FFS - women specific beer!

I suspect that the 'value' of her college-based market research for the project was deemed to be £35k (I certainly hope so, for her sake)

I understand the upset & feeling that it's patronising & unnecessary to brew a beer 'for women', but from a marketing perspective, there does seem to be something about beer (& ale especially) which, in general, seems not to be attractive to many women. (I think sales stats would back this up). Is this down to the product, the male- centric marketing of beer, the odd social stigma beer can have (a man's drink, old-fashioned, uncouth, etc) I'm not sure, but in general I'm happy to see someone having a go at trying to change the current situation (& happy to see a move away from some of the woeful laddish beer names & marketing)

I've never tried to brew with real chocolate - have tried to get the effect with choc malt, etc to good if not perfect effect.

Hoppy New Beer to all! cheers MikeMcG

In message , MikeMcG writes

Crass sexist advertising does seem to go with the territory, to the point where Real Drinkers sneer at it and judge the beer on its own merits. Given the choice of tasteless beer with tasteful advertising, or tasty beer with tasteless advertising, what would you do?

I've got the Hobgoblin t-shirt "A few pints of this magic potion and she'll be gorgeous!" (The goblin is drinking the beer; in the background is an old witch, and a gnome is looking at her through two pint glasses held like binoculars.) They even sell it on ladies' fit shirts. We don't know if Hobgoblin meant it to be satirical, but it is now.

You could add a bit of vanilla, but I don't like that as much.

Hoppy new year everyone!

The sales stats probably match the bias of the advertising budget over the last few decades.

If people think about it there is a reason for Bill Tidy producing the Grotney Hardmen stereotype and the marketing men are still badly behaved - just look at the WKD ads promoting the moronic male stereotype in just another guise.

I suspect we'd be better off with no advertising at all.

On 1 Jan, 20:43, MadCow wrote: MikeMcG writes

hmm, maybe you have a higher opinion of RA drinkers than I do ;~) I think that the success of some beers has more to do with the name / marketing than the quality of the beer itself.

Funly nuff, you mention Hobgoblin, one of Wychwood's other beers (that we used to politely refer to as 'Lassie's Wedding Gear' when we'd drink it at a great little Canterbury pub) seems now to a real shadow if its former self when I tried it recently, in a pub which looks after their beer well, it was nothing like the complex rich golden brew it was before they rejigged the a.b.v.

Given the choice of tasteless beer with tasteful advertising,

I think Refresh/Wychwood know what they're doing with their marketing & I like something about much of what they do. Others have asked whether insulting the 'lagerboys' who might possibly be your future customers is a wise move - but I like the confidence of selling something, based in part at least on its complexity of flavour.

the brewery I currently rent to brew my beers have recently done a strongish liquorice porter, but I've not got to try it yet. (I think St Austell's Clouded Yellow has vanilla though) It's a flavour I like though, so I might give it a go. Who knows, we might see more spiced beers, given the price & woeful scarcity of hops! I might start the Campaign for really real ale :~) (i.e. the 'gruit' spiced, not hopped beers from several centuries ago) cheers MikeMcG

for the conservation

Dare I ask which Canterbury pub ?

you may dare :~) but, my (not very old, yet ailing) brain can only come up with yet another colloquialism - The Dog and Log (as it had a big fat black lab pub dog & wooden logs as benches outside!)

This was in the mid1990s, it was behind the Cathedral, with another bigger real-aley pub a bit further on, on the other side of the road, if my (already admittedly poor) memory serves.

A quick google, multimap, beerintheevening, brain-rack, etc suggests it might have been The Bell and Crown, Palace St, but I'm really not sure. cheers MikeMcG

skipping back to the original topic, there's a short radio piece with the woman behind the new beer - she talks about it being "made with very light hops . . . "

(well you wouldn't want to trouble your pretty little tastebuds or waistline with those heavy ones)

see

cheers MikeMcG

there's a story about Lord Leverhulme (of soap fame & a leader in branding/marketing/advertising) asking his newfangled advertising dept about the success or failure of their various campaigns - he was told "50% of it works . . . " (or something like that) " . . . but we don't know which 50%!" I think it was also added that what they were sure of was that simply not advertising lost them sales! cheers MikeMcG PS & kind of on topic - I missed it myself, but my sis in E.Anglia saw the new Moorhouse's TV ad (shown in E.Anglia, though!) - anyone seen it - any good?

Oh - my mistake - I thought you meant "The Hobgoblin" - the only Wychwood pub for miles around which, with such an amazing range of beers from it's parent brewery, sells only Hobgoblin and lager.

from a quick multimap, that seems to be on the high st? I think it must have been called something else when i was there. (do you know what it was / was called before?) oh & do you know the pub I am still struggling to remember!? cheers MikeMcG

No - and no.

Sorry ;o)

In message , MikeMcG writes

Really real ale can be flavoured with hops, but isn't boiled with them (or boiled much at all) so it'd be a sort of malt wine. It wouldn't have the bitterness of beer, it'd be sweet only if it was very strong or still fermenting, and sour only if it had a lactic thing going on as well. I'd be very interested to try some, but I suspect I wouldn't like it. Let us know how you get on!

no worries - from a comment on BITE - beerintheevening.com it seems to have been the Black Griffin - a bit scuzzy & studenty pub with OK beer pub when I was there. as to the ID of the other pub, I'm still drawing blanks at the mo. cheers MikeMcG

"Research to develop the ale with Shropshire brewery Hanby Ales, based in Wem, took 18 months. It has cost a staggering £44,000, which has come from family and friends and a donation from a leading Shropshire businessman."

so it seems it might have actually cost that! how long to recoup that then? how many pints? wow. cheers MikeMcG

Sounds rather Belgian...

Yep.

But think about what I said about the bias of advertising budgets to crap like WKD etc

it would be interesting to see how successfully those real ale businesses that have done new things in marketing/advertising felt that they'd been (e.g Fuller's, GK & Moorhouse doing TV ads).

Talking of women & beer & marketing & Moorhouses - anyone any comment on their US-only renaming & release of a bottled pale ale called here 'White Witch' (I think) & in the states "Blond Bitch"?

seems all a bit unnecessary to me. cheers MikeMcG

Funny how I remember right at the end - yes you're right. The Hobgoblin was once the Black Griffin.

In message , MikeMcG writes

Last time Guinness had a TV campaign, I saw a media industry review of it saying, basically, "They're very good ads and will make Diageo feel happy but everyone agrees that mass TV promotion of beer is nowadays completely pointless".

One of the GK pubs that surround me here had a beer festival. I've met a couple of people who were impressed with that, but the best I've heard anyone say of its normal offerings was "It's cheap". Nobody said "It's on TV".