BEER cocktails are soon to be sold in bars across the country if a Burton brewer can make a success of a new multi-million pound business.
Reporter HELEN KREFT was given the onerous task of being one of the first in the country to try the new mixes and decided that chocolate and beer is actually easy on the taste buds.
Molson Coors Brewers has launched The BitterSweet Company to remove the gender imbalance that exists around beer consumption by adding a mix of beer to the already popular cocktails favoured by most women.
Staff at Molson Coors launched the company after discovering a gap in the beer market. During a survey of 2,000 women, they discovered that although many do not mind the taste of beer, they believe that holding a large pint glass is ‘ugly’ and consuming the whole amount leaves them feeling bloated, leading to worries about the calories they are consuming.
Kristy McCready of the BitterSweet Partnership said: "The main problem for women that we discovered was the image they had of drinking beer. Over 60 per cent thought it was a drink for men. If women do drink beer, we found they usually drink it at music and sporting events. They also believed that beer has more calories than wine which is a myth we would like to dispel."
The BitterSweet Partnership is being advertised as ‘run by women for women’, and is currently gaining insights from women throughout the country.
Helen Kreft made her way to The Dial, in Station Street, to be one of the first in the country to taste the six beer cocktails on offer. A Kru Woo — a play on words of the popular cocktail Woo Woo — was one of the new drinks and included peach schnapps, cranberry juice and Kasteel Cru.
The beer cocktails will be sold during The Dial’s Ladies Night every Wednesday and the bar is issuing comment cards to gain feedback.
Ms McCready said: "We have launched the beer cocktails at The Dial after many months of working with them in our laboratory to create the perfect mix. The Dial has the expertise in cocktails while Coors can provide the beer.
"After finding the mix, we have created the image that many women find important in a drink and put this in a smaller glass so they do not get as bloated as they feel when drinking a pint of beer."
The five women behind the company have also assembled a beer panel of women to see how women think. One member is ITV’s Carol McGiffin from Loose Women who recently spoke about the Burton company on her television show.
She explained that women did not drink beer because of the image it portrayed and the calories they thought it gave them.
Beer Cocktails will be sold at The Dial for the next month before being rolled out to the rest of the country.
Meanwhile, The BitterSweet Company has put recipes of their new drinks on their website www.bittersweetcompany.com and are encouraging people to make their own.