Heineken bottle to change

Although surprised to see the Portuguese offering on the doorstep, was doubly so when I received another package.

Courtesy of Heineken again, I received a perspex box, displaying a single bottle of Heineken lager, plus, wait for it, an iPod Touch (8GB version 4.2.1). I thought someone must have accidentally dropped theirs in the package, but no, turns out it's a gift. The public relations consultants Hill and Knowlton are responsible for this drive, as too the Sagres DraughtKeg campaign.  I was approached by one of their Account Executives for my details, as they wished to "send some product" my way. I had no idea what this entailed, and expected a couple of sample bottles and maybe some cheap merchandise.

So, in the last week,  from the Heineken group I have been the recipient of 5.33 litres of beer, a nice wooden box, a nice perspex box, an iPod Touch , and a couple of polite emails.

I feel somewhat obliged to pass some fair comment about the new bottle.  It's a sleek design, with clear plastic labelling as opposed to the traditional paper. It has embossed glass at the rear, making it arguably easier to hold on those slippery nights. Mind you, this is not ground-breaking: Cascade has been doing this for years.

Of interest is the commentary on the back stating The "A-YEAST" ensures every brew of Heineken has a consistent clean crisp taste, and is so precious it's been stored under guard in Holland since 1886. As others have commented (including BrewsNews), there must be some leniency here, as this yeast strain seems to have made its way to Australia. Yep, it's still a brewed-under-licence offering.

It's sleek, it's modern, it's trendy and fashionable. The short movie clip and pictures that came preloaded on the iPod are very trendy too. It says a lot about big brewing marketing strategy..... target the image-conscious young adult.

And what about the bottle content ? I'm leaving mine unopened as a bar curio, but have previously rated Heineken as  C+ / 3.15.  This is generous, as the overall average on the BeerAdvocate website for Heineken is C (from 1,189 reviews); my review is 11.7% above the average.