you can stop the madness

OK, I may not know much about cars, computers, politics, religion, caste, racism, boxing, weather, municipal planning, or anything else I tend to blather about here at delhibelly.com. But one thing I do know is beer. In all its varieties and forms. I even ate a frozen beer-sicle once.

As I’ve complained before, the beer situation in India is bad, folks. There’s only one variety (lager) excluding costly imports and most of the available locally made brands don’t taste very good. The reason is simple: Glycerine. A cheap preservative with a sweet flavor, this stuff makes beer taste like it’s laced with honey (not a good thing, despite the fact that lame-o “honey lagers” are marketed by some of the American giants). Glycerine is the reason that the big bottles of Kingfisher are so disappointing, while the small bottles (originally for export and in short supply locally) are so surprisingly good.

Until I open my brew pub, I suggest we write to Vijay Mallya and complain. No, no, no – complain ABOUT THE BEER. The rest of his faults can be ignored for the time. Write your own letter if you want, or cut and paste this one, snail mail or email, it’s up to you:

Vijay Mallya, c/o
P Subramani
Senior Vice President – Legal & Company Secretary
United Breweries (Holdings) Limited
‘UB Anchorage’ 5th Floor
100/1, Richmond Road
Bangalore 560025
Email- ps1@ubmail.com

Dear Mr. Mallya:

The Kingfisher Beer you sell to people in India tastes terrible, yet you make perfectly good lager for the export market. Why? I personally account for at least one-third of the small Kingfisher Export bottles consumed in Delhi, but frequently I am forced to settle for Castle, Foster’s or Kaltenberg because all the shops run out of Kingfisher Export. I suspect my subsequent lack of consumption alone represents vast financial losses for your company, but these losses are multiplied in geometric proportions if you take into a count the beer that is not consumed by my friends due to the tyranny of Glycerine-laced lager!

Please, sir, as a gentleman, if not as an executive, you must recognize the gravity of this problem and make recompense. Otherwise, the people of India will be forced to revoke your title of “The King of Good Times” and rename you “The Man Who Only Sold Good Beer to Foreigners.”

Spitting-beer-mad,

YOUR NAME HERE