I was out for a boy’s day over the weekend.
This, I think, was more because of the rugby being on, and The Minister for War and Finance being far happier to have me out than home with 10 other blokes all screaming at a TV screen. But while out, I got to try this week’s Drop, Hahn White, and it’s one time that I’ve been grateful for a small 330ml bottle.
Hahn White is made with an infusion of orange zest and coriander. The beer pours cloudy and fizzy. It develops a head, but that fades pretty quickly. The taste is underwhelming, and it is more like a watery, diluted Fanta than a diluted beer. As expected, just about all flavour has been removed including any bitterness, which the marketing spin described as “virtually no bitterness, having been gently touched with Saaz hops”.
It’s not just the “taste” that got me a little wound up either. The bottle describes a “Carousel Ritual” that the drinker is recommended to follow when drinking, which involves cutting an orange, with a “Carousel Cut” and inserting a slice into the beer. This really is marketing gone mad. The only reference I can find to “Carousel Cut” relates to songs cut from the final version of the musical “Carousel” and a reference to a band in Dhakar. The Carousel Ritual doesn’t exist either except in the 70’s sci-fi film “Logan’s Run”, where you die unless you subject yourself to the “Carrousel Ritual”.
“We’re lifting the image to a point where you’re not apologising for it being on the dinner table,” the SA Brewing operations manager Peter David says.
As a beer drinker, I find that insulting, and I don’t think I’m on my own here. I’ve never felt like I’ve had to apologise for a beer being on the table, and if I did, then I don’t think they’re the type of people I want to be hanging around with.
It’s not a great beer, it’s not even a good beer, it probably shouldn’t have the word beer on the label, and not surprisingly, none of my fellow Amber Analysts on the day liked it either.
I can’t believe Dr. Chuck Hahn, a man who gave Aussie beer one of its biggest shake ups, who revolutionised craft brewing with his very excellent, muscled up James Squire Pilsner, would be ok with his name appearing on a beer, when the brewery is making comments like that.
