On Thursday Lion Nathan released their new summer beer, XXXX Bright Summer Lager. I’m late putting this up – it’s taken me a while to work out how to approach it. I interviewed the brewers and marketer. I tried it. I meditated on it and engaged in all sorts of abstractions about the true nature of beer. I even wrote and deleted more than 2000 words about it for this post. But I came to realise that all you need to know about it has already been said by UK writer Tim Webb in an article he wrote in Beer Advocate magazine about his first interview with a major brewer:
My first interviewee, some 20 years ago, deserved my question,”if you are so proud of your brewing credentials, why do you produce all this characterless piss?”
And I deserved the answer–”Because my customers prefer me to do so.”
Accident or Engineered – does it look just a little TOO much like Corona, but with even less personality? I doubt we’ll get to sample it down here in Melbourne. I don’t think we’ll miss it!
Cheers
Prof. Pilsner
I’d have to say it has slightly more personality than Corona, if only because it doesn’t need a slice of citrus – but does that mean it has character? But I also have it on good authority that despite appearances they aren’t going head to head with Corona because, “Corona is from Mexico and we’re brewed here”. This is marketing speak for “despite the fact that we are for all intents and purposes identical we will market ourselves differently”.
I was given one of these to sample a while back and I think I left it in my fridge for a month before I worked up the courage to give it a go.
My expectations for it were low and there were no surprises when I finally did try it. It left me thinking.. it’s bad enough there is one Toohey’s Extra Dry out there in the market.. why do we need another beer just like it?
When beers like these dominate the market it has detrimental effect not only on what people believe beer to be but how they drink it. Mainstream beer culture and identity in Australia is in a pretty fragile state as it is in my opinion.
Well put Will. While the brewers would no doubt argue that they are responding to market demand, setting the bar so low just skews the entire market further.
I don’t get you guys. I enjoy drinking what I think is good beer, which is typically a nice IPA, Saison, ESB, APA or Alt, but if this is what a large number of people want to drink, then I don’t think you can criticise a company for meeting a (substantial) market demand.
Thanks Sammy, though I think you missed the point of the post. I wasn’t necessarily criticising people who drink it – just simply making the point that companies sell beer llike this becasue it sells not because they want to give expression to the higher arts of brewing. My view is very much a beer that you enjoy is a good beer – lest beer turn into wine where there is a winerati who dictate what is good and what is not.
That said, with a beer like the Summer Bright Lager, there comes a point when the flavour becomes so muted that it no longer tastes like the ingredients that make it up. Even the beer marketers were unable to come up with flavour descriptions for it other than “refreshing” and “sessionable”, words that have come to mean flavourless in the marketing world. When a beer is engineered so that it doesn’t taste like the sum of its ingredients because it is for a market that has started to prefer sugar-sweetened, fruit-flavoured alcopops, uses cane sugar to create alcohol without beer flavour or body and chemically processed hop extracts so that the marketers can sell it in a clear bottle…is it still a good beer?
It may be an enjoyable, alcoholic refreshment, you can drink it unapologetically and you are neither a bad person nor a fool if you drink and enjoy it, but is it good beer? I love good food but I still enjoy McDonalds….
My friends and I were in a Bar in Cairns last night and this beer was being marketed. It occurred to me that the target market may be the Pink Dollar. Their pastel packaging would suggest that, even were it subliminal it is there. I would love to meet the marketing wanker who thought this one up. Really, XXXX has a market which is Bum Crack showing Queenslanders, It works and it is a very popular brand with a strong following. Why now aim at the Bum Crack oggling Queenslander? If it lasts 6 months I’ll be amazed. Anyone with half a brain will see it as a marketing wank.
Thanks for clarifying that one Matt.. I’m with you.
I wasn’t actually aware that they used the word ‘sessionable’ to describe this beer and if they are using that term publicly I’m pretty surprised that it was picked up by authorities.
How can they call it sessionable and still stick the ‘drink responsibly’ tag along side it. Bizarre.
sorry.. was should be wasn’t in the second line there
I picked up a six pack of this beer, tonight. I thought it was great. I’m 21 years old, I am by no means a arrogant beer snob. I think this beer is great and I think other twenty-somethings will like it too. We don’t care about “the fine art of brewing” and we don’t care what anyone else thinks about us liking this beer, and I’m sure XXXX doesn’t either. It’s cold and refreshing, that’s good enoughf or me.
I posted a full review of this beer on my blog: http://nickdrewe.com/2009/10/23/xxxx-summer-bright-larger-a-review/
Nick, if you enjoyed the beer then it is a good drink – it’s as simple as that. There’s no arrogant beer snobbery about it – if people like it, they like it and the companies that are trying to sell beer have done their job. I read your post on it and it’s a good review that describes how much you enjoyed the beer and how you see it fitting with your lifestyle – and adding enjoyment to it – which is what I think beer should be (and I spend far too much time thinking about these things).
I do think though – and this is where your suggestion of arrogance or beer snobbery might come in – that a product that contains malt, water, hops and yeast should have at least some residual flavours from those ingredients in it, otherwise it’s just a drink with alcohol in it. These ingredients barely leave their DNA in Summer Bright Lager. Brewers have become very adept at making beers with light flavours like this by adding large percentages of cane sugar (up to 30%) and then adding enzymes to the brew to further break down the complex sugars to create ‘low carb’ beers and beers with little body. They also add highly processed hop extracts so they can put it in clear glass bottles without it becoming light struck. To me, it is so heavily processed and so far removed from the agricultural product that beer originally was that it is the equivalent of cheese slices or wine coolers. There is nothing wrong with these things per se, and they have their place and their purpose, but they are no longer representative of the products they started out as. If that’s snobbery, then I’ll wear that.
I tried this beer about a month ago and thought it was great,I managed to get some to Adelaide and love it . To look at it is very much like TED but smoother and the bottle can remind you of Carona.This could be marketed as the next big drink for the younger drinkers Mexican appearance Low carbs aand a summer drink well done xxxx
Work at a club, and we have just bought in the XXXX Summer Bright, was wondering why you don’t have a “Summer” theme promotion to go along with this beer??? Working in the industry its alot easier to sell or to recommend this beer to a patron when we can give away items along with it. Not only does it get the beer out there but patrons are more likely to tell their friends where they can get it. Thus increasing saless.
This is typical aussie lager, aka as cats piss. Even more pathetic than dirty rotten vic (VB).
Australian mainstream beers are crap and this is another crap product. You might as well drink mineral water.
I gave this ‘beer’ a try on New Years day as some of my hipster friends had bought a few cartons. Its not that it tastes bad, its just that it barely tastes at all. To me it was more like an alcoholic soda water. Couldnt call it a beer, it was so synthetic; no aroma, next to no head, no bitterness… I doubt they even use hops in it.
I see this is a product aimed at people who appreciate getting drunk over enjoying the drink itself. Unfortunately there is a massive portion of our society who think this way so it will probably make a killing.
I reckon we need to try and replicate Germany’s drinking culture where people are brought up to appreciate good beer and wine instead of abusing them to get wasted.
Brewers are dictating demand and not the drinkers. They want a beer that covers a broad range and a beer that wont offend. That’s why majors brewers stick to this watery formula. It’s about making money and not a better beer.