Bottomshelf Beer Reviews: Lacrosse Lager

If you ask someone to describe me, they usually say, “Paul Newman crossed with Robert Redford… oh, and he likes to drink.”  Suffice it to say, my devilish good looks and love of cheap beer is widely known. So for me, it’s nothing short of a tragedy when I see how expensive bottomshelf beer has gotten.  30 packs of Olde Style have gone the way of the dodo, and 30 packs of good ol’ Pabst Blue Ribbon have gotten increasingly expensive and harder to find.  The only thing more tragic than that, is when someone tells me I look nothing like Paul Newman (hey idiots, we both have blue eyes.)  As the saying I just made up goes, “from the greatest tragedies come the greatest achievements.”  If we didn’t have World War I we wouldn’t have had World War II, and if we didn’t have World War II, what would we make first person shooters about?   I guess my point is, if PBR and Olde Style hadn’t gotten more expensive I never would have discovered Lacrosse Lager: the final frontier in 30 packs.

Speaking of final frontier, here's Start Trek: the Movie's Zoe Saldana

Hello ladies.

 Why do 30 packs rule so hard?  Well for starters, when you get done drinking the beer you can put the box on your head like it’s some kind of crazy beer mask.  I suppose, you could just dump the full cans of beer out and then put the box on your head, but I’m not your mother so you can make your own damn decisions.  If you go the second route, I suggest cutting a mouth hole so you can drink your tasty beer without taking your mask off.  Trust me; ladies love a guy with a creepy cardboard mask.  Actually, I’m not so sure about that, but at least you can have sex with a fat chick and keep your identity secret.  The only thing you’d still have to worry about is someone seeing you put on your cardboard face shield, thus blowing your cover.  I suggest dealing with this one of two ways: either put the mask on in the bathroom and emerge like some kind of grotesque Super Man or spray people indiscriminately with pepper spray and then put your mask on.  Hey, don’t look at me.  You’re the one that’s resorting to violence just to have sex with some fat girl.  Jesus dude, she doesn’t even have big tits.

Congrats dude...I'm sure she has a great personality

Kari Byron is here to explain beer math

 If you can believe it, there’s something about thirty packs even cooler than the sweet helmet you can make (shocking, I know.)  And that’s the extra beer.  Some basic math will tell you that if a typical case has  24 beers and a thirty pack has 30 beers, then a 30 pack has five six more beers than a regular case.  It’s like you’re getting an entire six-pack for free.  How do they get away with this?  One of my friends said that they divide the cost of the six extra beers among the other 24 cans, so you don’t even notice.  But that doesn’t make sense, 30 packs have more beer and they still tend to be cheaper than their 24 pack cousins.  Who’s laughing now science?

Sceince! Industry! Technology!

 “30 packs are great” you say, “but what makes Lacrosse better than say, Special Export?”  Well, there’s 99 reasons and a bitch ain’t one.  And by “a bitch” I mean “the number of cans.”  And by “cans” I mean “cans of beer.”  (If you didn't follow all that, they both come in 30 packs.) Lacrosse is good stuff, but what is Lacrosse?  Most people define Lacrosse as “a game I know nothing about.”  If you look up Lacrosse Lager in the beer name game the beer’s namesake could also refer to Argentinean-born Fernando Lamas.  Cool, I guess?   And according to the Lacrosse Tribune, in 1934 the Lacrosse Lagers were an amateur football team that played (and got their assed kicked by) the Chicago Bears.  If you try to solve the mystery on the beer’s official website you’ll come up empty.  Most of their website is about how clean and state-of-the-art their brewery is, without so much as a mention of what beers they brew.  You have to admit that’s a pretty unconventional marketing approach.  The website does mention that the brewery is located in Lacrosse Wisconsin, which I GUESS is probably the reason for the name, that or Fernando Lamas, you be the judge.

I wanted to sex up the article with a picture of women's lacrosse, but the results were fug.  This is from an ad for foxy boxing. 

As for the flavor, this stuff is tasty.  How tasty?  Tasty enough to get a C+ from those highfalutin assholes at beeradvocate.  It might not sound impressive, but on that website most domestic brews tend to hover around the D- range.  According to the can, Lacrosse is “fully kraeusened” and “double brewed with pure artesian water.” I’m not sure that that means, but I believe them.  It has a full bodied flavor, with a slight hint of sweetness, without any of the poo taste you get with most cheap beer.  Over the years, I drank a ton of this stuff and I’ve never gotten a headache.  I got an upset stomach one time, but that was my bachelor party; and in all honestly I had it coming.  During my research I read somewhere that Lacrosse is brewed with the Old Olde Style recipe, from back when Olde Style was the number one beer in Chicago.  I don’t know if that’s true or not.  It tastes kind of similar to the new Olde Style, but I think Lacrosse tastes considerably better.  Anyway, Lacrosse doesn’t have a bunch of stupid, asinine, unfunny, “fully kraeusened,” Improv commercials, and that’s more than enough for me to give Lacrosse the leg up on Olde Style.

Pic of the van rented on my bachelor party.  Note: there is something on the door, and it isn't oatmeal.

Lacrosse is cheap, tasty, and comes in a ready-made cardboard beer mask.  Perfect, right?  Well, almost.  Before you buy yourself a cool 30 pack of Lacrosse ask yourself a few simple questions.  Do you have an “ironic” mustache?  Do you own a Yo La Tango album?  Are you now or have you ever been a member of Yo La Tango?  If you answered yes to any of those questions I am begging you, in the name of all that is Holy not to buy Lacrosse Lager.  You hipster assholes ruined Pabst and Olde Style.  Let me keep this.  If you are a hipster and you must drink Lacrosse, at least do me a favor and don’t tell any of your retro-shirted idiot friends about it.   

Fuck you Rivers Cuomo.  Mustaches used to be a sign that someone was into Cameros and cigarettes.  You and your kind ruin everything.  Nice shirt and hoodie combo, makes you look 20 years younger.  Pinkerton was overrated.

Would you like to know more?  Lacrosse Wisconsin has the highest ratio of bars per square mile in the country.  51,000 drunken hillbillies can't be wrong.