Beer brouhaha
Richard Fennell is fond of the occasional can of Tuborg lager, which comes from Denmark. Or at least it used to. He bought a couple of cans in his local Tesco recently and was having a drink with his Danish girlfriend when they noticed something wasn’t quite right with their beer. The girlfriend - using a word that Pricewatch is going to adopt immediately - complained that the beer had been “bewatered” or diluted. “When disposing of my can in the recycle bin I noticed the alcohol content had been reduced, but the price had not,” writes Fennell. “On further investigation I saw that it was brewed in Ireland,” he continues.
He rummaged in his recycle bin and found an old Tuborg can which had a higher alcohol content and had been brewed and canned in the Carlsberg brewery in Denmark. The weaker Irish can and the stronger Danish version are identical in colour and shape, as is the cardboard packaging. Annoyed, Fennell contacted Tesco to complain as he was paying the same amount for an “inferior imitation beer”.
“Needless to say,” he writes, “my first letter has not been replied to and neither has my second one.” He wants to know how could beer brewed and canned in Denmark with an alcohol content of 4.2 per cent be the same price as an inferior imitation brewed in Ireland with an alcohol content of 4 per cent? He also asks how many big businesses are involved in deceiving the consumer with “lookalike” products? While answering the second question might be difficult, we did try to find out when the “bewatered” Tuborg started selling in Ireland and why the alcohol by volume (ABV) had fallen slightly. We called five randomly selected off-licences, all of whom expressed surprise that the alcohol content of the beer had been reduced. They all confirmed that the price of the beer had not fallen in their shops.
Tuborg, like its sister beer Carlsberg, is now brewed in St James’s Gate by Diageo, so we contacted that company to find out when it had started brewing Tuborg and why its alcohol content had fallen but its price had not. The company said that it had no control over the prices individual retailers charged for the product but pointed out that variations in the ABV of the same beers across the world was not uncommon.
Pringles have pulled a similar stunt. What used to be a 200 gram can of Pringles Sour Cream and Onion is now a 170 gram can. Note that the can is the same size and looks virtually identical to the 200 gram can so most people wouldn’t notice the difference. You do however notice that there is a big gap between the top of the Pringles inside and the top of the can. Perhaps their advertising slogan should be ‘Pringles, same price, now with less!’
Comment by Paul Smyth | October 30, 2007 at 10:34 amThis beer scam has been going on for donkey’s years. We’ve all seen the ads extolling the beechwood aging and rocky mountain deliciousness of premium foreign brands from Holland, Denmark, America and Australia. But all those lagers we’re so familiar with are in fact brewed under licence here in Ireland. What we’re really getting is a kind of globalised, tasteless swill that no self-respecting Dane or Dutchman would touch with a bargepole. What I can’t understand is why the advertising standards crowd aren’t on to the brewing majors. Clearly if a lager purporting to emanate from say…Holland, comes from Cork, then isn’t that a deception? My advice to Conor and all other beer drinkers is to be more discerning, stop drinking mass-produced rubbish and seek out the good stuff now being stocked by many of our more imaginative independent off-licences.
Comment by Philip Donnelly | November 2, 2007 at 2:04 pmNot that OUR breweries would ever do such a thing, of course!!!
Yet the Guinness brewed in Nigeria is about 7% alcohol (if I recall aright), about half as strong again as what they brew here.
Breweries justify such changes as adapting the product to suit the local market - in this case the drinking culture. Some countries don’t swill the stuff by the gallon like we do, so prefer a stronger beer. If we got our hands on such stuff, we’d all end up comatose. Well, that’s the argument!
Y’see they aren’t ripping us off, they’re saving us from ourselves! (Though if that’s so, why don’t they stop brewing altogether, one might ask?)
The reality is they’re selling a brand, not a beer. If they thought it would sell in Saudi Arabia at 0% alcohol, they’d brew some. If they thought they’d sell more to women if they’d dyed it pink, they would.
Comment by Duncan Martin | November 15, 2007 at 4:30 pm