The Increasingly Mis-named Range Of Aussie Beers

[Batz]

Am I the only one annoyed and confused by the totally random mis-use of style names by our big brewers? Names seem to be attached to beers without regard to what the name really means or whether it is even vaguely appropriate.

Witness the recent erruption of "blonde" labelled beers onto the shelves. Now is not "blonde" a well known style of Belgian Ale? What gives some marketing "genius" the right to decide to slap it onto a crappy "low-carb" (i.e. use more sugar for less residual body) beer?

The irony is that almost without exception, the beers so mislabeled are generic lagers, poor third generation clones of the original Pilsener without the character or quality. Let's look at some of the offenders:

Victoria Bitter - actually a lager. Can't be a bitter because that's an ale style.
XXXX Bitter - another lager.
Melbourne Bitter - yet another lager...
Emu Bitter - a lager. Someone PLEASE send these guys a BJCP guide book!
Resch's Real - a lager. Is this an allusion to "real ale". What would CAMRA have to say...
Cascade Pale Ale - not an ale at all, actually a lager.
Boag's XXX Ale - actually a lager. (no way... imagine that!)
Pure Blonde - Not a "blonde" at all, actually a lager.
Platinum Blonde - actually lagers.
Carlton Blonde - a lager.
Boag's Blonde - another lager. More marketing "me-too" wankiness.
Carlton Draught - by definition, draught beer is beer on tap... if it's bottled, it's not "draught".
XXXX Draught - another bottled beer, thus by definition not draught.
Boags Draught - another bottled "draught" beer.
Emu Draft - well, I guess a can could be considered a really really tiny keg...
Hahn Ice - Not an "ice" beer at all. Has not been frozen and had the ice removed to make a super-strong beer.

Funnily, Cascade Blonde (another Foster's beer) IS at least actually a wheat beer. Yet they had no qualms about using the same name for "Pure Blonde".

Now, is this not false labelling? Which is illegal? Imagine if wine producers tried the same stunt! Sparkling white labelled as "shiraz", chablis labelled as "chardonay", shiraz labelled as "port".

Do any other countries have to put up with this BS? (Maybe in America?)

It's obvious marketing is running the show, and they don't give a stuff about beer, but believe (or would have us believe) it's all the same pale yellow lager-y stuff and they can call it whatever they want. :angry:

If you don't like it go move to Afghanistan or some place.

 

[Murcluf]

I think I found the BJCP Nazi Party Gathering for the Anally Retentive.

The BJCP Guidelines at guidelines only and only followed loosely as the style scope is particularly narrow and a large percentage of beer produced around the world don't fit into the the style guidelines including ones they use as examples. Another point is that there are a lot of breweries out there in the world who have been brewing beer for over 100 year and more which is many moons longer then BJCP was a tear drop in anyones eye.

The cart has always gone before the horse (Beer has been brewed for centuries and the BJCP hasn't)
VB XXXX Southwark EMU etc etc etc have never claimed to English Bitter Ales brewed to CAMRA requirement.
Pride of Ringwood ???????? Do I need to say more on that
The only Blonde producer in Australia tying itself to Belgium I know of is Murrays
Americans have there own style the call Blonde check your BJCP guidelines for that one and they tie it to Kolsch and or Hybrid
West End Carlton and any other beer sold in Australain as Draught were originally sold as Draught/Keg
Coopers Ales use Ale Yeast and have always done so
Ive just spent 1/2 hour on this thead I can't buy kack
Do the Breweries of the World give a flying......... to what we think? ....NO!!!!!!!

By any other name would a Beer taste so sweet......?

Any How Have a Home Brew.....! And have a Good Weekend....! :icon_cheers:

 

[smudge]

It's a shame that most Aussies don't first reach first for the Macquarie for their definitions. And in this case they don't do a
bad job.

'Ale'

1. Any of various English types of beer brewed by the top fermentation method.

2. Any beer.

3. obsolete any unhopped beer.

No's 2&3 are as TB says, all about context...."I might have a few ales tonight" doesn't proscribe what type of beer you might
drink.

But the first definition in an Aussie dictionary pretty much says it all.

Cheers,
smudge

 

[eamonnfoley]

there should be no argument here - we should respect the beer culture of Europe because without it we are nothing but bland lager land. end of story.

