On Thursday Lion Nathan released their new summer beer, XXXX Bright Summer Lager. I'm late putting this up - it's taken me a while to work out how to approach it. I interviewed the brewers and marketer. I tried it. I meditated on it and engaged in all sorts of abstractions about the true nature of beer. I even wrote and deleted more than 2000 words about it for this post. But I came to realise that all you need to know about it has already been said by UK writer Tim Webb in an article he wrote in Beer Advocate magazine about his first interview with a major brewer:
My first interviewee, some 20 years ago, deserved my question,"if you are so proud of your brewing credentials, why do you produce all this characterless piss?"And I deserved the answer--"Because my customers prefer me to do so."