"Drinking Beer Is a Science"

Hey kids, here's a goof on the new "vented" Coors Light can I wrote for the Sunday paper. I'm dedicating it to my pal Guy, who imbibes this stuff like oxygen...

TAMPA — In case you haven't watched TV lately, or read the newspaper, or opened a magazine, or surfed the Web, or visited a post office in downtown Tampa where you were swarmed by buxom young women chirping beer propaganda, Coors Light has declared a war on glug.

That's right: glug (you know, rhymes with ugh).

In a hellzapoppin' blitz of advertising and promotion, Coors Brewing Co. is touting the latest advance in discount-suds consumption: the Vented Wide Mouth Can. Never mind that Coors Light has slightly more flavor than rain. Never mind that the entire point of Coors Light is that it doesn't stain a bowling shirt. In the great beer battle, Joe Six-Pack is treated like James Bond.

The Coors Light can has been retinkered like a spy gadget, with an opening that's 8 percent wider than before — and 27 percent wider than other domestic beers. Along with the gaping maw is a "vent," or groove, next to the opening, which allows air into the can, supposedly creating a "smoother pour."

Viewed from the top, the new can design looks like a Stratocaster with a whammy bar — or a snowman with a nightstick.

"Combine the vent with the wide opening, and that allows beer to pour more smoothly, like a draft," explains Coors spokeswoman Jenny Volanakis. "When you pour it, there's no glug."

But wait — isn't the glug of a beer a beautiful sound, like the roar of a crowd or the sweet song of springtime birds?

"Our research suggests most people don't like the way beer pours from a can," Volanakis says, adding, "It's all rooted in customer research."

Customers must also have demanded the "cold activated bottle" (cartoon mountains on the label turn blue when the beer is cold enough to drink) and the "frost brew liner" (a blue coating inside the can protects the holy hops flavor and, um, whatever).

On Tuesday, a.k.a. Tax Day, a.k.a. Happy Venting Day, 10 Silver Bullet Girls (or "Coors Promo Specialists," depending on your attractive source) strutted outside a downtown Tampa post office, touting the new technology with great skin and unfortunate puns.

"There's a better way to vent than on your wife!" Lauren Healey calls out to one businessman. Healey attained legal drinking age roughly five minutes ago. "My job is to enlighten people. Drinking beer is a science."

And all this to help Coors Light catch the market leader, Bud Light? "Around here," she whispers, "it's the B-word."

After sending off "a massive amount" of taxes, Tampa resident Scott Levell, 32, stopped to chat with the girls. He said he pays no attention to the technological advances in packaging. "I like Coors Light because it's easy," he explains. "It's like water."

So does the Vented Wide Mouth Can work?

We discovered that there was still a slight glug when we drank directly from the can while sitting at our desk at work. However, when poured into a cup, the beer flowed glug-free. Thus, two scientific conclusions:

(1) People who drink Coors Light out of a can think cups are for sissies. They chug the beer then throw the can at their friends.

(2) No matter how smoothly it pours, into a glass or into your mouth, it still tastes like Coors Light.

Comments

[NickWithAnAxe]

You can put a nice, three-piece suit on a turd. The fact still remains that you have a turd in a suit.

Research? Really? It's 2008. We should have food in pill form, flying cars and cures for AIDS, cancer and male pattern baldness by this point. Instead, we're spending time "researching" the acoustic asthetics of pouring lousy beer from a can.

It's no wonder this land is in it up to our hips.

[Marissa]

So, Coors delights in a coup of eliminating the glug. Wow! Amazing!

Sean, if it wasn't for your fine writing this wouldn't have ever mattered to me. OK, it still doesn't matter, but I enjoyed reading about something absolutely useless.

p.s. Sharpies ROCK!

[Eric62]

Thank God for newspapers (or their online equivalents) and Bless You Sean Daly for clearing this up.
Brother in law left a few Coors Lights in the fridge from his visit, and I grabbed one yesterday after working in the yard. Somehow, I missed the ad blitz about venting and blindly bumbled my way into opening a vented silver bullet without proper instruction. I simply thought the bloody thing was flat or perhaps had been cracked open previously, thus destroying the "glug" and all semblance of taste with it.

[sparky]

So Coors Brewing and their crack marketing team never heard of shotguns.

Should have sent the boys up to Penn State, I am sure the students on any given weekend would show them that it doesn't matter how wide the opening is on the top of the can. Then again they probably wouldn't be using Coors Light.

[Jeff in Cuba]

As a denizen of the Centennial State, allow me to offer a half-hearted counterpoint.

Original Coors, affectionately known as "Banquet Beer" (which makes about as much sense as "Tea Funyuns") is by far the "lighest" domestic brew on the market, and deserves a little of the "Rocky Mountain spring water" rap that is so frequently heaped upon it.

Coors Light, however, is actually one of the "heaviest" light beers, which means there is precious little difference between the two brews.

As any man who has ever spent an evening in a singles bar can tell you, when the goods are essentially the same, it's all about the marketing.

So the vent isn't just enlightened fluid mechanics or ingeneous engineering. It's a zodiac medallion on a gold chain at the pick-up bar that is your local beer aisle.

[Ian from Down Under]

Who cares, pour me another Jack.