So what’s the deal with Fosters beer? The ads say it’s Australian for beer but that’s crap. I rated it about 6 years ago and the can I bought in Milwaukee said it was a product of Canada. But tonight my neighbor gave me a can of it that said it was either brewed in Texas or New York.
My question has nothing to do with brewing under licensing, or whether you like/dislike this swill.
It has to do with why they would brew it under licensing instead of importing it.
There are lots and lots of beers imported into the united states that were brewed in it’s country of origin. Why not Fosters? Does it have to do with the distance of Australia to the USA?
The first time I got drunk (in the '80s), it was on Foster’s. I liked it then. I haven’t had any in a few years, but the last couple/few times I didn’t care for it. Those were brewed in Canada. I don’t know where the '80s stuff came from.
Since I don’t drink very often, I want good beer. Foster’s doesn’t qualify.
When I was in Australia in the late 1990s I never saw anyone order a Foster’s. I asked about it and the general feeling was that it’s cheap beer sold overseas.
I’m pretty sure that the Guinness available in the US is brewed here as well, but it’s been a while since I looked at a label.
Transport does mess with a beer’s flavor, as it’s not always well temperature-controlled, and the vast majority of beers don’t improve with age once they’ve been bottled/canned.
Actually. I think it’s a lot closer to Budweiser. They’re both an entirely generic product that’s brewed in many different countries (10 for Bud, 6 for Fosters). They make a fantastically consistent product that, while it might be despised by us beer snobs, makes their accountants very, very happy.
“All the GUINNESS® sold in the UK, Ireland and North America is brewed in Ireland at the historic St. James’s Gate Brewery in Dublin.” I can’t vouch for the stout in Nigeria or Cameroon though.
Water is very expensive to transport.
The product does not improve during the transport phase.
There would also be, I presume, import duties payable for imported beer not applicable to the local suds.
I would have thought for a brewer the question of having their product made locally versus imported would be answered by a reasonably straight forward costing analysis.
In Australia a lot of the larger selling “imported” beers are actually brewed locally. I would have thought the reverse would equally apply in the US.
Stella Artois, Becks, Heineken, Kirin, Guiness Stout, Carleberg et al are brewed in Australia under licence.
Believe that last year Cooper were making a play to brew Budweiser (God, no … the horror)
About all I know about Fosters came from a friend’s Australian roommate. This would have been back in my college days. I was drinking a Fosters when said Australian showed up. He got a screwed up look on his face and said, “That’s womens’ beer, mate.”
Can’t be. Otherwise, we’d have imported Budweiser here in Canada, and Australia’s VB brewed under license. But no; Bud is brewed in Canada under license and VB is imported. I have no idea why.
I first tried Foster’s in Texas and thought it pretty good at the time. It came in this huge can that we joked about being a magic, never-emptying can, because we could get maybe three glasses out of it. All of the Aussies I know here in Bangkok disparage it.
The Fosters Group owns a lot of brands of beer, but the stuff sold as “Fosters” is not drunk much here. The whole “Fosters is Australian for beer” thing is what is technically described as “a blatant lie”.
I always get a Fosters draft with my steak at Outback. I’ve never bothered buying it for home. I get Dos Equis draft at my local Mexican place. Don’t buy that for home either.
Almost no-one drinks Foster’s here, and many bottleshops and liquor stores don’t even stock it.
It’s possible to get the “authentic” stuff (ie, the stuff brewed in the country the beer is from) if you go to the right decent sized or specialist place.
Tiger Beer sold in Singapore tastes nothing like the stuff you get in Australia, even though according to the last bottle I had here, they were both brewed in Singapore.
Heh. When I was in Maui I had a beer that is traditionally brewed in Japan, but the can said Canada. I had to do some math to see which was closer. Would it have sucked less had it actually been from Japan?
I imagine the economics of beer distribution favour exporting your product in shipping containers and actually made in the home country early in the distribution cycle. This works to test the new market and to rely on the “imported” label as some sort of heuristic measure of quality and desirability in the minds of potential customers, so that you can charge premium prices.
If the market grows, the economies of scale switch to producing it in the target country for the reasons others have said - exporting essentially water is very expensive, and excise and tax regimes can be worked around more easily for a now-local product.
And if I recall correctly, Fosters got a big kick along about the time the Barry McKenzie image of Australians was being promoted. He drank Fosters, IIRC, and that may be why the idea of Fosters as popularly Australian has gained traction.