musing

Brew Blog reports that MillerCoors is bringing back the classic “Great Taste, Less Filling” advertising tagline for Miller Lite.

MilllerCoors has said it plans to drive growth for its two lead brands by focusing on sharply differentiated marketing positions. Coors Light is about Rocky Mountain cold refreshment. Miller Lite is about taste.

“Research has shown the two factors that matter the most to mainstream light beer drinkers are taste and refreshment,” MillerCoors said on Tuesday in a message to distributors. “And so the path to simultaneous share growth for Miller Lite and Coors Light is clear: We will distinctly align each brand against one of these benefits, driving home our positions in everything we do on behalf of each brand.”

So now we’ve established that Coors Light has nothing to do with taste. That’s progress, I guess.

What if the New York Post printed a beer column?

If you aren’t familiar with the Post, and its well known Page Six, this may be lost on you. I picked up the paper because a) a tabloid is easier to deal with on a windy morning at the beach and b) while most other newspapers are struggling to retain readers the Post rolls merrily along. I figure there’s something to be learned here. Post.

Beyond what rock star’s ex-girl friend is sleeping with what movie star, that is. Or who’s shopping for multi-million dollar villas in Croatia.

Perhaps I got too much sun, but I began to imagine beer stories that would interest the Post and how they’d be written. Before reading please remember there’s less chance they are true than the fact Eric Clapton is a dud in the sack (who knew?).

– Where’d the Budweiser tap go? Our spies report that Stella Artois is now on tap (along with Bud Light) in Anheuser-Busch’s St. Louis brewery board room.

– What brewery that has long advertised using Saaz hops in its best selling beer might be experimenting with Sterling hops?

– Spotted on the Jersey shore: An airplane dragging a banner advertising $9 pints of Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA and $3 bottles of Miller Lite during happy hour at The Animal House. $9 pints? Have you checked the prices on airplane fuel recently?

– No reports what they did with the left over food, beer and wine, but Saturday’s seven-course dinner at Caffe Taci was cut short when beer chef Sean Z. Paxton and television star Rachel Ray reached an impasse over what beer to use in the Flemish stew. “Shiner Bock. Shiner Bock,” Paxton was heard muttering later in the evening over a glass of Saint Lawrence Smoked Porter at a popular Village watering hole.

I have more, but will spare you. However, one serious thought. Would life be better if small-batch beer were popular enough for the Post to pay attention?

How’s this for perspective?

One of the provincial-run liquor stores in downtown Halifax has a nifty little display of “Beers of the World.”

One of the beers is Old Milwaukee.

Well, it is imported. Made me ask myself a different question: Where is Old Milwaukee the local beer?

So I’m standing in a gas station in semi-rural Maine admiring three cooler doors wide of craft beers &#151 mostly beers of the region — when a woman opens one of the doors and shakes her head.

“Did they get rid of all the regular beer for this specialty stuff?” she asks, apparently speaking to me.

I look on down the coolers and noticed beers like Corona, Bud Lime and Michelob Ultra. Then I look behind her. Two doors of there was Budweiser, Miller Lite, Coors Light, etc. I point to them, she smiles, grabs a bright red 12-pack of Bud and heads on her way.

No, I don’t see gas stations getting rid of “regular beer” any time soon.

Our travels through Wisconsin allowed us to update our photo of the “World’s Largest Six Pack” i LaCrosse.

We’ve got a little collection of the “world’s largest . . .” going on this trip. We’ve seen the world’s largest cross country skis, the world’s largest fly fishing rod, America’s biggest mall and more. So an update seemed like good enough reason to drive through the heart of LaCrosse.

When Heileman, then Stroh, owned the brewery the six pack, as you can see, featured cans of Old Style. When City Brewery bought the operations the cans were remodeled as LaCrosse Lager. Prettier, don’t you think?

The sign with information about what in the lagering tanks may have been touched up a bit, but otherwise looks exactly the same. It says there’s enough beer inside to fill 7,340,796 12-ounce cans and placed end to end these cans would extend 565 miles. They would provide one person a six pack a day for 3,351 years.

Thought you needed to know that.