 

[boingk]

Never really thought about this issue, although did have a drunken rant with mates while we plowed through a slab of "Blue Swimmers" (our name for New cans). It says 'draught' on the can yet the product is clearly not being dispensed from a frosty font. We also had a laugh at the '5 natural ingredients' claim they use - it includes sugar as one, for those who haven't seen it.

Anyway, for the most part people are unaware. Kind of like if I asked you what Fog rating your last post was. A Fog rating is a numerical description of how hard a sentence is to read on an intellectual level, derived from a simple equation involving 3 sylable or greater words, verbs, adjectives and sentence length. I can't recall it precisely so won't approximate it. Highschool students are around the 16-18 mark, whilst tertiary students (well, most anyway) should be around the 17-19 mark (from memory, could be wrong). Any higher and you risk becoming ambiguous. Newspapers, by contrast, are pitched at around 12 - within reach of pretty much anyone.

Still, how often do you see people running around complaining about the Fog level of a sentence they just read?

Yes, improper beer labelling is annoying. Yes, it is misleading. Yes, it irks me.

But no, I don't really care; by far the majority of incorrectly labelled beers I would not be buying so as to savour the representation of a particular style.

My rant and 2c on the issue - boingk

 

[mattcarty]

do you think macdonalds uses 100% Australian Beef in their patties

from what im told the "100% Australian Beef" is actually a brand name so they can use it even though their burgers are made from 99% **** 1% spit from pissed off teenagers who are sick of being abused whilst they earn sweet F-All to serve up barf burgers to lard arses.


cheers
carty

 

[peas_and_corn]

do you think macdonalds uses 100% Australian Beef in their patties

from what im told the "100% Australian Beef" is actually a brand name so they can use it even though their burgers are made from 99% **** 1% spit from pissed off teenagers who are sick of being abused whilst they earn sweet F-All to serve up barf burgers to lard arses.


cheers
carty

Not this again.

 

[caleb]

Anyway, for the most part people are unaware. Kind of like if I asked you what Fog rating your last post was. A Fog rating is a numerical description of how hard a sentence is to read on an intellectual level, derived from a simple equation involving 3 sylable or greater words, verbs, adjectives and sentence length. I can't recall it precisely so won't approximate it. Highschool students are around the 16-18 mark, whilst tertiary students (well, most anyway) should be around the 17-19 mark (from memory, could be wrong). Any higher and you risk becoming ambiguous. Newspapers, by contrast, are pitched at around 12 - within reach of pretty much anyone.

Well the Fog rating of most of my high school essays used to be off the chart! I've tried to improve, but those reading my posts might realize that it's been an uphill struggle for me. (imagine if I was TRYING to be 'foggy')

But here's the real problem, and it goes deeper than beer. When a word is mis-used to the extant that it can mean anything the user wants it to mean, then it ceases to actually be meaningful. At which point it ceases to be a useful word. You might as well say "ma mana ma manamana ma" for all the meaning the word now has. In effect, your vocabulary, indeed the entire language, is dying, one word at a time. This can't be a good thing.

Sure, words and languages evolve over time. But this doesn't mean a whole bunch of words should be applied randomly until they cease to actually carry any useful meaning.

Or do we allow this to progress to the point communication becomes:
"Then I was like, you know, yeah... and she goes, like, just, you know, and I was all like - whatever. I mean, dude, like, you know what I mean, yeah?"

Oh... wait a minute... <_<

(I can see the sarcasm this post is going to generate now.)

 

[quantocks]

do you think macdonalds uses 100% Australian Beef in their patties

from what im told the "100% Australian Beef" is actually a brand name so they can use it even though their burgers are made from 99% **** 1% spit from pissed off teenagers who are sick of being abused whilst they earn sweet F-All to serve up barf burgers to lard arses.


cheers
carty

 

[caleb]

If you don't like it go move to Afghanistan or some place.

Why? Do they have a really amazing beer culture there or something?

Oh... you mean it could be worse - like a place where there is no beer at all because of oppresive religious and idealogical laws banning it totally?

Kind of like, say, cannabis over here?

Mmmmm, right...

