What does a person have to do to order a drink these days without someone going on about the latest rage on the bar circuit - alcoholic sodas and lemonades? In the past six months, Hong Kong has gone crazy over 'soft' drinks - an ever-expanding variety of sodas aimed at young people who want to drink but do not like the taste of alcohol. Widely available in bars, the drinks are also sold in supermarkets and convenience stores.
If an older generation views with suspicion this attempt to expand breweries' markets to the younger, predominantly female crowd, the target consumers think it is a brilliant idea.
'It gives you another option,' says twentysomething Lorna Batty.
New brand, Hooper's Hooch, brewed by Bass in Britain, seems to be the flavour of the moment. At an informal tasting at Al's Diner in Lan Kwai Fong, our taste team was almost uniformly enthusiastic about its fresh lemonade flavour.
'I can drink six or so in an evening and I don't get drunk or hung over,' says Kathryn Lewis, another member of the target market.
And there is the danger: the alcohol content, often as high as the average beer, is masked by sweet and lemony flavours. Hooch, for example, has a 4.7 per cent alcohol content. E33 soda has 5.5, and E33 cider has 8.4. Coolest of the sodas, Sub Zero, has 5.5 per cent and Australia's Two Dogs has 4.2.