I thought it was German for all this time!!! Anyways.... it's like most (I don't think most of the traders here have it) Americans thinking Sony is an American Brand... it's Japanese
You're probably thinking of Beck's. Better beers, though, if you can find the imports rather than the American clones, are Carlsberg and Tuborg. But they'll be expensive.
I owned a bar at one time in NY. It cost us the about the same to buy Heineken beer as it did to buy Budweiser. We were (I believe) the biggest outlet for Heineken in Nassau County at the time, but NY laws are very strict about discounting by liquor distributors (basically there was no discounting). So our volume was not a factor at all in our cost. Can anyone guess why it did not cost more to buy beer that had to be shipped across the Atlantic Ocean than beer that was more local? (I fully expect an answer from Max401). The real answer will be surprising. At least it was to me when I learned from the distributors!!!! Peace, and good guessing (Maybe there is a Google answer for this one, if there is, then there is no mystery, and the fun will be gone from the "puzzle"). However I promise...the answer is logical, but not one you would guess, or at least I never would have. RS
OK...since there were not any guesses, the answer, which was fascinating to me (but I am easily amused), is that they used beer as ballast on freighters and tankers. So rather than just flooding the ships with sea water (which they can do and sometimes need to do), they transported beer for a very nominal cost. The dense weight of the beer served as the perfect ballast. The neatly stacked cases make for easily handled cargo. So while the cost of imported beer is substantially higher in liquor and grocery stores, it is just because of marketing. The true cost difference is negligible. Maybe because we were near a port (NY), we did not have the extra cost of land transport after the beer got to the US. I would imagine that because of the weight and land transport costs, it is likely that Heineken (or any European beer) would cost more in places in America which require further travel The stuff is definitely heavy!! Buy then again, most beer has to be transported some distance. (though some brands like Budweiser are brewed in many locations to make shipping less of an issue). What is amazing to me is now bottled water seems to have caught up to the price of beer. How is this possible? Look at the label on many bottled waters, and you see the source is often municipal water. Get a filter, put it in bottles, and sell it for more than beer, or gasoline. What a racket!!!! Peace, RS
Too bad more people don't investigate their local microbreweries. We have one here that puts out a porter that's better than anything I've tried in England. And there are many microbreweries that bottle their goods for resale. Aspen Meadow is very reasonably-priced and puts out an excellent nut brown. And there's Mississippi Mud, which is one of the best black-and-tans I've ever tried.
agree... interesting re shipping beer.... me too, i had thought heineken was german too, til about 4 yrs ago... microbreweries are great.. we've got a bunch here in hawaii.. i like gordon biersche's , they have a good dark stout-type of beer.. i miss drinking beer (haven't had one in years).. almost 40 now... the older you get, the faster beer goes to your gut, so I gave up on it.. ah well. guinness stout w/steak/lobster, now that's a combo. missing all of that. my wife's from japan, she always has me eating tofu and other healthy things. oh joy. bah humbug.