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.
 

Wacko, in haste

Had to take Thomas to a softball game recently, and I couldn't help noticing that we passed the Hulmeville Inn just before getting to the field. The weather was threatening, but the fields were busy, so I dropped him off and whipped down the road...to the grocery store. I had errands, and I was being responsible!

But when the provisions were packed in the Passat, and I cruised back to the field, the game was still going on. I figured, sign from God, and headed Hulmeville-ward. I'd already had a beer just before I left (didn't know I was going to be the driver) so I had to go session-strength -- and wasn't that a cruel joke, since Our Favorite Sales Rep, Suzanne Wood, was there with a cask of Sly Fox 113. God, that hurt. I averted my determined-to-be-responsible eyes and perused the taplist. Hmmm...Magic Hat Wacko. The beet beer. 4.5%. Gotta do it.

Well, it was clearly beet-influenced: it poured red/pink, kinda like my fingers after I've been making borsch. I was just taking my first sip when the Hulmeville's reigning Alpha Beer Geek, Steve Hawk, tapped my shoulder. Hey! Oh. Yeah. I have a glass of Wacko. That's okay, Steve says, I understand, I had to try one too. Yup. So I sat down with Steve and his fiance (I'm sorry, honey, but I'm pathetic with names), and his prop manager, Rob Strigel (Rob's the guy holding the picture of Steve), and got stuck into the Wacko.

Not a lot to say. Wacko falls into that category of Magic Hat beers -- Circus Boy, Humble Patience, Participation Ale -- that's just kinda there. It's got a bit of earthy sweetness, a fresh aroma, but nothing really interesting except the color. It drank easily enough, but I sure would have rather had a Brawler. There's a low-alc beer with something to it. Wacko just didn't have a lot. I don't understand why a 'summer' beer has to have next to no flavor.

Anyway, when I had about an inch of Wacko left, Thomas called. A thunderstorm had blown up; could I come get him? Sure, I said, where are you? Under the flagpole. Okay. I tossed the Wacko back, said good-bye to everyone, and headed up the road...and thought, under the flagpole? In a thunderstorm? I called him, and said, where am I picking you up? He laughed, and admitted he'd realized how dumb that was just about the time he'd hung up. He was at the snack bar. We went home, and I got a bottle of Sam Adams Lager with dinner. Ooomph.

Leinenkugel Fireside Nut Brown

My neighbor dropped off some Leinenkugels for me the other day. He knows I'm a writer, has the PA Breweries book, and we exchange stuff over the back fence: beers both ways, vegetables, some really good home-made horseradish from roots he grew in the garden, some sausage I picked up, and one day, when a big chunk of the back fence blew over in a serious windstorm, we inadvertantly exchanged dogs.

Anyway, a friend gave him a Leinie sampler 12-pack, and he wanted to share the wealth. I thanked him, and left the four beers in the garage to chill. Last night I pulled out the Fireside Nut Brown and popped it. Whoa! Now I know what the "Natural flavor added" bit on the label means: they put hazelnut essence in here. That's going to make it hard for me to like this one, I just don't like hazelnuts, except for out of hand eating and in pastries. Not in coffee, not in beer. Not this one, not Rogue, not whatever. I liked the pecans in the Shiner Holiday Cheer, but hazelnut...yeesh.

If you like hazelnut? Well, I'm still kind of iffy on this one. It's kind of thin and sweet, and the hazelnut's pretty up-front, on the verge of being over-powering. You'll probably want to try it for yourself.