 

[mattcarty]

i stand corrected

so then who is the magician who manages to make real beef taste that ****!

cheers
carty

 

[altstart]

:icon_offtopic:
Any country that allows a certain company to advertise itself as the fresh food people deserves all it gets with respect to false advertising. That is the problem in a nutshell plain and simple.
Cheers Altstart

 

[boingk]

Yes, improper beer labelling is annoying. Yes, it is misleading. Yes, it irks me.

But no, I don't really care; by far the majority of incorrectly labelled beers I would not be buying so as to savour the representation of a particular style

I stand by this statement.

Sure, words and languages evolve over time. But this doesn't mean a whole bunch of words should be applied randomly until they cease to actually carry any useful meaning.

Righteo, then. So what happened to groaning ales, 'true' unhopped ales, thyme as a predominant 'hop', and other long forgotten beers? They went down the sucker, better things came along.

That wasn't your point, but calling something what it is not, albeit under a trade name, for the exclusive undertaking of making a commercial profit from a legitimate enterprise doesn't faze me a bit. Nor is it wrong. It is merely an irritation. Words do lose meaning, but not to those who keep them alive. I'd argue that since 90% of Australians think a 'Bitter' is either a citrusy carbonated non-alcoholic beverage, or comes with 'VB' labelled on it, the words pertaining to the beer styles we love are already dead in this country. Sad but true.

Maybe we should just form a conglomerate and show them how its done. Like Barons have done, come to think of it.

- boingk

 

[peas_and_corn]

Well the Fog rating of most of my high school essays used to be off the chart! I've tried to improve, but those reading my posts might realize that it's been an uphill struggle for me. (imagine if I was TRYING to be 'foggy')

But here's the real problem, and it goes deeper than beer. When a word is mis-used to the extant that it can mean anything the user wants it to mean, then it ceases to actually be meaningful. At which point it ceases to be a useful word. You might as well say "ma mana ma manamana ma" for all the meaning the word now has. In effect, your vocabulary, indeed the entire language, is dying, one word at a time. This can't be a good thing.

Sure, words and languages evolve over time. But this doesn't mean a whole bunch of words should be applied randomly until they cease to actually carry any useful meaning.

Or do we allow this to progress to the point communication becomes:
"Then I was like, you know, yeah... and she goes, like, just, you know, and I was all like - whatever. I mean, dude, like, you know what I mean, yeah?"

Oh... wait a minute... <_<

(I can see the sarcasm this post is going to generate now.)

I JUST ACCIDENTALLY A WHOLE COKE BOTTLE GUYS <_<

 

[mattcarty]

:icon_offtopic:
Any country that allows a certain company to advertise itself as the fresh food people deserves all it gets with respect to false advertising. That is the problem in a nutshell plain and simple.
Cheers Altstart

true if they werent listening in on our conersation right now i would tell you all the truth about how macdonalds have covered up the ugly cow eyeball incident, along with the support of te bush/howard government in which the CIA were ordered to "dispose" of certain inside informants to keep the truth hidden under a see of lies, sheep of of you sheep bwah ha ha ha you fools cant you see they are controlling your minds through subliminal messaging in their advertising!

*men in white coats drag carty off whilst he fights to cover his head in tin foil to stop the mind reading satelites from learning any more of his secrets*


oh and i feel i need :icon_offtopic: :icon_offtopic: just to be safe

 

[clean brewer]

spit from pissed off teenagers who are sick of being abused whilst they earn sweet F-All to serve up barf burgers to lard arses.

Abused???? :huh: They do nothing in their jobs anyhow, lazy teenagers.. :angry:

:icon_offtopic:

 

[peas_and_corn]

'You get what you pay for' applies to wages as well.

 

[Frank]

'You get what you pay for' applies to wages as well.

Pay peanuts.... Get monkeys!!

 

[mattcarty]

i apologise to caleb for de-railing his thread into a pile of off topic goo

 

[TidalPete]

:icon_offtopic:
Any country that allows a certain company to advertise itself as the fresh food people deserves all it gets with respect to false advertising. That is the problem in a nutshell plain and simple.
Cheers Altstart

:icon_offtopic:

+1
Although my (Widowed) dad always told me we were going to run off with Barbara Hutton. :lol:

TP