So this came about last week but I wanted to read the insta-responses before posting my own. But I recommend also reading THIS and THAT to get a rounded picture.
If you base your beer buying choice based on the word America and all the emotions that it evokes. Well then foreign owned Budweiser may have you covered. They have applied for and received special dispensation for a summer season label that swaps out the Budweiser and replaces it with America. As well as whatever other flag draped patriotic words they could find.
And they are truly banking on people buying for that reason only. Maybe Americans will. It has been a weird and wild primary season and I suspect that many a political after-party will have buckets of “America” chilling on ice for the sheer easy-ness of the image that it will send. The flag lapel pin of beer, as it were.
I have my doubts though. Barring cans being emblazoned with first names or photos of Trump or Clinton, what percentage of consumer who already buys this type of beer is basing it on the label? Has there been a study done on it? My gut tells me that the average purchaser will pick on A) price or B) ingrained love/hatred of one brand over another. There might be a group of “undecideds” out there but of them, I again ask, what percentage will pass by reason A on the way to C) that label has America written on it.
I have grown accustomed to the avoidance of the beer inside the container but I also understand that mountains turning blue or a vortex neck might sway people for novelty in ways that a few word choices simply cannot. The cans will be made in far too great a quantity to be collectible though collecting is preferable to drinking them.
Or is this just some psychological experiment from the advertising world? The knowledge that they are a foreign owned company has probably seeped into their customer base and this may just be a way to stop the spread of the pernicious fact based rumor that they are run from Belgium/Brazil. What does it hurt them to slap a few patriotic words on a new label? Probably a drop in the marketing budget. All in exchange for forestalling their sales slide. Blatant misdirection has worked for the Tangerine Terror this political season (see Trump in his own version of 11 22 63). So, why not for America-wiser.
I fully expect to see a Point the Way USA IPA this summer in red, white and blue striped cans. Or perhaps a Patriot’s Peachy Pumpkin from Elysian.
I also fully expect craft brewers to answer this call with patriotic and hoppy puns combined.