Caffeinated Beer Becomes a Reality

Cylar writes "CNN is reporting that Anheuser-Bush has developed a sweet, caffeinated beer they are dubbing B(E). Intended to compete with the trendy sweet concotions popular on the club scenes (such as Smirnoff Ice), it will contain caffeine, guarana, and ginseng." Not sure how I feel about ginseng in my brew, so I'll have to study this with a few cases.

Comments

New taste to acquire

[mirko]

Coffee is an acquired taste, so is beer, I guess one will have to learn to enjoy this beverage...

Re:New taste to acquire

[Nos.]

At least you'll be awake and in a good mood while you "learn to enjoy" it

Re:New taste to acquire

[Walt Dismal]

Thank goodness. Finally a beer that goes well with Twinkies.

Re:New taste to acquire

[Handbrewer]

Beer might be an acquired taste. But please, do not brew a beer like this, id hate to see a new generation grow up thinking beer is like this. You can probably guess from my nick i appreciate a good, and often homebrewn, beer. It has taken me many years to taste my way through just a small portion of the beer spectrum, and its very enjoyable. But its not commercially viable to brew to so many tastes, so the big breweries just brew some variation of the Pilsner og light lager. Very booring, no wonder young people would rather have a Smirnoff Ice. But how about a good Brown Ale? Or IPA, or a well served Belgian Wit, like Hoegaarden? That beats anything, anyday, anytime :).

Heres hopeing that the next generation still drinks beer!

Re:New taste to acquire

[Servo5678]

Remember the Buzz Beer slogan? "Stay up and get drunk all over again."

"The combination of alcohol and caffeine should be addictive as heroin but so far the sales haven't born that out." - Lewis Kiniski

Re:New taste to acquire

[csteinle]

I always thought Hoegaarden sounded like an outdoor brothel.

MMmmmm Beer

[mfh]

In the immortal words of Homer Simpson...

Oh, yeah. Beer busts, beer blasts, keggers, stein hoists, AA meetings, beer night. It's wonderful, Marge. I've never felt so accepted in all my life. These people looked deep within my soul and assigned me a number based on the order in which I joined.

And now he can stay up late drinking beer without passing out -- because it's got caffeine!

Re:MMmmmm Beer

[lukewarmfusion]

Lois: Peter, you're drunk again!
Peter: No I'm not. I'm just tired from staying up all night drinking.

Buzz Beer

[Merlin42]

Does Drew Carey get royalty payments on this stuff?!?

Re:Buzz Beer

[goneutt]

The Coffee in the beer products go way back. At the 1904 worlds fair (the same place that gave jack daniels the ribbons on the label) a beer was awarded a medal that used coffee instead of hops.

I only know this cuz it was Kurt Vonnegut's grandfather (I think thats the right relation) and was mentioned in Time Quake.

Re:Buzz Beer

[Creepy]

Guarana isn't an asian vegetable, though - it's a South American stimulant that is traditionally used to boost the sex drive.

Ginseng, native to Asia and North America both is reputably also an aphrodesiac (and promote well being, yada, yada yada).
I found a great quote here -

Don't take Ginseng and Ginseng mixtures with Coffee as it will accelerate the caffine effects on the body and can cause diarrhea.

So basically, they want you to get drunk, buzzing, and horny all at once. I would recommend against this one for most geeks, but you probably would match up well with someone drinking it ;)

Drew Carry said it best...

[CrazyTalk]

In reference to Buzz Beer (they had the concept years ago!) - "Stay up so you can get drunk all over again"

Ew.

[njfuzzy]

So we take the nasty taste of American beer, and we load it up with sugar and stuff to make us jittery. Great plan.

Re:Ew.

[EvilTwinSkippy]

It's like making love in a motorized canoe.

Obligatory Simpsons

[Anti Frozt]

Marge: I'd like a coffee
Aussie Bartender: Beer it is
Marge: No, coffee
Bartender: Beer
Marge: Cof-fee
Bartender: Be-er
Marge: C-O
Bartender: B-E

This is a good first step!

[cerebralsugar]

Now if they can just add nicotine to it too I can have all my vices in ONE CAN!

Re:This is a good first step!

[kfg]

Oh sure, sounds like a good idea at first, but do you have any idea how hard it is to keep a beer lit?

KFG

great... belligerent drunks that stay up all night

[httpamphibio.us]

at least you used to be able to count on somebody passing out...

Americans and Beer

[soccerisgod]

As an inhabitant of a country that makes great beers, I have to say I find this highly appaling.

