Third Shift Amber Lager: Coors in Disguise

[DonRocks]

The last time this happened to me was many years ago with IceHouse.

I was at a 7-11, and saw something that looked like it might pass for a fake microbrew.

IceHouse is swill, and Third Shift isn't far from it - don't be fooled by the label.

The label makes no mention of Coors. "Third Shift Band of Brewers," it says. "Amber Lager, Gold Medal Award Winner [what the hell does this mean, anyway?], "Gold Medal Winning Beer Brewed By A Band Of Brewers Whose Passion For Brewing Doesn't Stop When The Day Shift Is Over."

Bullshit.

Here's what The Beer Advocate has to say about this terribly bland beer.

[treznor]

Friend of mine received a Third Shift Brewery beer opener/pocket watch combo in the mail recently and was pretty impressed all around (what can I say? He's Scottish, he's impressed with anything free). Until, that is, we looked up who the hell Third Shift Brewery is and discovered that its just the 'craft brew' label for Coors. He no longer thought his freebie in the mail was quite so cool...

[TedE]

There are a few more new names that have popped up in the beer aisle recently that I just assume are macros in disguise. Hint: if it goes on sale for $5-6 at Safeway it's probably from BudMillerCoors. The big boys are bound to get sneakier with this kind of thing, but right now I think they are fairly easy to spot.

[SeanMike]

Last night I saw it on tap, and figured "what the hell". I ordered a glass of it.

Basically: it's not bad. It's not good, either. It's just...eh.

I had no problems drinking it, but there are a bazillion more interesting beers out there. If it was similarly priced to Coors, I'd drink it a lot more often -- I find Coors Lite to be overly viscuous to me. (On Sunday Fundays a few of my friends prefer Coors Lite. My cheap beer of choice is Miller Lite.)

[johnb]

There are a few more new names that have popped up in the beer aisle recently that I just assume are macros in disguise. Hint: if it goes on sale for $5-6 at Safeway it's probably from BudMillerCoors. The big boys are bound to get sneakier with this kind of thing, but right now I think they are fairly easy to spot.

Anheiser Busch or whatever it's called these days used to identify itself -- I recall having finding the notation "Brewed by the Specialty Brewing Division of AB" right there on the label of some ersatz craft brew. Whether they still do that I have no idea.

On a related point, I discovered lately that Red Stripe is now being brewed, for our drinking pleasure, in Latrobe, Penn. But I can't really blame D&G for that one -- it had to be tiresome, not to mention expensive, to haul all that grain down to Kingston and then haul the bottled beer back.

[TedE]

Anheiser Busch or whatever it's called these days used to identify itself -- I recall having finding the notation "Brewed by the Specialty Brewing Division of AB" right there on the label of some ersatz craft brew. Whether they still do that I have no idea.

Batch 19 Lager was the one I couldn't recall from Safeway (MillerCoors product)

Like I said above, I think they are getting sneakier about it. SAB has created an entire separate division to handle their "craft" offerings (whether these are new products or many of the imports they control). It's getting a LOT harder, the parent company doesn't appear anywhere on the label.. InBev has taken control of some cherished micros and imports. Some of them haven't seen much reduction in quality (Goose Island still produces some outstanding beers under their Barrel Aged series). Others? Who knows.

I stopped drinking Dominion when InBev shut down the NoVA facility and moved it to Delaware, but that was a personal choice after losing a solid local offering. And ultimately I think that's what a lot of these choices will come down to. I try not to support them with sales due to the immense pressure from the Big Three to control as much market share as they can. They were late to the craft beer scene and are desperately trying to play catch up. That means exerting their influence on distributors to essentially drop competition. This is not subtle stuff either, Sam Adams won a lawsuit in the 90s after Bud blatantly tried to shut them out of the major distributors. It's about as anti-competitive as you can get. I'm sure any DR member who has opened a bar or restaurant can attest to the pressure they get for somebody to control their taps ("Here, we'll install this expensive tap system on the house, just agree to carry XYZ beers of our choosing.")

On a related note, Blue Moon was a respectable Belgian wheat clone when it first came out (aside from their inane insistence to market it with an orange slice on the rim ...), I will still occasionally get one on a hot day at Nats Park. Holy cow, I hadn't checked in on what they had been up to lately! Peanut Butter beer? It appears that the product is basically one of the "malternative" brews like Twisted Tea at this point. Gah!

[deangold]

At the Brewers Ball, I tasted Sam Adam's entry into the Hard Cider market. It's called Angry Orchard. Without knowing the Sam Adams connection I took a taste and almost did an involuntary spit take. But haveing kept squid fermented int eh smog of LA under a layer of miso atop a downtown shopping center once, this was easy to keep in my mouth. Not pleasant, but easy.

All the guy repping it cold talk about was the sales numbers on cider growth. At least he was honest because if he had to talk about his cider, he would have has to say "flavorless swill tasting of being artificially carbonated and thoroughly insipid bordering on downright nasty"

I can see why the orchard is so angry: its poor defenseless apples turned into this swill.

[JPW]

At the Brewers Ball, I tasted Sam Adam's entry into the Hard Cider market. It's called Angry Orchard. Without knowing the Sam Adams connection I took a taste and almost did an involuntary spit take. But haveing kept squid fermented int eh smog of LA under a layer of miso atop a downtown shopping center once, this was easy to keep in my mouth. Not pleasant, but easy.

All the guy repping it cold talk about was the sales numbers on cider growth. At least he was honest because if he had to talk about his cider, he would have has to say "flavorless swill tasting of being artificially carbonated and thoroughly insipid bordering on downright nasty"

I can see why the orchard is so angry: its poor defenseless apples turned into this swill.

Had the exact same reaction. Although I tasted a second bottle of the six that I bought to double check. The other 4 have been sitting in the beer fridge for a while now.

[TedE]

Double Take Amber Ale is the other one I noticed on the shelves in Safeway for a curiously low price. The rabbit hole is deep with this one. The brand is owned by something called World Brews which is in turn owned by an entity called The Winery Exchange, Inc.:

World Brews, a subsidiary of Winery Exchange, is a private label beer
supplier for premium quality beers from the USA, Latin America, and
Holland.

World Brews manages all aspects of the beer business, including
brewing, brand development, production, distribution, and retail
promotion.

Beers are brewed at / by another brewery.

(that's from Beer Advocate)

It also seems to be linked to Hook and Ladder Brewing, and actual local brewery headquartered in Silver Spring (whose beers are blah at best)! Macro or micro? Or some weird contract brewing/marketing thing like FX Matt/Saranac Brewing who contracts brews a LOT of brand names people might not be aware of (and even brews the Kirkland Signature line for Costco).