53 A VERY SPECIAL BREW
Sir Winston Leonard Spencer-Churchill was given many prizes and awards in his lifetime; he is the only British Prime Minister to have received the Nobel Prize in Literature and was the first person to be made an Honorary Citizen of the United States.
To honour Churchill’s contribution to Denmark and the Danish people, Carlsberg decided to create a new beer, commemorating his visit to Copenhagen in 1950. The move followed the Danish tradition of producing a new beer to celebrate outstanding events, such as a European coronation or birth of a royal baby.
Carlsberg knew from its research that Churchill’s favourite drink wasn’t actually beer but cognac. Rather than being put off by this fact, it used it for inspiration: the brewer created a 9% lager, stronger than normal, with cognac flavours among its tasting notes. Carlsberg called the new beer “V-øllet”, literally “V-Beer”, echoing VE and VJ day.
When Churchill returned to Britain, Carlsberg sent two crates of the beer to his London address. Clearly a man of judgment and taste and of course a skilled politician and diplomat, Churchill sent a letter to the brewery in which he thanked it for what he called “Commemoration Lager”.
In the years to follow, the drink was renamed “Påskebryg” (“Easter Brew”), and then replaced by a weaker beer named (“Carls Påske”). In the late 1950s, Carlsberg decided it would try selling the beer in Britain and production was started in Northampton. It was given yet another name, but this time the name would stick: “Carlsberg Special Brew”.6
And the moral is that products may need to be evolved or repositioned to find their most successful niche. Have all your products or services found their optimum position?
6 The author Kingsley Amis was also a big fan of Special Brew and used to mix it, half and half, with ordinary Carlsberg in a large tankard. No other drink, he said, has the same ability “to create goodwill”.
In 1980, a ska band called Bad Manners had a huge hit with a single entitled Special Brew, which stayed in the UK charts for 13 weeks: “I don’t care, when they stare at the way I’m always with you. We’re a pair; it’s not fair when they say we’re a special brew.”
At 9% alcohol, Special Brew is part of a group of strong lagers that are now termed “super-strength” in the UK and “malt liquors” in the US. Unfortunately its strength means that it is associated with street alcoholics and this has led the brand to acquiring an unsavoury reputation and a host of other names including “tramp juice”.