When Guinness rolled out its new bottles last month, it conducted samplings in which it asked drinkers to taste it side by side with Belgium's golden lager, Stella Artois.
No, you would never confuse the two, unless you're in the habit of wearing a blindfold.
But that's who Guinness is gunning for - the likes of Stella, Heineken, Grolsch, Carlsberg and Peroni.
Yes, the very company that has made billions selling black stout wants in on premium yellow lager because, these days, that's where the big bucks are.
Now, you might rightly wonder: What about Harp Lager?
It's also brewed by Guinness (its name is a tribute to the Guinness harp logo) and it's actually yellow. The problem is, it's not called Guinness. And, at least in America, Harp is a half-dead brand.
Then why not make a yellow lager and call it Guinness? Been there, done that, pal, and the result - Guinness Gold, circa 1980 - is best forgotten.
"We could have easily made a blond lager," said Guinness master brewer Fergal Murray. "But we wanted to extend our brand . . . We wanted a stand-alone lager with the Guinness character."
And Guinness' character is nothing if it isn't black. So that's what they've come up with: a yellow beer that's actually black.
This whole lame-brained scheme smells like something that the business nerds at Wharton came up with after a night of Jager shots at Smokey Joe's. Eventually, though, someone in the brewhouse actually had to create this Frankenstein.
It wasn't as hard as it sounds. Black lager is an old German style known as Schwarzbier. (The brewery is careful not to call it that because, well, speak English!)
