Off Color Brewing collaborates with Miller High Life

It's an awesome idea. Brewers are brewers. I wish the execution was different though. A (probably very expensive) sour beer in a 750... It's essentially a "craft beer" remix of High Life while removing the approachability.

 

To add to the above:

I think it's misleading to mention this as an example of working together vs. a takeover. That conjures up an entirely different idea of "working together" than a simple collaboration beer.

 

Seems a smart move. Macro brewers see craft as serious competition, and they could not possibly buy them all out. They seem to be taking the approach of offering craft quality through collaboration, which saves them having to buy out craft breweries, and allows them to have short-term collaborations which they could extend or follow up with collaborations with other craft brewers.

 

Off color is one of my favorite breweries. My only complaint is that I probably won't be in Chicago when this drops

 

Sort of interesting...I hope it doesn't come in a clear bottle...

 

I don't know, "Miller High Life" is a brand - how do people collaborate with a brand (kinda like when so many people say "Budweiser did this..." when they mean Anheuser-Busch). Seems to me the folks at Off Color collaborated with the employees and the company MillerCoors.

Why else use "Light Stable Hop Extract"? Authenticity?

Then why the higher ABV? I also notice the label doesn't mention MHL's "Corn Syrup (Maltose)" adjunct. Obviously, neither the corn syrup nor LS hop extract were used in the original Miller High Life of the early 1900s.

High Life's clear bottle is probably the oldest original aspect of the beer currently sold under that name. Back in the early 1900-10s, when Schlitz was heavily advertising the advantages of the brown bottle to prevent beer from becoming lightstruck, crosstown rival Miller claimed their beer in the clear bottles were immune to sunlight because "ORDINARY DAYLIGHT DOES NOT AFFECT HIGH GRADE BEER."

 

Ah, I didn't even see that! I bet it is coming in a clear bottle then. I imagine it will look like a High Life 40 oz. bottle.

 

All of Off Colors' 750 mL offerings have been in dark bottles to date (AFAIK). I think it would be silly to put this one in a clear bottle but I could see Miller pushing for that.

 

if you ask me.. Miller High Life is not only a brand, but a successful brand at that

http://www.forbes.com/sites/jaysond...cteristics-of-successful-brands/#34086a804017

 

My guess is there must be an immense amount of pride over at Off Color in seeing the Miller High Life logo next to their grain mouse. Because if memory serves me, John has mentioned a love for drinking High Life on more than a few occasions. It certainly prevents him from dancing on the bar.

 

John has some company in that Shaun Hill of Hill Farmstead has made similar comments: “I actually find myself drinking Miller High Life or Budweiser because those beers are perfectly crafted.”

Cheers!

 

I don't know, I'd say a brand that's gone from selling over 23 million barrels a year in the early 1980s, #2 in the US (source- Sanford Bernstein) to 3.6 million last year (BMI), and fallen out of the Top 10, might be seen as not quite as successful as it could be. That's a bigger drop percentage-wise that even Budweiser (the classic example of the former flagship) has had in the same general period:

1988 - 50.6m bbl. / 2015 - 15m bbl.​

But, apparently, market share and sales aren't one of the 7 important aspects of a product's success according to Forbes.

 

Since it's Off Color and High Life, should make the bottle clear with dark spots!

 

Miller High Life is a brand unto itself. It is a recognizable for just as much as Bud is. While market share overall has decreased for big bear with resurgence of local and craft breweries in the past 30 years. People still know the brand. Additionally the Off Color collab will intrigue craft drinkers who started with MHL and MHL drinkers who want to randomly try a craft beer.

 

How are hop pellets made "light stable"? Is it anything any knowing person would want to ingest? ; )

That said, I'd try it, to see if Off Color managed to make a palatable MHL variant. (i.e., one that I could finish. ; ) )

 

Yeah, I get it and nowhere did I claim otherwise --- but how does a "brand" collaborate with human brewers? When a brewer from Off Color says, "Hey, let's use your light stable hop extract!" How does a brand respond? Doesn't the Miller High Life logo (or maybe the Girl in the Moon?) just stare straight ahead, uncommunicative?

THAT was the point of my post. OK, maybe nitpicking, probably a bit of ballbusting, maybe an insignificant point re: the wording of the article - but people really don't get that? As I said up there:

30 years ago (1986), AB had a 38.4% market share, today it's 45.8%.

Miller was at 20.5% and Coors was 8.2% in '86, and today the combined joint venture is 25.1% - so they are down 3.6%.

The biggest change affecting High Life is that all three of the former flagships, Budweiser, High Life and Coors Banquet, are now being outsold by their brewers' "light" brands. High Life has experienced an even worse record during the period because its share was further cannibalized by Miller Genuine Draft (which, for a time in the 1990s>, was actually outselling MHL) and Miller eventually moved the HL brand from the premium to the popular price segment in many markets.

 

I freaking love it!!! So much stuff in the modern beer world make with the pretense of being fun, outrageous and perverse, yet here is something that strikes me as genuinely embodying those things. Bring it on!

 

This sounds to me a little bit like all the black metal musicians whose favorite style is 80s pop (there is a ton of them)