E-Malt.com News article: Japan: The two largest brewers preparing for summer heat

Japan's notorious summer heat is on its way, and beer giants Kirin Brewery Co. and Asahi Breweries Ltd. are gearing up to make the sweaty season a momentous battle of cool beer, The Mainichi Daily News reported on May, 25.

Asahi had the head start in the sub-zero beer brouhaha when it began offering freezing Asahi Super Dry beer through restaurants in summer 2010, and will be increasing the number of outlets this year. Kirin will get into the act this year, offering a technique to make mugs of its Ichiban Shibori brand into -5 degree Celsius beer slushies with frozen foam heads.

Both companies are surely hoping to be crowned king of cool this summer, but are also hoping the frozen beer push will revive lagging beer sales.

Like Asahi's offering, Kirin's beer slushies will be available in restaurants and bars, and the firm began a broad deployment of the machines that make them on May 17. The ice granules in the slushy are very fine, and mixed with the air also blended into the beer, the beverage goes down very smooth and easy. What's more, the frozen head acts as a kind of lid, keeping the beer icy for about 30 minutes, and the company eventually plans to have 1,000 special foam cap-making servers nationwide.

Kirin began a test run of the technique in March this year, providing one of the slushy machines to a restaurant in Hanshin Koshien Stadium, home of the Hanshin Tigers baseball team. March to mid-May beer sales at the eatery apparently doubled from the same period last year.

Asahi, meanwhile, will continue offering "Extra Gold" Super Dry -- the firm's flagship beer served at -2 to 0 degrees -- through restaurants.

"Beer served at below freezing has a sharp, dry taste and makes for a more satisfying drink," the company's public relations department says. By the end of April this year, Asahi had 1,965 Extra Gold servers across Japan, and the company is aiming to bump that to 3,000 by the end of the year.

Furthermore, "Extra Gold Bars" open from May through September will appear in business districts in Tokyo, Osaka, Nagoya and Fukuoka. Asahi opened three such bars last year, which saw a total of more than 130,000 customers cross their thresholds. This year, too, the bars are already welcoming long lines of office workers looking for a cold one on the way home. With new tables that help keep the beers on them frigid, Asahi expects about 150,000 patrons this summer.

Pressured by so-called "third-category" beer-like drinks - which are cheaper than the genuine article - beer shipments dropped 4.1 percent in 2011 from the year before to 2.79 million kiloliters - less than 40 percent of the 1994 peak in beer consumption.

According to an Asahi Breweries survey, some 60 percent of beer drinkers in their 20s said that suds served at 0 degrees tasted better than the same drink served at 10 degrees. Meanwhile, less than half of respondents in older age brackets agreed, and the firm hopes its sub-zero suds PR campaign will help boost beer sales among younger consumers, who have led the recent flight from the eternal tall, cold one.


25 May, 2012