Coffee-Beer from the Land of Sky Blue Waters
Pabst launches Hard Coffee, a caffeinated malt beverage.
Jul 18, 2019
MILWAUKEE—Pabst, the Milwaukee-based brewer, is rolling out coffee-flavored beer in several markets, according to Forbes.
PBR, as the 175-year-old brewery is known, is calling the new product Hard Coffee. It’s an 11-ounce malt beverage in a can, featuring 5% alcohol by volume and 30 milligrams of caffeine (the average cup of joe has about 95 milligrams) from real Arabica and Robusta coffee beans, plus milk and vanilla flavoring.
Hard Coffee, which received a 3.833 rating, out of five, on the beer-rating site Uptappd, will test the product in five states: Florida, Georgia, Maine, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.
Category blurring is a long-time trend in the beverage business. “The fact that many new products cut across traditional category lines and [that] companies are looking outside their traditional categories for growth,” is evident, said Stephen Rannekleiv, the global sector strategist for beverages at RaboResearch Food & Agribusiness.
Despite new innovations, Rannekleiv noted that sweet, caffeinated alcoholic beverages have had some challenges in the past. Four Loko, a malt beverage, ultimately had to remove the caffeine from its product because young drinkers overindulged and ended up in the hospital. However, the alcohol level of Four Loko is twice that of most new coffee-based drinks.
Merchandising
