tasted like light beer with a small dose of 7-Up. I tried eating a pretzel with it, but it didn't help much. If you're looking for something really different, this isn't it. It's kinda different, but mostly it's not my kind of beer. It's someone else's beer.