Monday, June 7, 2010

Light Beer Sales Fall

The Wall Street Journal recently posted an interesting article stating that sales of light beer are significantly down. According to Advertising Age, Bud Light is down 5.3% and Miller Light is down 7.5% this year. The marketing teams, in their infinite wisdom, can't seem to figure out why. The article kicks around several possibilities, but I like to think that maybe people are just getting tired of flat, flavorless beer.

I've personally never understood the idea behind light beer. It has no taste. Beers, as a general rule, have a distinct flavor - be it malt, hops, barley, whatever. Except for light beer, which doesn't seem to even try. The writer of this article even went through a blind tasting of several light beers:

Taking notes in my blind tasting I quickly found myself running out of ways to describe vapid nothingness. Natural Light was "flavorless"; Michelob Ultra was simply "bland"; Coors Light was "blah"—though it did have the slightest hint of sweetness, as if an ounce of (bad) ginger ale had been diluted with pint of club soda. Miller Lite had a slightly foamier consistency (the Vortex bottle at work?) but no particular taste that could be discerned through the suds; Bud Light earned the honorific "least awful, but just barely."

If you are not into darker, heavier beers, there are still plenty of ales and lagers out there that have the ability to tingle your taste buds. There is no reason to waste your time and money buying swill when you could just as easily drop your cash on a beer with a little personality (or play it super-cheap and just drink water).

While we have no plans to serve light beer of any kind at the Ankerhaus, rest assured that, no matter what your beer preference is, we will have something available to suite your palate.

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