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...

The World's Largest Brewers: ups and downs

Just saw some interesting numbers: change in stock prices over the last year on the world's largest brewers from a regular e-letter from www.e-malt.com. Rolling down from the year's best performer to the year's biggest loser:

MolsonCoors -- +4.4%
SABMiller -- -15.7%
Heineken -- -48.2%
Carlsberg -- -60.9%
Anheuser-Busch InBev -- -70.7%

MolsonCoors has been tearing up the pea patch lately, running on big margins from Blue Moon and increased volume on Coors Light, enough to offset losses from the Canadian brands side of the business. Coors has put in place a number of things that are appealing directly to their customers: the 'blue mountain' temperature sensing label, the 'air vent' pouring aid on their cans, and they've done away with the goofy "Twins" advertising and have focused on the beer and the fun.

That all seems silly to most craft drinkers, but you know what? We don't drink Coors Light anyway, so they're not aiming at us. They are aiming at us -- or people who are thinking like us -- with the very understated and smart support they're giving Blue Moon. You gotta be some kind of smart to beat the crap out of the average performance of American/European stocks last year: -42%. Hats off to MolsonCoors.

Blue Moon as a folk song

No, I'm not talking about a 12-string acoustic version of the 1934 Rodgers and Hart classic (although I really like the "Blue Moon Revisited" version the Cowboy Junkies recorded). I'm talking about a great thought-provoking post that Stan Hieronymus has up over at his Appellation Beer blog (which, by the way, you should read regularly, like I do). Stan's question: if you were to consider Blue Moon White as a 1960s folk artist, would it be Pete Seeger, Peter, Paul & Mary, or Trini Lopez?

Crazy, yes, but get inside Stan's genuine Old Folky head, and it sounds like this: is Blue Moon about the beer, or about the money and fame and riding a wave? Is it "authentic", which Stan says was the big question about PP&M back in his high school days (Trini Lopez was not, and even I knew it, at the age of 10). Stan says history proved them to be so. They were on the right side of causes for 40 years (Stan's right side, which I don't endorse blindly, but Stan's a good guy), but also:

"They wrote excellent songs of their own, but just as importantly generously helped promote many other songwriters. They sounded prettier than Dylan singing Blowin’ in the Wind, but that allowed them to broadcast a political messages [sic] to far larger audiences than the Weavers every [sic] reached.

And that last is the crux. Molson Coors is one of the biggest pains in my professional ass. I have not been able to build a relationship with them, and I find it hard to warm up to a company that sometimes insists on having a lawyer on the line when they allow an interview. But Blue Moon is doing solid work on wedging open the craft beer niche for literally millions of mainstream beer drinkers, and I just can't see how that's a bad thing.

If you want to talk history, it gets even more solid. When the big craft boom was going on in the 1990s, all three big brewers jumped in: Anheuser-Busch with their Elk Mountain and American Originals lines and some innovative Michelob specialties; Miller had Miller Reserve, and Coors launched Blue Moon.

When the Great Craft Flatline hit in 1997-98, we saw who was authentic. A-B pulled out. Miller pulled out. Coors kept Blue Moon alive, when it couldn't possibly have made sense for them to do so. Maybe it was inertia, or maybe it was keeping faith with the irrepressible Keith Villa.

But I tasted their Chardonnay grape wheat beer at the GABF judging last year, and pushed it hard for a medal, with no idea it was a Blue Moon/Coors product (who the hell would have thought?), because it was one of the very best fruit beers I'd ever tasted, and the panel agreed. So I think they've still got it in them to make authentic beers. Why not? Keith Villa is 100% authentic, and always has been. And he still works for Coors.

We're not going to settle this question now or any time soon. But with Blue Moon growing at a phenomenal pace -- 79% in 2005, over 100% in 2006, and closing in on SN PA in sales, according to Villa -- history may well overtake us. How will we know? When all those Blue Moon drinkers start branching out and trying something new.

Meanwhile... if those craft beer figures released by the BA included Blue Moon, and Redhook, and Widmer, and Goose Island, and A-B's organic beers and specialty seasonals, and all the non-mainstream beers that aren't BA-approved, or hell, even the non-mainstream imports...What kind of growth would there have been? What kind of volume would there be? What kind of percentage would these non-mainstream beers have of the total beer market? I'm just sayin'...