Corkscrewing Through Inanity
Elysian Brewing, one of the brands AB InBev did not sell to Tilray, just dropped their latest beer. It is a part of a line extension on their good-selling but probably flagging flagship, Space Dust. I have no idea if the beer is good or not, but everything that appears on the can and website is disastrous. For a relaxing Friday, when my planned but incomplete post was delayed, what could be more pleasant than trawling through this comedy of errors?
Let’s start with the name. “Space Dust” works because it is an actual thing. The two words combine to describe tiny particles floating through the empty vastness of the universe. “Juice Dust,” by contrast, is an oxymoron and viscerally unpleasant to consider. It also relies on: 1) a customer’s knowledge of Space Dust IPA, and 2) a customer’s knowledge of “juicy” in the context of IPA. Okay, maybe they know the first—they absolutely do not know the second. Also, Juice Dust. Ew.
However, a bad name isn’t an indictable offense in 2024, especially for line extensions. All the good names are gone, so clunkers are unavoidable. But you know what’s not unavoidable?—describing your beer thus:
Corkscrewing through the obsidian darkness of outer space, Juice Dust is powered by a fathomless palate squeeze of orange and citrus. This Space Dust alter ego wrings out vibrant bursts of juicy, fruit-driven flavor to help illuminate all your interstellar journeys.
This is such bad writing one assumes it has to be AI. (Which does not exonerate whomever greenlit this text for the website.) Let us start with “powered by a fathomless palate squeeze.” This is pure word salad, one not clarified by the “orange and citrus” that follows. Orange is a type of citrus. Really mailing it in there.
Things don’t improve with the next sentence. The beer “wrings” out flavor? I certainly hope not. Is the fruit driving the flavor (and if so to where?), or is the flavor fruity? The answer is clear to all but the writer. Finally, on the website, the stats contain three categories: hops, malt, and “body.” Under the latter are these words: “Orange, guava, ripe tropical fruit, candied citrus.” All right then.
One can over-interpret a single data point, so I will try to resist using Juice Dust as a metaphor for ABI’s current approach to craft beer. But hoo-boy, do I feel for the folks in Seattle. They have to be cringing at all this. On principle I hope no one buys Juice Dust because the sooner the beer dies, the sooner I can forget I ever heard of it in the first place.