Sleeman uncaps Clear beer

Low-calorie brew designed for health-conscious drinkers battling the bulge

SHEILA McGOVERN, The Gazette

Friday, October 17, 2003

link to article

John Sleeman arrived in town yesterday to convince Quebecers that diet beer is not an oxymoron.

Ontarians, it appears, are buying the argument - literally. In August, Sleeman Breweries launched its Clear beer in Ontario, promising a beverage with about "half the calories, a quarter of the carbohydrates, that still tastes like beer, and has four per cent alcohol."

Last week, Clear was Sleeman's top-selling beer in Ontario.

It's moving off the shelves at twice the speed the company expected, so the brewery had to scrap its plans to introduce the beer nationally, he said.

"Frankly, we can't make enough of it."

However, there's enough left to launch Clear in Quebec. It began appearing on local shelves about 10 days ago.

Clear's arrival reflects two realities.

First, there's Canada's rather flat beer market, where consumption is growing at only one to two per cent annually, and all kinds of imported beers are flowing in.

Second, there's our aging population, which is having enough trouble battling middle-age spread, so they don't need beer bellies.

Despite the tough competition, Sleeman's - Canada's third-largest brewery - has managed to grow by about 15 per cent annually by being innovative, snapping up small craft breweries and marketing several of the leading imported brews.

Last winter, it decided to keep innovating and asked beer drinkers what their next beer should be.

"They said: 'Can you bring us a low-carb beer, because we're all on the Atkins diet,' " Sleeman said.

So Clear was created with 2.5 grams of carbohydrates per bottle compared with 10 to 12 in regular beer, he said. And it has 90 calories per bottle, while regular beer has about 150.

It's a light-coloured beer, about the same colour as Sleeman's Lager - its top-selling beer in Quebec.

The Gazette subjected it to a very unscientific taste-test. We handed six beer drinkers a bottle and said: "Do you like it?"

"It's a little watery," said our first subject, who is a Sleeman fan. But when it was pointed out Clear had almost half the calories of a regular beer, he said he would get used to it. "That's something I'm very mindful of."

Our next two tasters liked it immediately. It did taste light to them, but they like light beer. They, too, said calories were important to them.

The next two felt the taste came up a little short, it lacked finish, "it's not hoppy." But when the calorie count was provided, one said that would sway her, particularly during an evening of beer drinking. The other said it would not.

Our final taster is fond of dark beers and didn't like Clear at all.

Sleeman doesn't expect everybody to take to the beer. It's aimed at a very specific audience - people concerned about their weight and people on carbohydrate-restricted diets, such as diabetics.

"I've noticed in Ontario it is not 19- to 20 year-old males with great abs who are drinking Clear," he said.

Nor does Sleeman expect to have the low-carb market to himself. Budweiser has one in the U.S., and Sleeman expects other Canadian brewers will follow.

"But it's always nice to be first," he said. "The other will have to match our quality."

Though Sleeman, based in Guelph, is a rather young brewery dating back to 1985, the family has been in the brewing business for generations. They started in England in 1770 and moved to Canada in 1834. Alas, John Sleeman's grandfather was caught bootlegging - shipping alcohol to the U.S. during its prohibition era - and lost his brewing licence in 1933. His father worked for Bell Canada.

But in 1985, armed with his grandfather's recipe book, John relaunched the business selling premium beers of its own and marketing and distributing such imports as Guinness, Harp, Newcastle Brown Ale and Kronenberg.

It's also the Canadian distributor of popular New England brew Samuel Adams, which is not available in Quebec. The company said it is negotiating to have Samuel Adams in Quebec bars and restaurants in 2004, but because the province allows beer to be sold in many stores, the Boston-based owners consider general distribution to be too expensive.

smcgovern~thegazette.canwest.com

Gotbeer, I'd send you some, if I could mail beer across the border.

The Beer Store near me couldn't keep it on the shelves. It took me two weeks to nail some. I finally caught the Sleeman truck making a delivery.