 |
||||||||
 |
||||||||
|
||||||||
|
Hip without the hops [Times photo]
By CHRIS SHERMAN, Times Staff Writer
Time for one more lecture from a grumpy baby boomer. Only now I speak as well for my even grumpier elders and for the also-aging Generation X, which thought it invented the term "alternative" (and had a fondness for Sam Adams). What's Wrong With Kids Today, Reason No. 1749: Not your inside-outerwear, your impermanent tattoos or your cereal-for-supper this time. It's your beer. I use that term quite loosely to describe Generation Zima's latest craze, New Age alternative brews. It's beer with all the beer filtered out. It tastes like soda pop and is dressed in the drag of a hip, grownup liquor with a well-advertised brand name. It's multitasking in a longneck. I shouldn't even mention "beer," because there's not a breath of hops left inside, and federal regulators are rewriting rules on names and labels to minimize confusion with actual liquor. There ain't a drop of distilled spirit in them, either. It's just water and malt sugar fermented with the buzz of high-dollar marketing and 5 percent alcohol. Some call them malternatives or alcopops, but the term in the beverage industry is FMB, which sounds like an inflatable sneaker but means flavored malt beverages. FMBs comprise a Ben & Jerry's spectrum of beverages with natural colors and flavors (and artificial ones, too) that mimic drinks from lemonade and iced tea to the truly hard vodka and rum. This spring, the category sprouted still more new labels, chiefly old hard-liquor brands, so that now the well-stocked cooler offers what once was malt in a dozen new varieties, including the "flavor" of vodka. Wearing familiar vodka colors are malt beverages Skyy Blue, Smirnoff Ice and Stolichnaya Citrona; malt beverage brands better known for their big-bottle rums are Captain Morgan Gold and Bacardi Silver; carrying memories of tequila of a similar name is Sauza Diablo. None mention the vodka, rum or tequila on the label -- just the unmistakable marque. FMBs from Mike's Hard Lemonade to the beery Stolis and Bacardis make up 4 percent of the more than 3-million cases of beer sold in the United States, and they're just starting. "It's going to explode," says Bill Gieseking of Pepin Distributing, Tampa distributor for Anheuser-Busch, which paired with another powerhouse brand to produce Bacardi Silver. The category is growing in sales 24 percent a year, as fast as imported beer, with Smirnoff Ice in the lead and Bacardi Silver second. "There are six or seven more coming this summer," heading for a collision in the beer aisles, Gieseking said. "Another 4 feet of that cooler is going to be dedicated to them," before the brands shake out and the fad fades or stays. Coming to bars and convenience stores near you will be "hard colas" from Jack Daniels and others. Plus, there are a host of big brands yet to milk the malt. Can Absolut be far behind? Of course liquor distillers have packaged premixed cocktails and canned drinks for years and Kahlua now has a line of pocket-sized White Russians and such, but the shape-shifting and taste-tampering of beer started 10 years ago. The first, of course, was Zima, the first lemon-lime of beers with a New Age zip or at least a name starting with the sexiest of letters. It broadened in the past three years, when malt beverages became a vehicle for hard lemonades from Australia and then twisted into hard teas. The technique they used is the same for the newest spirit-inspired FMBs. The maker takes the legally required malt, hops and other ingredients and brews them into a beer, then strips or filters out all the beer character except for the alcohol. Finally, they add to this bland alcoholic liquid whatever color, flavor, and aroma they want. The jump to liquor-poseurs makes sense for both millennial consumers and producers. For the target buyers, men and women, minimum drinking age to 34, who grew up with Transformers and now like as many choices in martinis and cheesecakes as cable channels, FMBs have lots to offer: Sweet, very sweet, soft-drink flavor, even when the taste is supposed to be tart lemon-lime. The buzz of a well-advertised brand name, maybe not on network television, but slickly marketed in alternative magazines and way-cool Web sites. The allure of transformational technology. If you can we split genes and clone sheep, why not mutate beer? For the malt manipulators, FMBs have payoffs beyond any market growth: FMBs are taxed at lower rates than wine or distilled spirits. They can be sold in stores and restaurants not licensed to sell liquor and can be promoted and advertised in ways that hard liquor is not. It's all about the brand: FMBs maximize it across several categories, diversifying it beyond pure spirits, which are shrinking and increasingly vulnerable to attacks from neoprohibitionists. Exactly who's buying and drinking, and where, is still evolving. Planes tow Bacardi Silver banners along Florida beaches and advertising is plastered over clubland, but a random check of