Brewers Mixing Beer and Non-Alcoholic Beverages to Target Youth

The brewers have learned from the spirits industry and have started experimenting with different flavours and admixtures of different non-alcoholic beverages. A beer mixed with energy drink is already available in Germany (check the CAB website: http://www.cab-drink.com/). The promotion of such drinks definitely targets young people. The problem from the legislative point of view is – especially in Germany – that this drink is based on beer. This makes it cheap (low tax) and the legal purchase age for beer is 16 years (in Germany). Brewers were certainly happy after the introduction of the special tax on spirit based Alcopops.

These developments should be observed closely.