{"id":104,"date":"2016-08-15T09:06:03","date_gmt":"2016-08-14T23:36:03","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/?p=104"},"modified":"2016-08-15T09:06:03","modified_gmt":"2016-08-14T23:36:03","slug":"christmas-beers-and-rtds","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/?p=104","title":{"rendered":"Christmas Beers and RTD’s"},"content":{"rendered":"

Beer Radar for TWTW Friday 16th<\/sup> Dec 2011<\/p>\n

By John Kr\u00fcger<\/p>\n

I get a good deal of beverage industry info from the people behind the registers at bottle shops. The bloke in my local drive through is a top bloke. He rides his pushbike past my house every day on the way to the pub. Looks like an ex local footy legend who\u2019s now stacking kegs at 9am every morning. I asked him, what\u2019s this year\u2019s fad leading up to Christmas? We peered at each other through a jungle of life size cardboard cut-outs and novelty plastic drink cans. \u201cLook at all the bloody cider. First we had to get more fridges for the kids drinks\u201d he points to two doors of RTD\u2019s \u201c\u2026and all the wine of course, now we\u2019ve got to work out what\u2019s going so we can fit all this cider in! My grandfather would be rolling in his bloody grave.\u201d He said, shaking his head in utter disgust. I wasn\u2019t sure how the connection to his grandfather had popped up there but I left it unquestioned anyway.<\/p>\n

I looked through about twenty bottles of Champagne and local bubbles until I could find something in my price range that wasn\u2019t flavoured with fruits, then moved on to another major bottle shop around the corner. The mature woman behind the counter that I always say hello to just shook her head at all the new beers that I regularly comb the fridges for. \u201cI dunno why we get all of those. We don\u2019t need three quarters of all of those beers. Just VB and what\u2019s it called? \u2026..West End Draught! That\u2019s all we sell. We sell pallets of those and only one or two bottles of those other beers. They\u2019re a waste of time and space.\u201d I wasn\u2019t going to get into tastes and percentages with her but it\u2019s an insight into what\u2019s really popular. Depressing maybe, but no big surprises.<\/p>\n

So Cider is the next big thing? Everyone\u2019s crazy about Perry? Maybe that\u2019s already pass\u00e9 for the hipsters. We had a gorgeous 20 year old woman, the girlfriend of my brother-in-law, come over with him for lunch. She wasn\u2019t real keen when offered Champagne, white wine, red wine, beer, spirits\u2026 but as the last option, I offered her a ginger beer. She paused. I said it\u2019s alcoholic. She nodded and asked to see it. I pulled out a bottle of Crabbie\u2019s and she was squealed with delight. I\u2019d tried a bottle a few days before and it was sickly sweet with an ingredients list longer than a donkeys doodle. Crabbie\u2019s is invading the bottle shops like you wouldn\u2019t believe. It\u2019s already in at least one major chain near me. The Poms are said to be selling 2.5mil cases a year, 80,000 bottles consumed a day. With the European summer well and truly over, the summer drinks and associated marketing are washing up on our shores. Expect quite a few ginger-beer cocktails to resurface in the media. If you\u2019re the socialble type you\u2019ll probably find a diverse range of beverages to appear in your fridge this Christmas. When I was 18 years old, we had a carton of West End, a bottle of Johnnie Walker Black and a bottle of Moselle every year for Christmas. I suggest installing a six-pack or two of local craft beer in your fridge and securing the shelf space first.<\/p>\n

Cheers!<\/p>\n

Keep an eye out for the bumper booze holiday guide edition of Beer Radar<\/em> in WBM<\/em> coming soon.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Beer Radar for TWTW Friday 16th Dec 2011 By John Kr\u00fcger I get a good deal of beverage industry info from the people behind the registers at bottle shops. The bloke in my local drive through is a top bloke. He rides his pushbike past my house every day on the way to the pub. … Continue reading Christmas Beers and RTD’s<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-104","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-beer","category-beer-retail"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=104"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":105,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/104\/revisions\/105"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=104"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=104"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beerradar.com.au\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=104"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}