Getting Wired And Emotional
Sydney Morning Herald
Monday February 7, 2005
Beer can make you friendly, funny, sometimes feral and often fat, and the saving grace for tiresome drunks is that it has never helped them stay awake.
But the days of "he'll shut up and fall over eventually" may be at an end. Apparently following Homer Simpson's philosophy that alcohol is "the cause and solution to all of life's problems", the American brewer Anheuser-Busch, of Budweiser fame, has combined a potential hangover and its fabled cure in one can. Welcome to the age of beer infused with caffeine. A blend of caffeine-rich Red Bull with vodka has been a club staple for several years; less obvious is whether beer drinkers will embrace a concept that mixes effect (I want to get drunk) with affectation (I want to be hip).Charles Coll, a beer writer who jointly runs the Australian arm of the global website realbeer.com, thinks the appeal will be limited, and possibly short-lived. "In today's world anything goes; the question is whether people will buy it," he said. "One thing is that every brewery will try something but they will only give it a short life if it doesn't work."The new product, BE (or "B to the E", with the E raised up like an exponent in mathematics ), has just been released in the US. It is not the first caffeine beer - small breweries there and in Britain have tried it - but such a move by America's largest brewer may point to a cultural shift. With guarana and ginseng also in the mix, the beer "has an aroma of blackberry and a little bit of cherry, which is unexpected. It has typical beer flavours, like hops and malt, and it finishes with what we're calling the Wow factor". Those are the words of Nathaniel Davis, brew master and creator of BE. He goes on: "That bright, slightly sweet tart finish. People who drink it, their eyes light up and they say 'Wow!', among other things." Australian brewers appear less excitable. A spokesman for Lion Nathan, whose products include Tooheys and Hahn, said: "It's not in line with our strategy. It's not something that we've got any plans to consider." Even if it goes gangbusters in the US? "I doubt it."Red Bull said it would not be adding beer-with-a-buzz to its product line. "We make certain claims about Red Bull," a spokeswoman said, "and to meet those claims we don't promote mixing it with alcohol."
© 2005 Sydney Morning Herald