Guinness Blonde brew smacks of desperation
Guinness Blonde American Lager out of four Where to buy: LCBO Price: $2.55 per 473 mL can Food pairings: Grilled cheese sandwich, fries.
The verdict: Not awful, but hard to tell who’ll buy it. So this is what desperation tastes like: Slightly bitter, a touch of sweetness, and very, very ordinary.
Oh sorry, it doesn’t actually say “desperation” on the can, you say? A mere technicality. For what other reason could there be for the unveiling of Guinness Blonde American Lager, which hit Ontario earlier this year.
Yes, that’s right. The brewery that introduced the notion that beer could be something other than fizzy, yellow and bland has created a brew that’s fizzy, yellow and bland.
The beer, which launched in the U.S. last year and in Ontario in the fall, came with a grand pronouncement about its origins and purpose.
“Irish tradition meets American spirit in Guinness Blonde American lager . . . It’s the coming together of vibrant flavours, of character drawn from both sides of the pond,” reads one paean on the company’s official website.
Really, though, it’s all about marketing and desperation. Desperation as Guinness tries to spread some of its Irish charm beyond St. Patrick’s Day, when sales of the company’s flagship draft stout skyrocket in a celebration of all things Emerald Isle.
There’s also a certain level of, if not panic, certainly deep concern that sales of the stout are flagging. For much of the last decade, Guinness sales have fallen even in its home country of Ireland.
So what does a brewer so strongly identified with a single product do? Start turning out new brews aimed at craft beer drinkers and others not inclined to sip Guinness.
Yet while many of them, such as Guinness West Indies Stout or Guinness Dublin Porter, pay at least some lip service to the brewery’s history and status as a dark beer icon, some of them — like Guinness Blonde — make no sense at all. Can you imagine someone who doesn’t like stout or porter saying “You know what? I feel like a bland, light lager. Hey, there’s one made by a company known for doing the exact opposite. Gotta get me some of that.”
To its credit, Guinness’s strategy seems to be working, the new brews are credited for halting the slide in sales in Ireland.
Still, it would be shocking if it were actually Blonde pushing that turnaround.
But while the broader strategy seems to be working, at least temporarily, this Blonde has hidden its roots a little too well. josh@thestar.ca