UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF
BEER
Author(s): ALEX BEAM
Date: September 11, 2001
Page:
D1 Section: Living
By strange coincidence, the two founding partners
of the Boston Beer Co., purveyors of the successful
Sam Adams line, are both launching light beers in
New England. Jim Koch is test-marketing Sam Adams
Light in Providence and Portland while his former
partner, Rhonda Kallman, is rolling out Edison Light,
which she hopes can find a niche next to Coors Light,
Bud Light, and the like. "We want to be part
of the beer drinker's repertoire," Kallman says. "I
don't believe there is brand loyalty any more in
the beer industry."
Not here there isn't. I don't like light beer. Tastes
bland, no buzz. But I love the history of light beer,
which is really the history of one living man, Dr.
Joseph Owades, who now runs the Center for Brewing
Studies in Sonoma, Calif. Back in the 1960s, Owades
worked for Rheingold, where he developed a chemical
process that removed all of the starch, and thus
most of the calories, from beer. There are some of
us still old enough to recall Gablinger's, which
Rheingold marketed as a diet beer for men. The market
responded with deafening silence. Men just want to
be fat. In an act either of astounding generosity
or of egregious naivete, Owades shared his light
beer formula with Chicago's Peter Hand Brewing Co. "We
gave it to them," Owades says. "We were
in Brooklyn and they were in Chicago. My bosses didn't
think there was any competition." Hand made
a beer called Meister Brau Lite. "Being from
Chicago, they couldn't spell `light.' "
It, too, went nowhere, but in the early 1970s, Miller
bought the brand, renamed it, and rolled out one
of the most successful advertising campaigns ("tastes
great, less filling") in history. Men didn't
care about losing weight, but they did care about
drinking the same brew as the macho guys Miller hired
as pitchmen, like the New York Jets running back
Matt Snell and the tough-guy writer Mickey Spillane.
What about women? Owades and I have something in
common. We both thought that women might buy a light
beer brewed just for them. In the mid-1980s, a friend
of mine and I drew up a thumbnail business plan for
a women's light that I assume prompted much hilarity
in the mailroom of the Boston Consulting Group, where
we submitted it.
A few years ago, Owades himself formulated a women's
light called Qruze ("smells a bit like suntan
lotion," one beer writer said) that never went
anywhere. Women do drink light beer, Kallman explains,
but "you don't market to them directly. Women
will drink what men drink, but men won't drink what
women drink."
Men drink a lot, and lately they have been drinking
a lot of light beer. Overall, beer sales are generally
flat, but the light category grows about 6 percent
a year. Which is why Kallman has retained Owades
as her chief consultant, and why Sam Adams is testing
the light waters, now for the second time.
An earlier entrant, Lightship - for which Owades
also consulted - foundered on the rocks. "The
name didn't exactly say it was a light beer," a
spokeswoman says. "That is why we are test-marketing
this new brand very carefully."
Alex Beam can be reached by e-mail at beam@globe.com
© Copyright 2001 Globe Newspaper Company
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