ERROL PARKER | Editor-at-large | Contact
A young man who must’ve done something bad on the grog this silly season has taken it upon himself to be the designated driver in February, forcing a move from regular beer to beer-flavoured water.
City worker Sam Rolland has noticed his sleep is better, general anxiety is lower and the deathly mid-afternoon malaise has all but left him. One unexpected facet of his month-long sobriety has been, he says, is that he’s still spending a lot of money at the pub.
He’s not feeding Pelican Pete or rubbing the screen to help Findo find the Gold. He’s enjoying stubbie after stubbie of a Friday afternoon, of a beer with no alcohol in it but for some reason, still costs the same as a beer beer.
“It’s got me fucked,” he said.
“They don’t pay any excise, which is essentially 50pc of what makes up the cost of a schooner, and it still costs the same as a Betoota Bitter or Export. It’s even more expensive than a Gold! You know, when he boys and I head to the pub at the end of a work week, I’m paying $11 a bottle for this cat piss. You know, you have half a dozen of them and a few honks on your mate’s vape. You’ve spent near $60 to be full of water, pissing on people’s front gardens every 500m, and high on nicotine. It’s ridiculous.”
One of the big wigs down at Betoota United Breweries spoke candidly to The Advocate about their zero-alcohol varieties and explained there’s much more to it than just brewing beer with no alcohol in it.
“We have two varieties of zero alcohol beer. There’s the Betoota Poooph XPA and the Lympwryst Lager (named for the first person to bring grape vines to the Diamantina) and they’ve proven to be some of our most valuable, uh, popular products,” said chief brewer Fraser Brahman.
“It’s actually quite labour-intensive to create a zero-alcohol product that still has that great, satisfying taste of a real beer. That’s where the lack of a price difference comes from. It still does have an insane margin, though. I’m not going to bullshit a bullshitter.”
More to come.
