I have to feel sorry for Hahn.
Their main – okay, only – market is the mainstream beer drinker and that has been declining in recent years. But there is a beer market that is growing, however slowly, and that’s the craft beer segment. At least it’s growing based on what I’ve read.
And so Hahn has created Harvest, which is meant as the company’s entree into the world of craft beer. It’s also meant to have been a “limited edition” but I doubt that as it was released in Easter but it is still around now.
Now here’s why I feel sorry for them. Hahn’s existing market very much prefers the bland lagers they’ve been making (they must, why else wold they drink them?), so they can’t go crazy making a “craft beer” and alienating the drinkers they still have.
By the same token most craft beer drinkers also see Hahn as a maker of taste-free lagers and so aren’t going to look twice at a beer bearing that name on its label (I’d drink a good beer no matter who the brewery was, though I’m not expecting a mainstream brewery to test the boundaries of beer any time soon). The unadventurous taste such a craft beer would need to retain the existing market will be far below what a true craft beer drinker would prefer.
So with Harvest, they’re firmly stuck in no-mans-land, with a product of little interest to their existing drinkers, or any other beer market. I suspect that’s got something to do with why a product released at Easter as a limited edition is still around more than six months later – it has no real market.
The flavour is weird – the only real difference between this and Hahn’s usual fare is a cloying sweetness. It’s as though someone figured “young drinkers like sweet drinks like RTDs, so let’s make a sweet beer”. But no-one – regardless of what market segment – wants a sweet beer.
If Hahn really wanted to tap into the craft beer market, they’d be better off releasing that Bacon Beer they made as a publicity exercise. I had some of that and it was easily the best beer Hahn had made in years. Make that part of a Hahn “special range” which is truly limited and where the brewers have licence to create off-the-wall stuff and I reckon they’d hook a whole load of craft beer drinkers.
Would I drink it again?: Nope. This is supposed to be an entry-level craft beer but if I wanted to drink something “entry level” I’d go for James Squire. At least they have some flavour.