{"id":4233,"date":"2015-12-02T20:28:29","date_gmt":"2015-12-03T03:28:29","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/?p=4233"},"modified":"2015-12-02T20:28:29","modified_gmt":"2015-12-03T03:28:29","slug":"heineken-pulls-tequila-beer-from-u-s-nobody-notices","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/heineken-pulls-tequila-beer-from-u-s-nobody-notices\/","title":{"rendered":"Heineken Pulls Tequila-beer from U.S., Nobody Notices"},"content":{"rendered":"

So much for Desperados<\/a>, gone from the U.S. before most people had a chance to taste it. The Heineken lager that’s aged in tequila barrels and infused with “tequila flavors” is a modest hit overseas, so the brewery introduced it into a few American test markets<\/a> just last year. Evidently things didn’t work out so well, and Heineken quietly announced last week<\/a> that Desperados was departing these shores.<\/p>\n

Desperados isn’t the first tequila-themed beer to meet with misfortune here. That would be Tequiza, a beer “with blue agave nectar” for which we have Anheuser-Busch to thank. Tequiza rolled out in 1998 under the slogan “Give it a Shot” — the ads implying that Tequiza was a tequila shot and a beer chaser rolled into one. But at a meager 4.5% ABV Tequiza wasn’t worth a shot. It limped along until 2009 before being mercifully killed.<\/a><\/p>\n

American fans of Tequiza and Desperados, if there ever were any, can take comfort in knowing that A-B is back on the case. Behold Oculto<\/a> (Spanish for “hidden”) an “agave-infused” beer about to go nationwide this fall. At least Oculto has a little more kick to it than Tequiza did, coming in at 6% ABV. The labels are artfully designed to resemble Mexican Day of the Dead masks — and, for added thrills, the eye sockets in the skull mask will start to glow when the bottle gets cold.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/p>\n

Barrel-aged beer is becoming more popular among craft brewers<\/a>, and some have even experimented with used wine and cognac barrels. But none that I know of have taken the next step of artificially infusing the beer with wine or cognac or tequila flavors, as Heineken and A-B have done. Maybe Oculto’s freaky bottles will help it catch on as a gimmick-drink; otherwise, it’s hard to see this unnatural hybrid getting any more love than did Desperados.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

photo credit:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.flickr.com\/photos\/markhillary\/13091438963<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

So much for Desperados, gone from the U.S. before most people had a chance to taste it. The Heineken lager that’s aged in tequila barrels and infused with “tequila flavors” is a modest hit overseas, so the brewery introduced it into a few American test markets just last year. Evidently things didn’t work out so […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":101,"featured_media":4234,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"sfsi_plus_gutenberg_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_show_text_before_share":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_type":"","sfsi_plus_gutenberg_icon_alignemt":"","sfsi_plus_gutenburg_max_per_row":"","footnotes":"","_links_to":"","_links_to_target":""},"categories":[47],"tags":[72,75,143,1190,1188,722,578,1189,203,1191],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/101"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4233"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4233\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/4234"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4233"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4233"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/brutalhammer.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4233"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}