bartenders found mixed results. From the beaches to Ybor, FMBs sold during special promotions, but only Smirnoff Ice has won big space in the cooler at a few bars. Far more FMBs are selling direct from grocery stores and liquor stores that stock a big variety and charge about $7 a six-pack. Today's young consumer might have an especially sweet tooth, but FMBs are not the first sweet temptation. Sloe gin, wine coolers and schnapps had their day as "first drinks"; the English put lemon and soda in shandies, the Belgians give fruit flavors to their most noble lambics. Indeed, even the new generation of microbreweries from Oregon to New Orleans have given into silly names, wild labels and odd flavors; the difference is that they weren't too sweet or mass-marketed. Local brewers aren't worried about the FMBs as competition, but they are not amused. "All I know is it's ridiculous," says Vickie Dobles, owner of Tampa Bay Brewing Company, a brew pub in Ybor City that makes 10 or more craft brews on tap for serious beer lovers. Her son John, the brew master, is more indignant. "The big brewers have been working for years to get rid of the color, the taste, the flavor and the calories in beer," he said. The FMB's are the result. It appalls someone who makes a careful choice of each ingredient and method of fermentation, to make a spectrum from lagers to porters that stick to a spoon. Dobles has fun with names and tastes in his beers, but the jokes are about real beer, such as his new Brits' Freakin' Nightmare, an English pale ale made with the traditional East Kent Goldings hops and then finished with an untraditional kick of Hallerthau hops from, gasp, Germany. "We pick and choose and taste and smell the hops we use for reasons," says brewer and fellow purist Michael Bryant of Dunedin Brewery, who prides himself on his barley malt and all his ingredients, as well as his gaily screen printed bottles. His Razz Beery is a novelty but it's a crisp wheat beer made with fresh summer fruit. But he only has funny names and nifty coasters for promotion. That may not be enough for a generation intoxicated by advertising, although big brewers and big distillers have always put as much image as flavor into their bottles. Maybe ad-smart whippersnappers can show the old folks how to be savvy: Love the logo, hate the brew. * * * P.S. It's not all their fault. You can blame adult drinkers -- and Atkins' dieters -- of all generations for a different bastardization of beer: Michelob Ultra, the first low-carb beer. Given that the chief ingredient is grain that turns to sugar and then alcohol, that's tough, but A-B science has made a beer with 2.9 grams of carbohydrates, less than one quarter of a regular Michelob. Budweiser expected success with older drinkers, but Pepin's Gieseking says Ultra is doing strong with people in all age groups who want a much lighter drink. "The women are really loving it." Me? I'll save my beer carb allotment for a Young's Double Chocolate Porter. TIPs on the FMBsLike other novelty products, Flavored Malt Beverages are best as refreshment, so drink them very cold. The head evaporates quickly; they can be served over ice, which helps to dilute the sweetness. FMB's are so sweet you can't drink many; Michelob Ultra is much easier to drink. * * * Bacardi Silver: Clear as grain, tastes like rum and 7Up, with a hint of lime, close to Slurpee-sweet. Best of the rum-surrogates. Buzz factor: Embossed bat logo very cool. * * * Captain Morgan Gold: Smells and tastes like rum and ginger ale on a caramel base reminiscent of flat Coca Cola. Buzz factor: Not as piratical as the Bucs. * * * Mike's Hard Raspberry Lemonade: Rosy color, sharp nose like Fresca but eventually very lemonade-sweet with little cranberry bitter, more like a fruity Fizzie. Buzz factor: "Mike won the cranberry farm in a poker game." * * * Smirnoff Ice: Frosty color of etched glass with floral aroma and sweet taste more like berries, banana and bubble gum than citrus. Buzz factor: Label and frosted look close to the real thing. * * * Stolichnaya Citrona: Cloudy color, with more head than most, sweet but not as cloying as other lemon-lime. Holds up well to ice. Buzz factor: Industrial Stalinist label is so hot at the beach! * * * Sauza Diablo: Fuzzy pale green. Looks, smells and tastes like a weak margarita with a hint of salt. Sweet aftertaste can be cloying. Most convincing masquerade. Buzz factor: Que diabolico! * * * Skyy Blue: Another 7Up but this one's crisp and tart, not so sweet, with whiff of vodka aroma on the finish. The cleanest-drinking FMB. Buzz factor: Blue bottles are so 20th century, but love that double Y. * * * Michelob Ultra: Light lager with a firm head. Body is thin and watery, but reduced carbs mean more hops than malt in nose and taste, giving it more character than most lights. Won't fill you up. Buzz factor: Light there, too.
 © 2006 • All Rights Reserved • Tampa Bay Times
490 First Avenue South • St. Petersburg, FL 33701 • 727-893-8111 
|
From the Times Taste section From the features wire |
