Let's not get carried away, here.

So, they think they've come up with a breakfast beer, huh?

A new beer to be launched in New Zealand's largest city at 7:00am Thursday has been slammed by alcohol watchdogs concerned about its promotion as a "breakfast beer."

The cherry-flavored wheat lager is described as "a beer the ladies can enjoy too ... if you're having a champagne breakfast but don't fancy champagne, have a beer instead," the New Zealand Herald reported Sunday.

The beer, made by Marlborough brewery Moa, contains 5.5 percent alcohol and will be officially launched at an Auckland cafe this week, but has already been slammed as "irresponsible."

National Addiction Centre director Doug Sellman said the marketing of the beer was "a completely irresponsible stunt from a health and addiction perspective, because it is normalizing pathological behavior."

We don't know about all that as what may truly be "irresponsible" is a sweet, fizzy, cherry-flavored lager that "...the ladies can enjoy too." Sorry, ladies, but that's got disaster written all over it.

Besides, there are plenty of "breakfast beers" out there already. Max touts Oro de Calabaza as the perfect beer to roll out of the rack and dive into first thing in the morning.

Most pre-existing "breakfast beers" tend to be Belgians... Max explains why this is so at the link. And though we cannot personally vouch for Oro de Calabaza (yet) we have had Sophie, a Belgian farmhouse ale and each time we wish we had a tall stack of pancakes or even better... french toast in front of us while drinking it.



P.S. And if you are wondering why Max isn't handling this assignment, we had to let him go due to insubordination.

Naaaah.... Just kidding. He'll be back tomorrow for his regulary-scheduled MAXED OUT installment.