According to an article in today’s Montreal Gazette, Canadians are increasingly looking to buy better tasting beer. And like their American cousins, the big Canadian breweries are flooding the market with faux or stealth microbrews in order to compete with craft brewers. With these faux craft beers, they’re trying to fool customers into thinking they’re getting just want they want, a beer that’s been hand-crafted to taste great.
Labatt has a line called Alexander Keith, named for an early brewer in Nova Scotia. MolsonCoors, likewise, has Rickard’s family of brands. Both Rickard’s and Keith’s are listed on their respective company websites and acknowledged as their brands. Alexander Keith’s own website does disclose that it’s a Labatt brand, but only in the legal stuff like “terms of use.” They certainly don’t go out of their way to associate themselves with the parent company.
An interesting parallel, though the article goes on to discuss tarrifs between provinces and what their removal will mean for small players. I don.t know enough about the market to form an opinion, but it’s an interesting read.
Alexander Keith’s IPA, owned by Labatt; and Rickard’s Red, owned by MolsonCoors.
If you enjoyed this post or the Bulletin generally, please consider buying me a pint
Click on the Links Below to Support the Beer Bulletin |
[powered by WordPress.]
For more dates, visit the Brookston Almanac
For additional dates and more info, visit the |
For additional dates and more info, visit the |
From Topix, place your cursor over the headlines to link to the full story
For more beer quotes, visit the Beer Quotes Page.
Sell or Serve Beer? Become a Certified Cicerone |
If you'd like to submit a beer sample, book or other beer-related product for possible review either here on the Bulletin and/or any of the publications that I write for, please send me an e-mail and I'll send details. Thanks.
Sippin' on the Dock of the Bay
National Homebrewers Conference
June 18-20, 2009
Oakland, (yes, Oakland), California
January 17th, 2007 at 6:26 am
Hi from Canada. As a expat Nova Scotian, I can confirm that Keith’s is a continuous brand that has existed since 1830s though with many blandifying tweeks of the recipe. It is true that Labatt bought it decades ago along with the Olands portfolio, but Olands only acquired Keiths a few decades before that. The lack of association is as much a legacy of its Nova Scotian background as much as or more than being a stealth craft brand. Nova Scotians are very loyal to Keiths - due in large part to ads that leverage the independence of NS politically - even if it is basically macro-pap. If it were sold as a Labatt product that would smack of Ontarianism to the core market at home and to Nova Scotians elsewhere in Canada which would undermine sales. It may be sold as a premium product but more to take advantage of the cultural opportunity than anything to do with craft beer.
January 20th, 2007 at 9:29 am
Alan’s comments are interesting. I was just going to write that this is further damning evidence that macrobrewers don’t seem to be proud of making good beer for a chance, thus their reluctance of calling it “Labatt’s IPA” or whatever. You’d think that stealth craft brands would backfire big-time once the public catches onto the deception, but maybe regional loyalties supercede that theory as Alan states. It’s sad that Keith’s wasn’t picked up by a Nova Scotia microbrewer or brewpub to maintain the legacy on home turf. And it’s sad that politics might prevent good beer from being made or distributed in certain regions. All this is further reason to only drink local microbrews.
January 20th, 2007 at 10:39 am
As a beer lover in Canada, I have to exception to the use of the phrase “better tasting beer” in reference to Keith’s and Rickard’s. Or specifically, the flagship beers in each of those brands. Keith’s IPA may have been a proper IPA back in the 1800s when Mr. Keith first brewed it, but it’s been little more than fizzy yellow macro swill for as long as I can remember - there is some question if it’s even an Ale anymore, let alone an India Pale Ale. And it’s a poorly guarded secret that Rickard’s Red is simply one of Molson’s standard high-gravity brewed beers with some colour added.
Also, these are not recently created attempts to jump on to the craft/micro brandwagon. As previously noted, Keith’s was a real brewery with a rich history before Oland/Labatt took over, and Rickard’s has existed as a Molson brand for 20 years or more. The only reason this is a story now is because recent tax and tariff changes mean that it will be cheaper for Labatt and Molson to sell these beers in Quebec, so the small Quebec breweries are worried that the big guys will take the same approach that they’ve been using for years in other provinces and try to market these brands as premium/craft beers.
January 22nd, 2007 at 2:13 pm
Just following up to say that the opening paragraph reads much better now - and renders most of my previous comment nonsensical. :)