You might wonder why I even care - after all, that beer is not exported to Europe and we can still drink our own (beerlike) beer. There's just one problem - the Football WC (you call it soccer...)

Stupid FIFA has a contract with an American beer producer. Guess which. That means we can only buy American beer in the stadion.

Someone from Europe who's pissed at piss...

Re:Americans and Beer

[bludstone]

American microbreweries are great.

Not all american beers are the crappy bud chains. There are plenty of fantastic brews available stateside.

Re:Americans and Beer

[NeoSkandranon]

The big brands make what people like to drink, simply.

The majority of beer drinkers here in the states want something weak and tasteless that they can knock back ASAP and reach for another, thus accellerating their progression towards getting totally pissed (or at least pleasantly buzzed). Or at least this is what my friends and roommates have infromed me after asking how the hell they stand to drink the tan water that passes for beer here.

Now granted, I can see the reasnong behind wanting a not-strong/overpowering beer perhaps with food...but my idea of that is Harp or Newcastle, not Bud piss -in-a-bottle Light

(Disclaimer: I'm a college student)
(Disclaimer 2: I drink imported, microbrew, or nothing)

Re:Americans and Beer

[Creepy]

There's more to it than that.

US law prohibited small breweries before 1977. In 1977 that law was overturned (or repealed or something of that sort) and microbreweries and brewing in the home was permitted for the first time since pre-prohibition. That meant large breweries (the only ones allowed) had ~50 years to change US tastes to a cheap, bitter, rice-based wheat lager in a market they basically had a monopoly over (you had several choices from some core breweries, but they all were basically the same).

Microbreweries didn't take off until the mid-to-late 1980s and the reputation was their beers were bad - and to American US mass brewery tastes, they were right.

Most drinkers start in late high school or early college. Because those are generally lean times financially, the cheapest swill that does the job is chosen. That, of course, is usually the stuff put out by the largest breweries. Even after college, it's hard to turn down 2-for-1 taps for $1 when imports and microbrews go for $5 or more each at the same bar.

Incidentally, and ironically in a way, the custom-brewed beers (in my case, Leinenkeugel's Red) put out by major breweries were my gateway to imports and other quality beers (though I did have a Pete's Wicked Ale long before that, but nobody, including me, liked it). I also no longer like wheat lagers at all... ok, I admit there's a German wheat lager I like (it's like drinking bread), but that's it.

This reminds me of both Simpsons and Futurama...

[Exocet]

My first real thought, however, due to the distributor was, "gross."

Immediately following that, though, I thought of a Simpsons episode, then a Futurama episode:

Homer: Uh, yeah. I need something that will keep me awake, alert, and reckless all night long.
Clerk: Well, Congress is racing back to Washington to outlaw these. [puts a bottle of pills on the counter]
Homer: [takes bottle] Sold!
[downs most of the pills on the spot]
Clerk: Hey, you can't take that many pep pills at once.
Homer: No problem, I'll balance it out with a bottle of sleeping pills. [takes another generous helping of pills]
-- "Maximum Homerdrive"

Fry: I'm never going to get used to the 31st century. [He points to his breakfast.] Caffinated bacon? Baconated grapefruit? Admiral Crunch?
-- "The Series Has Landed"

Not a new thing...

[Theaetetus]

MoonShot Beer!

MoonShot contains the maximum amount of caffeine allowed by law: 45mg per twelve-ounce serving. Since this is a moderate level (a cup of coffee contains 70mg), we have formulated MoonShot to be light-bodied, smooth and therefore uncommonly drinkable.

I've tried MoonShot... It's not bad, but not great. Little bit of caffeine tang, like Krank2O or Water Joe, but better masked by the beer. Tastes kinda like Rolling Rock. Weak, in other words.

If you want caffeine with your alcohol, go for irish coffee

-T

Re:Not a new thing...

[RupW]

Also, Dark Star Espresso Stout:

Specially blended and ground
espresso coffee beans are
added to the copper along with
the late hops to produce this
dark, rich stout.

I had a half of this at CAMRA's 2004 beer festival in London and it was pretty good. (But there were hundreds of beers to try.)

Oh, Sweet Jesus with a Urinal Cake

[Spencerian]

As if beer doesn't make you pee enough!

B/E! Now you can piss like the mighty Mississipp!!

Coffee Porter

[JUSTONEMORELATTE]

Years ago, a friend of mine was brewing and thought he'd invent a recipie for Coffee Porter. Rather than read what anyone else had done, he decided to just wing it and hope for the best.
He came into work one Monday, and asked what I knew about coffee. Seems he had a bottle with dinner the night before, but hadn't been to sleep yet.

