Blogger Does It's Best To Be A PIMA...

That's Pain In My Ass people...

So this thing just deleted this ridiculously long post that I had written about what was going on with work, and how excited I was. I can hear the sighs of relief already about the absence of my ridiculously long post. So I guess I will do my best to retype it as close as possible to the original.

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So at work today we had another meeting about "new products." I guess with the summer drinking season right around the corner, everyone wants to rush off to market with their latest and greatest idea to carve out a larger piece of the beer market pie (chart). We really do show the market shares as pie charts on our Power Point (cha-ching, Microsoft royalties... J/K), and one of the guys at one point made the comment "so how do we carve ourselves off a larger piece of that pie? We all laughed, and it's been the corny joke of the meetings since. But I digress...

Of course everyone has what they thought are some great ideas for the summer, and while I can't drop names, for fear of being fired for releasing trade secrets, there are some winners and losers in the products we previewed today.

New "Premium Malt Beverages": (For God Sakes, BITCH BEERS)
-So there are so many of these that I can't even remember them all. Between us and competitors there are going to be Teas, Energy Beers, new fruit flavors, and Light versions of everything. We did see a ton of commercials, and my favorite has got to be THIS one. I don't know why, but ridiculously white guys rapping about being ridiculously stuck up is just hilarious to me.

Summer Seasonals:
-Yes, it's that time of year again, and so the lighter easy drinking beers flood the shelf. EVERYONE and their mother is producing a summer seasonal this year, and sadly enough, they all have a really similar flavor profile. I've always been partial to the Sam Adams Summer Ale (which remains unchanged in the bottle, but the packaging is different), but there are some beers that may make it into my fridge this summer, and a couple that I may even be willing to pay for (hey, I'm sure you get something free at work, I don't take pens home, I take beer)...

Hops:
-2007 may be the year of the Hop Bud... Some breweries are reversing trends and releasing heavily hopped beers this summer, in lieu of a seasonal. These are going to be year round brews that just happen to coincide with the summer seasonal release. In the market, this is intended to capture a percentage of the people trying new summer beers, and get them into a beer that will be available year round. There are four or five ales coming to market that are beyond IPAs in the hop category, and the darkest one is a Red Ale, which is also one of the highest in IBUs (the measurement of bitterness).

Insanely Expensive Beer:
-So I am drinking this bottle of beer. ONE BOTTLE mind you... I am halfway through it while listening to the brewer, and I am thinking that this stuff sounds labor intensive to make, and the ingrediants are quite pricey when added up, but it's delicious. Then we get to the numbers. $14.00 a bottle. FOURTEEN U.S. DOLLARS A BOTTLE... FOR A BOTTLE OF BEER... I guess that the logic of "you only have to sell a few if they're fucking expensive" might have a chance to pay off here.

Fruit Accented Beers:
-Not in any way "fruity" beers, these just have various fruits used during the brewing process that manage to infuse just the slightest bit of flavor into the beer. Really a subtle and refreshing hint of flavor, and not a punch in the tongue. Everything and anything has been used, but my personal "neato" beers had; Pomegranate, Blueberry, Orange Zest, Lemon Zest, and Raspberry. These should all end up as year round brews, but some may end up in the seasonal category if demand slumps during the fall and winter.

So that was my afternoon. From eleven AM to seven PM we just drank, ate (lunch was a really mediocre chicken marsala dish, I was not impressed by the caterer), talked, drank some more, ate (dinner was herb crusted prime rib and a saffron infused rice pilaf, caterer is back in my good graces), talked for an hour about numbers, and then had a neat beer with desert (hint, the blueberry beer was here, and it was SO PERFECTLY MATCHED with the desert). I stayed in the office late trying to get ahead at work because tomorrow looks to be a nightmare...

Friday is going to be a good one though, and then this weekend I get to do a lot of housework. As much as this sounds not fun at all, I am looking forward to it. I have no idea as to why.

Stormin Out...



OK, so PS, South Park was ridiculously funny tonight.