According to the Daily Mainichi Kirin Breweries has unveiled a new beer with a lucky seven percent alcohol content. Called “Strong Seven,” the beer will sell for around 141 yen ($1.28) for a 350ml can, and 197 yen ($1.80) for a 500ml can.
Are those prices correct?!
From the story:
Over the past few years demand has been increasing for light-tasting beer with low alcohol content, but Kirin decided to develop a new genre targeting male beer drinkers aged from their 30s to 50s.
In Korea we’ve had an entry into this market for about a year — the lovely, Cass Red, which is a pale lager with…not a seven percent alcohol content, but 6.9%. That’s right, 69. Although I have to admit, drinking Cass Red doesn’t usually have me thinking of partaking in a 69. It has me thinking of bad tasting beer.
Still, once in a while it’s just a Cass Red kind of night.
8 responses so far ↓
1 baekgom84 // Aug 29, 2008 at 11:44 am
A German friend of mine told me that one particular brand of beer there sells bottles for about 50c. I’m still waiting for one of the Korean breweries to adopt this policy, though I shudder to think what it would taste like.
Haven’t had Cass Red, but I did try Cass Lemon, and was unimpressed. I find Cass to be the worst-tasting beer out of the lot. It’s also been reponsible for the worst hangovers I’ve had here as well. Hite is definitely the way to go, though I’m not opposed to OB.
2 simon // Aug 29, 2008 at 12:09 pm
The prices are probably because the new “beer” doesn’t actually qualify as beer under law, so they’re exempt from certain taxes lowering the price. There’s actually two categories of pseudo-beer here in Japan, one’s a rank below regular beer and called “happoshu”, the other one is another rank below that and it’s literally called the “third beer”. But both kinds taste pretty bad, and I’m sure this 7%er is the same, except it’ll get you wasted faster! (The 7% chuhai - a premixed shoch drink - must be selling well if they’re extending the “strong” line.)
Anyways I remember drinking Labatt Ice XXX or something that was about 7%, stronger than their regular Ice, back in Canada. Cheapest beer-like liquid had to be malt liquor though, too many bad hangovers from the OE back when I was a poor student
3 Korea Beat // Aug 29, 2008 at 12:42 pm
It’s a shame that the market for beer in Korea and Japan seems to be so immature. I mean these are two of the richest countries in the world and yet the consumer is hard-pressed to find any domestic beer which isn’t swill. In America cheap lagers are still the best sellers, but there’s plenty of good stuff to be found as well, in many different varieties.
4 Shinsano // Aug 29, 2008 at 12:50 pm
I saw Cass Lemon the other day. That’s got to be terrible.
The beer culture is surprising in East Asia…as far as I know it’s a little better in Japan, but it shocks me that no prominent secondary brews have popped up in Korea. You can buy what you need to make beer at home, but the so-called “house beer” places are even terrible. You’d think with he emergence of a wine culture that Koreans would get into some fine beers.
Then again, Soju is the most popular drink and it’s about as unrefined as it gets.
5 simon // Aug 29, 2008 at 2:15 pm
Actually, there’s good beer in Japan. Among the major breweries, Yebisu is the best, and it actually passes muster in the German beer test. And there are myriads of microbreweries around.
6 simon // Aug 29, 2008 at 2:17 pm
But yeah, the market is dilluted because there are so many different kinds of alcohol being consumed, with the main ones being beer, wine, nihonshu (sake), shochu, and of course the hard liquors.
7 Korea Beat // Aug 29, 2008 at 11:18 pm
I’m not saying there’s no good beer in Japan, it’s just not easy to find. Asahi and Yebisu are fine but they’re still just decent lagers. You can go out to a microbrewery, sure… if you live in a Osaka or Tokyo… but at the supermarket or liquor store? I’m living in a nowhere housing development near Indianapolis and the selection here blows away anything I’ve seen in Japan.
8 baekgom84 // Aug 30, 2008 at 3:58 pm
I think you’re onto something, Simon, at least where Korea is concerned: there are so many alternatives to beer here that there doesn’t seem to be a lot of demand for really good beer here. Why would Koreans go out of their way to look for really good beer when they can easily grab some makgeolli, dongdongju, bokbunja, daetongsul (great stuff), maehwasu, baekseju… (you get the idea). And soju looms as such a large presence in the national drinking psyche that drinking beer is almost relegated to ’special occasion’ status.
I’m curious about the drinking culture in Japan. When a Japanese person suggests ‘let’s go out drinking’, what can you expect? In Korea, that almost inevitably means soju and often a serving of samgyupsal. I drink far more beer when I’m out with other foreigners than I do with Koreans.
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