| Work an Hour, Earn a Beer “Beer is expensive in India. The reason is that it’s taxed heavily,” says Jean-Marc de Vaux, managing director of SABMiller India. “At Rs34 [$0.70] a bottle, a man has to work for a beer [for] over an hour.” A beer costs the equivalent of a quarter of a clothing factory worker’s daily earnings, an indulgence out of reach of many of the country’s 1.2 billion people. Nevertheless, beer sales are growing by 14 per cent a year incomes continue to rise. Most analysts agree alcohol consumption has plenty of room to expand. Indians consumes barely one litre of beer per person a year. The average Chinese, by comparison, consumes 23 litres a year; the world average is 22 litres. Availability is a big challenge, too. The Indian beer drinker has to travel miles to find a beer, usually at a tawdry, unrefrigerated outlet. India has one point of sale for every 21,000 people, compared with one for every 3,000 in Indonesia. Beer drinking in India retains the stigma of the illicit. Advertising is banned. |
| Beer Pong in Vegas The World Series of Beer Pong is a loud and sloshy annual tournament that elevates a college fraternity house staple of ping pong balls and beer to an (almost) serious competition. Thanks to a $50,000 first prize more than 400 teams flocked to the Flamingo hotel-casino on the Las Vegas Strip for a chance to bring their skills out of the bar and into the big time. They wore matching uniforms and talked about focus, strategy, and drinking more Pabst Blue Ribbon, the official beer of the tournament. Strangely, the winner, Ron Hamilton, 25, of Brentwood, N.Y., prefers liquor to beer. He claims he got ready for the final round by drinking a bottle of Jack Daniels. "The key today was me getting real drunk and my partner not missing, and us coming out and proving we're the best," Hamilton said shortly after winning the top prize with Michael Popielarski, 25, of Massapequa, N.Y. After watching the antics of the winning team one Vegas regular said "these guys make a good case for raising the drinking age to 26." A new documentary, "Last Cup: Road to the World Series of Beer Pong," is now available on amazon.com. The film, according to the producers, "captures the growing pong culture." If that weren't enough, there was "Beer Pong" the video game, designed for Nintendo's popular Wii system. However the manufacturer, JV Games Inc., changed the name to "Pong Toss" amid complaints about appropriateness for teenagers. |
Feature News from beernexus.com
| Hey Buddy, Can You Spare a Beer? The new Belgian owners of Anheuser-Busch have just announced that Busch Gardens will end a 50-year tradition and stop handing out free beer samples. The company's nine other theme parks, including SeaWorld in Orlando, will also stop pouring. The free beer samples date back to 1959 when Busch Gardens' served as the waiting room for tours of the adjacent A-B Tampa brewery. At the time, there no limit on the free samples which were served in a beer garden setting. By the 1970s, the garden grew into a full-fledged theme park and the sample cups started shrinking and limits were imposed. Joining the list of things cut was a longtime perk to full time park employees of two fre cases of A-B beers. The new owners have vowed to keep the company's trademark Clydesdales but after laying off 1,400 brewery employees right before Christmas, anything is possible. A corporate spokesperson said they were only trying to rein in what they consider excesses. And surprise, he did not mention anything about upper management salaries or bonuses. Nor were any advertising cuts announced. Anheuser-Busch has the nation's biggest brewery marketing budget and is the single largest buyer of sports TV advertising. |
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