Beer Radar for TWTW Friday 16th Dec 2011
By John Krüger
I get a good deal of beverage industry info from the people behind the registers at bottle shops. The bloke in my local drive through is a top bloke. He rides his pushbike past my house every day on the way to the pub. Looks like an ex local footy legend who’s now stacking kegs at 9am every morning. I asked him, what’s this year’s fad leading up to Christmas? We peered at each other through a jungle of life size cardboard cut-outs and novelty plastic drink cans. “Look at all the bloody cider. First we had to get more fridges for the kids drinks” he points to two doors of RTD’s “…and all the wine of course, now we’ve got to work out what’s going so we can fit all this cider in! My grandfather would be rolling in his bloody grave.” He said, shaking his head in utter disgust. I wasn’t sure how the connection to his grandfather had popped up there but I left it unquestioned anyway.
I looked through about twenty bottles of Champagne and local bubbles until I could find something in my price range that wasn’t flavoured with fruits, then moved on to another major bottle shop around the corner. The mature woman behind the counter that I always say hello to just shook her head at all the new beers that I regularly comb the fridges for. “I dunno why we get all of those. We don’t need three quarters of all of those beers. Just VB and what’s it called? …..West End Draught! That’s all we sell. We sell pallets of those and only one or two bottles of those other beers. They’re a waste of time and space.” I wasn’t going to get into tastes and percentages with her but it’s an insight into what’s really popular. Depressing maybe, but no big surprises.
So Cider is the next big thing? Everyone’s crazy about Perry? Maybe that’s already passé for the hipsters. We had a gorgeous 20 year old woman, the girlfriend of my brother-in-law, come over with him for lunch. She wasn’t real keen when offered Champagne, white wine, red wine, beer, spirits… but as the last option, I offered her a ginger beer. She paused. I said it’s alcoholic. She nodded and asked to see it. I pulled out a bottle of Crabbie’s and she was squealed with delight. I’d tried a bottle a few days before and it was sickly sweet with an ingredients list longer than a donkeys doodle. Crabbie’s is invading the bottle shops like you wouldn’t believe. It’s already in at least one major chain near me. The Poms are said to be selling 2.5mil cases a year, 80,000 bottles consumed a day. With the European summer well and truly over, the summer drinks and associated marketing are washing up on our shores. Expect quite a few ginger-beer cocktails to resurface in the media. If you’re the socialble type you’ll probably find a diverse range of beverages to appear in your fridge this Christmas. When I was 18 years old, we had a carton of West End, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and a bottle of Moselle every year for Christmas. I suggest installing a six-pack or two of local craft beer in your fridge and securing the shelf space first.
Cheers!
Keep an eye out for the bumper booze holiday guide edition of Beer Radar in WBM coming soon.
