Ok I know this one is older - but I haven’t been a-blogging lately…
Looking at the AP report:
- Bud is going to release an ale - called American Ale
- Miller was thinking of doing the same
- They expect it to be more of a niche product than Bud Light Lime
- They are calling it “American” to show that they still are
- InBev bought them for the the brand
Couple of things from all of this. Bud Light Lime - so far every “Lime” flavored beer I’ve had has been terrible. Instead of being acidic (you know like lime), they end up being sweet like a lollipop. Yuck!
I wonder where they are brewing all this stuff - since their 13 breweries must be optimized for lagering. Actually that was one of the things that totally changed Killian’s Irish Red after Coors bought the original brand. They changed it from an ale to a lager to make it easier for them to produce.
I’ve always been surprised there wasn’t more of a push into ales since my guess is they are cheaper to produce. I mean you don’t have to lager them - and temperature control is concerned with high temperatures. Maybe there isn’t that much difference - but at this kind of scale you would think it would add up.
The last thing, I wanted to say is about the brand. Maybe the news is right. Maybe what InBev wanted was Bud’s brand. I mean it does have a dominant position in the market place and owns the concept of yellow fizzy beer in the mind of mass beer lovers and haters. That being said - I think they bought them for another reason. I don’t have proof of this - but based on my limited time married to a beer distributor (I’m still married to her - but she got out of that business thank god!). I think it was the distribution channel that mattered as much if not more than the Bud brand itself.
InBev now has the ability to push its full line of beers out in the Bud trucks. In my mind, that is worth a lot. Since that is something that is incredible complicated and time consuming to set up - especially in a country as big and spread out as the US. Getting your beer to vendors, plus jockeying for shelf space is a big part of the gig. This is something that Bud has down. I mean it would be easy to say - look you can have Bud as long as you allow us to put up these other beers as well.
I guess there is an easy way to see if this is really part of their thinking. Next time you look at your beer case look for any of the following -
Staropramen, Leffe, Becks, Stella Arois, Brahma, Hoegaarden, Boddingtos, Labatte, Lowenbrau, Mackenson’s XXX, (or more obscure Skol, Cass, Jupiler, Quilmes, Klinshoye, Lakeport, Chernigivske, Ozuksko, Antarctica, Bohemia, Alexander Keith’s, or Sedrin).
And then keep looking to see if more and more of them show up. The whole goal of InBev is to get more people drinking more beer (That probably isn’t their mission statement but sounds like a good one to me - and not a bad business plan to boot). They have an arm’s length list of beers already - which will get longer.
It is hard for people to try a new beer if they can’t get their little hands on it. It would seem that Bud’s distribution system would make that a very easy problem to solve.
I for one hope I’m right - just from the perspective that I like Staropromen,Hoegaarden (even if it isn’t as good as it used to be), and Boddington’s a lot. So making it more available suits me just fine.
