Tag Archives: viking.beer

Dumb Beer Marketing of the Week: Stella Artois

26 Nov

In general, I like Stella Artois’s ad campaigns. I’m a sucker for the retro yé-yé style and screwball-comedic TV spots. Plus Stella, and its lower-alcohol version Stella 4%, are nice, easy-drinking after-work refreshers.

But this billboard is nonsense! “Contains only four ingredients,” it boasts. “Hops, maize, malted barley, and water.” First of all: they’ve forgotten yeast, which is arguably the most important ingredient in beer! Granted, Stella filters the yeast out of their beer, but it’s still an ingredient.

Okay, let’s say yeast doesn’t count because it’s not actually in the finished product. Even then, maize is not typically considered a component of high-quality beer. Quite the contrary, it is often used as a cheap adjunct to barley malts – American macrobreweries quite famously use corn and corn syrup to jack malt liquor up to grotesquely high levels of alcohol.

So maize is a silly thing to advertise. But even if it’s not, I haven’t addressed this ad’s most glaring inanity: who cares if it’s only four ingredients!? First of all, there are many, many beers out there that use only three ingredients (not including yeast) because they don’t include corn or other malternatives. But why is a low number of ingredients a selling point anyway? There may be dubious gastropolitical reasons or less-dubious health reasons for buying food and drink with low amounts of ingredients, but otherwise this one has me scratching my head. I’m not sure who’s the bigger idiot: the marketing director who came up with this advertisement or the mindless consumer who actually buys into it.

Marketing idiocy rating:

One Budweiser Frog (points awarded for clever art direction).

Søgaards Klosterbryg

25 Nov

Before and while drinking Søgaards Klosterbryg, I thought it was a Belgian abbey-style dark ale. The name means “monastery brew” (a reference to a nearby church) and it has the flavor profile is that of a classic Trappist dubbel. Cocoa powder leads a united front of raisin, tea, toffee, and coffee across the palate, while aromatics of orange, vanilla, and pepper spice things up. It has a lovely latte-colored head atop a thick, garnet-brown body and soft, rolling carbonation just like the Belgian originals. If it looks like a dubbel, smells like a dubbel, and tastes like a dubbel, then it must be… a Munich Dünkel?! Surprise surprise!

It just goes to show that lagers can be just as deep, nuanced, and eccentric as any ale.

Mikkeller Nugget Single Hop IPA

20 Nov

At the moment, Mikkeller is the Danish darling of the international craft beer scene. I like Mikkeller very much, but I do think that a great deal of their popularity is due to what beer writer Andy Crouch calls “American craft beer hegemony.” Brewers from nations around the world, notably Japan, Denmark, Italy, and even Belgium and Germany, have taken note of American craft breweries’ successes at home and abroad. And they have been inspired, or perhaps persuaded, to brew similarly creative, anti-traditional, and “extreme” beers – and the global beer literati are drinking it up.

The brewers at Mikkeller are innovative in their own right, but they do borrow a lot of ideas from American beer and have even collaborated with infamously eccentric breweries like Stone. So they’re very zeitgeisty. One of the ideas they’ve taken from American brewers is the single hop beer – a cool idea, but also a gimmicky one if you consider that beers brewed with only one hop varietal aren’t really uncommon. Most pilsners will only use one hop: the classic, noble Saaz.

But still, single-hop beers, especially IPAs, are a great way to showcase hops that are more often used in conjunction with other hops. Like Nuggets. Personally I think Nuggets are an odd choice for a single-hop beer because they are generally used to add bitterness to a brew, rather than aroma or flavor. But the beer is quite nice. Cinnamon-orange with a resilient parchment-colored head, boasting a fruity and very leafy aroma with notes of tangerine, mango, caramel, cucumber, rum, and field greens. Appropriately hoppy and uite bitter on the palate; more peppery than fruity, with nuances of juniper, autumn leaves, and grapefruit. The finish is long and lingering with tangy bitterness.

Gimmicky or not, it’s a good beer – and now I know exactly what Nugget hops taste like! Surprisingly good with Brie, especially with a nice, spicy chutney.

Dumb Beer Marketing of the Week: Beck’s Vier

19 Nov

“Beck’s Vier: German precision at 4%.”

WTF?

This advertisement is all over London now. I can’t understand how or why this would make anyone want to drink Beck’s Vier. The sleek, vaguely industrial-looking glass of beer is in no way enticing. Drinks are supposed to look delicious and perhaps refreshing, not aerodynamic. And “German precision”? I can understand the concept behind this, that of associating German beer with a generalized idea of German quality derived from Germany’s reputation for engineering… but wow, that’s quite a stretch. Besides, when was the last time you took a sip of German beer and exclaimed, “Wow, that’s so well engineered!” or “Mmm… now that’s precise.”

I mean WTF?!

Marketing idiocy rating:

Two Budweiser Frogs.

Carlsberg Special Brew

18 Nov

Chocolate stout with Danish marzipan, Vienna lager with Norwegian salmon, smushi… I can’t keep up this level of pretension forever!

So tonight, after a somewhat stressful day at work (i.e., at home), I opened the fridge and pulled out the least classy thing therein, the last of the super lagers that our friend had brought over last week: Carlsberg Special Brew. The tallboy that contains this barely-drinkable ogre of a beer comes dressed in a charming San Francisco 49ers uniform: gold and maroon and ugly enough to be a fashion accessory for Brooklyn hipsters. It still boasts the same dubious endorsement that all Carlsberg products boast: “by appointment to the Royal Danish Court.” I wonder if the regents of Copenhagen know what kind of crime and destruction they’re party to on the streets of London via this foul and exceedingly inexpensive lager.

Just like Super Skol and Tennent’s Super and other super lagers, Special Brew is weirdly good-looking, strawberry blonde wtih a bodacious plaster-white head. Good retention, espceically for the style, the ABV, and the glass I poured it into.
It smells (or perhaps stinks) of adjuncts and impure alcohol, full of corn, honey, and apple juice, and it wins points for an absence of skunky or sulfuric notes. On the palate it is light and beery with a grimace-inducing undertow of rough fusel alcohol.

Special indeed.

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