The life of a beer marketing executive must be a rough one. There is the need to appeal to the male demographic, which makes up 75% of beer consumption. That’s why most beer commercials are full of cleavage and short skirts.
However, the fairer sex still make up 25% of the market, so the beer barons have to be careful not to chase them back to their more ladylike Vodka Sodas or Cosmopolitans with excessively sexist marketing.
There have been a few new beers come onto the market that are specifically designed to appeal to the lady drinker. Carlsberg has a sweet-tasting beer called Copenhagen that is almost like a Champagne, and Molson has a rose & lemon flavoured beer called Animee. Both of these are for sale in the European market, but have not yet made it to this side of the pond.
However, North America does have a new beer aimed at the estrogen brigade called Chick Beer. Yes, gentle reader, along with the twin terrors of Chick Flicks and Chick Lit that strike fear and loathing into the hearts of men everywhere, we now have Chick Beer to contend with.
The beer itself is tarted up in a pink bottle with a little black dress on the label, and the entire six-pack is painted to look like a darling little clutch purse.
To complement the glamorous look of the beer, it has only 97 calories, compared to about 160 in most beers. There is also less hop bitterness, giving the beer a slightly sweeter taste. Finally, there is much less bloat-inducing carbonation that most beers, as the ladies are apparently less interested in belching contests after a few pints than the lads seem to be.
Unfortunately, the taste is consistent with the Light American Lager style of beer, which is basically Bud Light fancied up in a pink bottle.
With very little malt flavour or hop bitterness, this beer seems to be marketed at the 18-25 demographic, where most of the chicks are still drinking alcopops and other sweet boozy beverages. I suppose that much like the target audience, this beer goes down easy, which can certainly be a selling point.
This beer is the brainchild of an imaginative lady… err… chick… from Maryland, although the beer is contract brewed by Calgary’s own local beer baron Ravinder Minhas, out of his Minhas Craft Brewery.
Long-time readers may remember Ravinder Minhas as the kid-turned-mogul who started Mountain Crest beer while he was still a student at the University of Calgary, or from his hilarious “Dr. Bubbles” commercials on late-night TV.
In the same way that putting lipstick on a pig doesn’t make it a supermodel, putting a lacklustre beer into a tarty package doesn’t make it a good beer.
As you might imagine, your beer snob of a liquor reporter looks down his nose at a beer with such an uninspired taste, and would much rather the ladies stuck to a nice safe Chardonnay or perhaps a Bellini if they want to feel all princessy while knocking back a few.
Back in the days of my callow youth, when boy-bands roamed the earth, your humble narrator hailed from a simpler time. It was a time that men drank beer, and ladies drank Gin & Tonics, which had the dual benefits of being low-calorie, as well as causing lacy undergarments to slowly dissolve over the course of an evening.
However, with the halcyon days of youth now firmly behind me, your humble narrator would much rather chat up a Sheila at the local watering hole who confidently orders a flavourful craft beer from the bartender, rather than nursing a glass of fizzy yellow water that the beer marketeers to try to convince her is actually a lady-friendly beer.
A woman drinking a flavourful craft beer would never order a Chick Beer, or even be referred to as a chick. No, gentle reader, your humble narrator fears that only high-maintenance drama queens will be ordering Chick Beer, and should be avoided like the plague if you spot one at your local watering hole.
And that, gentle reader, is the reason that your intrepid liquor reporter frequents the brew pubs and craft beer dens of our fair land, as that is where the quality ladies who enjoy good beer are to be found.
