A Few Comments About White Claw
Sep. 10th, 2019 09:26 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
walkitoutLook, maybe I will get lucky here, and I will not ramble on endlessly!
I had never heard about White Claw until I started seeing articles about it in Reputable Periodicals. It is the most successful in a category called “hard seltzer”, in turn, an artifact of the way states tax fermented beverages such as beer and wine differently from distilled beverages. In much the same way that Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Zima were cocktail-like malternatives, White Claw is a hard seltzer.
They apparently got the flavor notes as gone as possible by using cane sugar for the fermentation base. The packaging recalls the white on white minimalist decorating scheme of the last decade-ish. The calories look like 100 for the regular stuff, and there is a line of unsweetened that is 70. The flavors are things like black cherry, a la La Croix. Basically, the generation of women that raised their kids to eat snack packs, live in white on white decorated houses, and drink unsweetened but flavored seltzer instead of sodas has produced a generation of college kiddies who drink White Claw. Obviously, someone much more clever than me saw this coming and created White Claw for their I Want to Drink 6-12 of something over the course of a long summer party and not be gassy or grossed out by the flavor needs.
There are memes. I did not notice any of them. I am super happy if you enjoyed your White Claw memes and proud of you if you contributed cleverly and never need to see them personally. (ETA: I specifically requested White Claw humor from Jon Konrath and he turned me down flat. I am devastated and may never recover.)
Here is what I really wanted to say: one of the articles I read quoted someone as saying they really did not want to be a beer snob. This was in the context of a discussion of ironic consumption. I do not know what to do with that negative desire (to NOT be a beer snob). I never know what to do with ironic consumption. I just want to put it out there, that Peak Beer is probably in the rear view mirror, when the young people actively are avoiding the beer, in part, because of the cognitive load of drinking beer. The _cognitive_ load.
Just saying.
Meanwhile, in the AO household, I am looking forward to a phone call in a couple months from Craft Cellar asking me if I want the premium advent beer box again. While R. has taken to visiting tap rooms and bringing home cans of local, artisanal, list of hops beers. Which are now a daily part of our drinking life, and a small glass poured from his can is the pre-drink before I have my evening cocktail. We do have a box of Harpoon downstairs, because I use it to make waffles.
Capitalism is a beautiful thing.
I had never heard about White Claw until I started seeing articles about it in Reputable Periodicals. It is the most successful in a category called “hard seltzer”, in turn, an artifact of the way states tax fermented beverages such as beer and wine differently from distilled beverages. In much the same way that Mike’s Hard Lemonade and Zima were cocktail-like malternatives, White Claw is a hard seltzer.
They apparently got the flavor notes as gone as possible by using cane sugar for the fermentation base. The packaging recalls the white on white minimalist decorating scheme of the last decade-ish. The calories look like 100 for the regular stuff, and there is a line of unsweetened that is 70. The flavors are things like black cherry, a la La Croix. Basically, the generation of women that raised their kids to eat snack packs, live in white on white decorated houses, and drink unsweetened but flavored seltzer instead of sodas has produced a generation of college kiddies who drink White Claw. Obviously, someone much more clever than me saw this coming and created White Claw for their I Want to Drink 6-12 of something over the course of a long summer party and not be gassy or grossed out by the flavor needs.
There are memes. I did not notice any of them. I am super happy if you enjoyed your White Claw memes and proud of you if you contributed cleverly and never need to see them personally. (ETA: I specifically requested White Claw humor from Jon Konrath and he turned me down flat. I am devastated and may never recover.)
Here is what I really wanted to say: one of the articles I read quoted someone as saying they really did not want to be a beer snob. This was in the context of a discussion of ironic consumption. I do not know what to do with that negative desire (to NOT be a beer snob). I never know what to do with ironic consumption. I just want to put it out there, that Peak Beer is probably in the rear view mirror, when the young people actively are avoiding the beer, in part, because of the cognitive load of drinking beer. The _cognitive_ load.
Just saying.
Meanwhile, in the AO household, I am looking forward to a phone call in a couple months from Craft Cellar asking me if I want the premium advent beer box again. While R. has taken to visiting tap rooms and bringing home cans of local, artisanal, list of hops beers. Which are now a daily part of our drinking life, and a small glass poured from his can is the pre-drink before I have my evening cocktail. We do have a box of Harpoon downstairs, because I use it to make waffles.
Capitalism is a beautiful thing.