Bottomshelf Beer Reviews: Big Hurt Beer

"I'll shove that bat up your ass and turn you into a Popsicle."

I love drinking beer and watching baseball, and if you don’t I’m going to go ahead and call you un-American.  People that don’t like baseball are the same weirdos who say “you only need to watch the last five minutes of a basketball game” and “soccer players are tougher than football players because they don’t wear pads.”  I hate those people.  If I was President we’d burn those bastards like witches.  As a baseball loving patriot and cheap beer enthusiast I was happy to discover that one of my favorite players from my youth, Frank “the Big Hurt” Thomas, had created his own Big Hurt beer.

Frank Thomas frozen in carbonite

Regular readers of this blog and people that know me in real life are well aware of my fealty to the Chicago White Sox.  Some of my happiest memories and drunkest experiences  center around my favorite team.  I’ll never forget the riot at Illinois State University when the White Sox won the 2005 World Championship.  If you look close enough to the video on youtube you can spot a jean jacketed Danny O’D running through the crowd screaming like a moron.  As impressive as the riot was, the youtube recommended videos revealed that the ISU student body riots kind of regularly.  The most recent riot being a celebration of the death of Osama bin Laden.  An event I find absolutely shameful.  How can you celebrate the death of another human being?  Just kidding.  Killing terrorists is awesome.  

Yippie ki-yay motherfucker.

Big Hurt Pinball

World Series victories are also awesome, but I think teams are defined by their fanbase and their players.  Philadelphia fans routinely assault the fans of visiting teams and fucking throw batteries at people; not coincidentally their Quarterback Ron Mexico (AKA Michael Vick) knowingly gave a woman herpes.  For a decade and a half the White Sox were defined by Frank Thomas.  He retired with a .301 average, 521 homeruns, 2 AL MVPs, 2,468 hits, 4 Silver Slugger Awards, 1,704 RBIs, a pinball machine, a SNES video game, and a guest spot in NBA Jam.  That might not make much sense to you if you don’t follow baseball (or know what a pinball machine is) but he was really good.  Even if you understand baseball statistics, the stat line doesn’t tell the whole story.  It can’t.  A player like Frank Thomas, Walter Payton, or Michael Jordan has to be seen to be believed.  I'm just glad I was fortunate enough to be a kid in the southwest suburbs during Big Frank’s best years.

Unfortunately, it’s hard to find a goddamned clip of the Big Hurt popping dingers without the express written consent of Major League Baseball, and I refuse on general principle to link one of those seizure inducing cellphone videos of a television broadcast.  Here’s the intro to the SNES classic Big Hurt Baseball.  
 

It’s a curious move to say the least that a player as legendary as Frank Thomas would create a bottomshelf beer.  I don’t know what I’d do if I was a famous millionaire, I guess I’d still drink beer and watch Conan the Barbarian, but I’d wear a tuxedo(?).  In any case, I don’t know if I’d be trying to break into the well saturated bottomshelf beer market.  Typically when a rich famous person decides they want to take a break from eating caviar and screwing girls with perfect skin they devote their beer endorsing talents to one of the major brewers or their own line of craft beer, which makes sense: instead of competing with Miller Lite carve out your own niche market or just let the bastards pay you.  With that in mind, it’s seems like Frank Thomas said, “fuck all that, this shit is 7% alcohol.  Let’s get drunk.”

Jenny McCarthy is kind of a dummy, but she's also a Sox fan and without her this article would have a lot less babes than usual

 At this point most beer reviewers would write about Sox fans’ “blue collar” or “working class” background.  Personally I think the fictitious class divide between the North and Southside teams is kind of played out, so I’ll talk just talk a little bit about Big Hurt Beer.  It has kind of a mechanical fruity smell, kind of like what I imagine an actual clockwork orange would smell like.  But does the taste hurt? (Sorry folks, the pun was absolutely unavoidable.  I’m as ashamed as you are.)  You can taste all of the 7% alcohol, at least on the first sip.  By the second sip I thought it was alright.  It tasted kind of fruity at first, but that sensation also faded as I journeyed to the bottom of the can. The aftertaste was really strong, similar the feeling you get after you drink coffee, eat black licorice, or smoke a cigar.  That’s not to say it’s bad, quite the contrary in fact, and if you like strong flavors you might want to give Big Hurt Beer a try.  At 7% you might want to try it anyway.  It might not be as palatable as some beers, but at least it gets you drunk quicker.

That might not be the ringingest endorsement that I’ve ever given, but I left out the best part:  Big Hurt Beer is on tap at Comiskey Park (U.S. Cellular Field).  If you’re anything like me you sometimes have a tough time getting drunk by the 7^th inning, and as one of the loudest fans in the ballpark the extra point and a half of alcohol BHB provides could be the difference between kind of letting the visiting center fielder know what you think about him and REALLY letting him know what you think of him, his haircut and his sister.  That’s what the pros call a game changer. Big Hurt Beer is Danny tested and Frank Thomas approved.   

Your hero getting ready for the big game