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.

New taste to acquire

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

Re:New taste to acquire

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

Gratuitous Linkage

Nudge, nudge. Link, link [anheuser-busch.com].

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 [google.com] crowd.

Re:New taste to acquire

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

Beer, you say?

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...

Re:New taste to acquire

I always thought Hoegaarden sounded like an outdoor brothel.

MMmmmm Beer

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!

Buzz Beer

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

Re:Buzz Beer

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.

This is a good first step!

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!

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

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

This reminds me of both Simpsons and Futurama...

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...

MoonShot Beer! [moonshotbeer.com]

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 [castletown.com]

-T

Re:Not a new thing...

Also, Dark Star Espresso Stout [darkstarbrewing.co.uk]:

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 [camra.org.uk] in London and it was pretty good. (But there were hundreds of beers to try.)

Oh, Sweet Jesus with a Urinal Cake

As if beer doesn't make you pee enough!

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

Coffee Porter

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 [slashdot.org]

Bad combo

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

This doesn't compete with Smirnoff

This competes with Red Bull and Vodka and its derivitives.

Re:This doesn't compete with Smirnoff

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

B(E)?

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 [google.com] Olympus m:robe [google.com]

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 [google.com] sounds revolting.

Stimulants and depressants...yum!

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.

Ginko Biloba + Beer = ...

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:Americans and Beer

American microbreweries are great.

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

Re:College kids and yuppies

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.