Now any homebrewer can tell you that the typical formula for 5-6 gallons of beer calls for about one pot of strong coffee for a subtle but noticable flavor.
Mark, on the other hand, took a pound of french roast, ground it to the "Espresso" setting, and dumped it into secondary for two weeks. If I remember the back-of-the-envelope calculations, we figured each bottle had 500 - 700 mg of caffiene, compared to 40-70 mg in a cup of coffee.

He gave me a bottle, and we used it for shots at a party, but that's about all I could do with it.

--
Free gmail invites

Bad combo

[FunWithHeadlines]

Too drunk to drive, too jittery to just sit in the back seat.

Re:It's probably crap.

[EtherBoo]

They really do make nothing but garbage. At a local beer bar I go to that brews their own bar, they will ask you to leave if you try to order a Budweiser...or anything else from that trash "brewery" and I use the term brewery loosely.

This doesn't compete with Smirnoff

[BelugaParty]

This competes with Red Bull and Vodka and its derivitives.

Re:This doesn't compete with Smirnoff

[Ingolfke]

Derivitives of Red Bull & Vodka... meaning child support and alimony?

Gratuitous Linkage

[swordboy]

Nudge, nudge. Link, link.

This isn't for carb watchers as it has 22 grams in there. Probably all sugar. 6.6 percent alcohol will be chasing the Jager Bomb crowd.

Re:College kids and yuppies

[Otter]

A couple of years ago, I arrived in Islay (home of Bowmore and Laphroaig), checked into a Port Ellen hotel and went down to the local pub to try the local whiskies in their native environment. Everyone from farmers to surly teenagers was drinking -- Smirnoff Ice.

B(E)?

[Speare]

B(E)? The geek in me reads that as "B of E" and then turns that phonetically into BFE, a vulgar initialism for "bum f* egypt," meaning the middle of nowhere.

How do companies decide to call things by stupid unpronounceable names? Pentax *istD Olympus m:robe

Then you have the stupid names which are just too close to derogatory names. I'm not talking about creative stretches of normal words like "Back Orifice" or "Internet Exploder." I'm talking about nonsense turned into the nearest possible normal words. Olympus eVolt sounds revolting.

Stimulants and depressants...yum!

[jav1231]

Isn't mixing stimulants and depressants (ginseng and alcohol) a bad thing? There are incidences of people mixing vodka and Red Bull and actually dying. I'm sure this is due to drinking an inordinate amount, but still uppers and downers together doesn't sound like good eats.

Just f__king great

[r_j_prahad]

At least you'll be awake and in a good mood while you "learn to enjoy" it

Just what the highways need at oh-dark-thirty in the A.M... a bunch of wide awake drunks behind the wheel.

what about Sparks?

[stevetures]

Well then what about Sparks malt liquor? As a musician, I can testify to the Sparks, where drinking it gets you to loosen up but you don't stoner out and write drone-ish song. http://www.drinksparks.com/ Ya gotta love how the can is painted to look like an orange battery, with the positive and negative terminals.

Beer, you say?

[Anonymous Coward]

Why the very thought of anyone drinking such a low class beverage has CAUSED MY MONOCLE TO POP RIGHT OUT! And really, who drinks beer in this day and age anyway? Everyone should drink only expensive wine and scotch.

Why just the other day my chauffeur took a wrong turn off of the freeway and pulled me past this run down little liquor store where this shabby looking man (who by the way was driving a Pontiac! A PONTIAC!!!) who hadn't shaved for a couple of days was walking out with a bottle of Johnny Walker Red. RED LABEL?! I exclaimed, exhaling a puff of cigar smoke and tipping my top hat back in a bemused manner. WHO ARE THESE CRETINS? I practically had my driver phone the police right then and there...

Ginko Biloba + Beer = ...

[Kakurenbo Shogun]

Next thing you know, they'll be putting ginko biloba into beer so that you can get drunk, do something stupid, and remember it in the morning.

Re:It's probably crap.

[Soporific]

There's nothing more of an oxymoron than a beer snob.

~S

Maybe not enjoy ...

[gstoddart]

At least you'll be awake and in a good mood while you "learn to enjoy" it.

Caffeine and alcohol may not be all it's cracked up.

I once saw someone use Jolt for mix. By the end of the night he was so bombed he needed to sleep but so wired he couldn't sit still. Not a pretty sight.

At the time, he most assuredly was not in a good mood for the experience. :-P

Cheers