"Faced with gasoline and food price hikes, consumers are looking for better deals on some products. Third-category beer, which is often made from soybeans, corn and peas, is priced cheaper than regular beer and happoshu low-malt beer. Beverage makers are fiercely competing to keep prices low, while trying to produce tastes close to that of regular beer. The key to third-category beer's success is the low price, and shipments surpassed those of happoshu beer in May. A 350-milliliter can of third-category beer sells for about 140 yen at convenience stores, about 20 yen less than happoshu and 75 yen less than regular beer."
How excellent: "...close to that of regular beer." Yum. Wouldn't it be nice if we had similar clarity in our macro-brewing? How many beers would have to call themselves happoshu that now hold themselves out to be beer from barley?
Comments
Brendan - June 23, 2008 10:12 am
Happoshu is not so good, but it is still recognizable as beer, thin fizzy yellow beer. I haven't had it for years, but it was unsatisfying.
Frank - June 23, 2008 12:55 pm
Pete Brown said in "Three Sheets to the Wind" (good book!) that happoshu "looks and tastes like watered-down beer". So I'm thinking Bud Lite or similar. The NLC would probably stock it if they knew about it. ;)