For weeks Beck´s Ice has been dominating our statistics, if it comes to search phrases. Beck´s Ice has been launched in May this year. It´s the seventh line extension the Inbev-owned brewer from Bremen has launched in Germany so far.
The other brands are: Beck´s Pils, Beck's Gold (a lighter lager version), Beck's Green Lemon (lager shandy), Beck's Green Lemon Alkoholfrei (lager shandy with 0 abv), Beck's Level 7 (energy lemonade + beer), Beck's Chilled Orange (lager shandy with orange flavour) and Beck's
Alkoholfrei (0 abv). There´s a draft version called Beck´s Vier in the United Kingdom as well, but that´s not available in continental Europe.
Now, what´s the story behind Beck´s Ice? The Beck´s laboratory has obviously created a method, to extract and filter the beer colour, thus creating a clear beer lemonade. The press release stated, that it´s half beer, half lemonade and with the "refreshing taste of tangy lime and mint". Beck´s Ice comes in at 2.5 abv.
We had the bottle sitting in our fridge, since the press packet was send out to us in April. When I saw the statistics and read a blog post over at Cafe Sol blog, I decided to finally give it a try. And I had rather not! There seems to be no beer (taste) in Beck´s Ice at all. It tastes somewhat stale, although I tried it chilled. I couldn´t detect any mint. There´s hardly any real taste to it apart from being bubbly, citrussy and sweet. It´s just another alcopop!
The beer industry has finally managed to completely take over the fields, the spirit industry left after public pressure and regulation got too strong years ago. It´s not the vodka and rum companies producing those alopops any more: it´s the beer industry.
We do have the regular green Beck´s bottles in our fridge as well. And I actually like to drink these. But if they continue to put more and more lemonade into their bottles (and thus their brand), it might be the time for a change.
Der Beitrag Beck’s Ice – the line extension without the taste erschien zuerst auf Mixology.