Back from a few days on the road and I am shocked - shocked!! - to find out there is an underworld of bootlegged beer out there. The news today comes from the Netherlands but this could be happening in your home town:
People drinking a beer in Amsterdam have a big chance of it being an unbranded brew. Hospitality businesses are serving illegal beer en masse to get out of stranglehold contracts they complain they have to sign with the established brewers like Heineken... Many cafe and restaurant-holders quietly put unbranded barrels under their taps, because they can save 25 to 50 euros on purchasing and the customers do not taste the difference, Amsterdam newspaper Het Parool reports. The unbranded beers come from brewers with overcapacity in Germany, Belgium and the Netherlands. Insiders in the drinks trade believe that 60 percent of the established hospitality businesses take this route.
Hmmm: "because they can save 25 to 50 euros on purchasing and the customers do not taste the difference." Isn't that odd. In what other product category could a merry oligopolist demand "stranglehold contracts" when the consumer can't perceive a distinction between the oligopolistic version from a discount one? And then there is that idea in the story's headline: "Most Heineken Beer in Amsterdam is Fake." Can a beer actually be fake? Sure the branding may be stolen and now doubt an example of widespread commercial fraud - a zwendel even - but does that make the beer in your glass fake beer? If you can't tell the difference? Isn't it really just switched? Or is there something so elemental in Heineken or other macro-brews that can be falsified in such an elemental way?
Comments
bierfesten - February 15, 2010 9:24 pm
Fake Heineken it can't be worse than the real version..
Pivní Filosof - February 16, 2010 1:35 am
It sounds to me like something the macros may have seeded.
I don't know what kegs look like in Holland, but in Czech kegs are anything to go by, there is no labeling, really, just a plastic cap that identifies the beer, which is removed and thrown away when the keg is tapped.
Yeah, some breweries have their own kegs, but those tend to go around and end up being used by micros or regionals.
Reminds me of a story I heard the other day. The owner of a pub was fed up with Gambrinus, but his patrons would refuse to drink anything else, so he asked the rep of a regional if they had any problem with him pouring their beer in a Gambrinus mug. Of course, he didn't. He didn't tell anything to the patrons, but he could hear them praising their pints. After a few weeks, he showed them a cap from a keg and said "Gents, this is the beer you've been drinking and look at how much you like it. From now on I don't want to hear anything about Gambrinus anymore". And they lived happily ever after...
Trainman - February 16, 2010 6:54 am
I am drinking a fake beer right now. I made it and call it whatever I want. Of course it isn't the same, but close.
Steve Beauchesne - February 17, 2010 7:01 pm
In Ontario it is referred to as blacktapping. I've actually caught one restaurant selling crappy macro beer and telling customers it was mine. I was able to tell the difference, but I shudder to think of how many people came to that restaurant and tried "that local micro" and were severely disappointed when they were actually being served crap.
Obviously, I took the tap off on the spot and have since refused to sell to them.
If a pub doesn't want to put on macro beer at inflated prices, they should absolutely put a different beer on tap - but make it something local and cool and then tell customers what they are drinking.
Alan - February 18, 2010 1:09 am
But who couldn't tell your beer from macro crap? I suppose if those customers never tried anything other than macros they wouldn't know what to expect.