Drinkers tell CUB to go pull the other one
INSTEAD of escaping their troubles, disgruntled Darwin drinkers are being confronted by them before they can even twist off the lid.
Or, rather, pull of the lid, as local drinkers of the once inoffensive mass-produced domestic lager Carlton Dry are up in arms over changes to the beers’ opening mechanism.
Carlton Dry stubbies recently changed from a stan- dard bottle cap to a ring pull cap last month, and matureaged fans are fuming.
“These ring pulls, if you have anything wrong with your finger – let’s say some arthritis – you can’t get them open,” said Angela James, a rusted-on Dry drinker.
Ms James said drinkers of a certain age like herself, who no longer have the physical constitution to yank off ring pull caps with a manic zeal, are cornered, as the new ring pull widget neutralises stan- dard bottle opener entry.
“They’re all sealed shut, so your bottle opener is no good … the only saving grace is the more I drink, the easier it gets,” Ms James said.
The thorny ring pulls, however, only seem to be half of Ms James’s problem.
Before barely having time to uncrumple her face in an attempt to jimmy the ring pull cap from the bottle, Ms James realised that Carlton and United Breweries ( CUB), a company with a stronghold on the Australian beer market, and a subsidiary to Anheuser-Busch InBev, the world’s largest brewing conglomerate, had excised 25ml from the bottle.
Announcing the decision back in October, CUB employed a series of distracting non-sequiturs in its press release to justify the ring pulls.
“In an increasingly complex world of political turmoil, financial uncertainty and coffee-infused beer with cinnamon tasting notes, people are crying out for the simple things,” the press release read.
“So we looked at ways to make our product even more straightforward.”
Ms James said she had no idea what that meant, and that the ‘convenience’ rationale didn’t cut the mustard.
“What do you even say to that?” she said.
“They’re hard to open, I can hardly get them open, then they conveniently don’t put as much beer in them … It’s a sad world.”