Be afraid, be very afraid. You’ve seen my article about Belgium in which I talk about
Hoegaarden beer. Well, those great folks at In-Bev — who own Hoegaarden — have taken a good thing and turned it evil. Not just a little evil, mind you, but very, very evil. Not only have the taken the name of a perfectly good beer and attached it to something that I would not serve to my worst enemy, but they have removed all the alcohol from it. Yes, I give you Hoegaarden 0.0.
The geniuses at the world’s largest adult beverage conglomerate have now produced a lemon-flavored drink that, in the words on a Wall Street Journal reporter tasted like, “…watered-down lemon Fanta.” I guess my question is why? Why take an established, respected brand and bastardize it by attaching its name to this unholy creation? This is akin to the other creation written about in the blogosphere this week called Cidre with the Stella Artois name attached to it.
I just don’t get why a company would risk alienating its customers by attaching a respected, traditional brand name to an obviously trendy and gimicky one. Knock it off already!
Read the full WSJ story about 0.0 here:
http://blogs.wsj.com/brussels/2011/04/26/anheusers-new-0-alcohol-beer/
Read The Sun’s article about Cidre here:
The ATL Beer Guy 