Bottomshelf Beer Reviews: Light Beer

Elegant in its simplicity

If your life’s anything like mine you get inundated with text messages and social media notifications when Costco puts out their very own rock-bottomed Light Beer.  Even if that rings a bell, your life is probably still pretty different from mine because your dick is way tinier.  Regardless of where you stand, people tend to think of me as both well penised, and the kind of guy that would be excited to hear his favorite warehouse store is now selling nearly 50 beers for less than $25.  And boy was I excited, my pussy dripped with anticipation.

 

I was like a goddamned slip-n-slide down there

Mixed metaphors aside Costco is pretty groovy place: high quality products at reasonable prices.  The money I save on dogfood alone more than covers the cost of membership.  And their booze is outstanding. I may be a celebrationist of cheap beer, but I can’t abide crappy booze.  Hamm’s and Dogfish Head both have their place, but shitty vodka’s place is in the toilet (it makes me throw up.)  Costco’s vodka costs about the same as the Vodka brand vodka in the plastic bottle at the Pic ’n’ Save, but it’s very very good.  Almost flavorless good (the hallmark of any high quality vodka is its ability to not taste like anything.)

 

Never worth it.

Free Snake

The Costco brand beer selection on the other hand had always been a little lackluster.  They used to have kind of subquality premium beers at a reasonable, but not outstanding price.  If I’m paying a little extra I like to get something exceptional, like a free snake or whatever.  As I alluded to in the introduction Kirkland Light is on the opposite end of the spectrum, and it couldn’t come sooner.  Time was you could get a 30-pack of PBR or Stroh’s for $10, or even get a case of Schlitz (the best beer) for $7.50, but the times they are a-changin’.  40-something cents a beer is a solid price regardless of quality.

The can art and box design give the Repo-Man-esque impression that Light Beer is Light Beer brand Light Beer, but the technically the full name is Kirkland Signatre Light Beer.  Those in the know are no doubt aware that Kirkland Signature is Costco’s in-house brand of pretty much everything.  As to who actually brews the beer, the can credits Regal Brau Brewing.  I did a little research and discovered the beer is brewed under license by different brewers in different parts of the country. Regal Brau is the Midwest moniker for Minhas Brewery (the folks behind the utterly disgusting Boxer Lager.)   On the West Coast Light Beer is brewed be Gordon Biersch under the nom de plume “Hopfen und Malz,” whereas the East Coast gets the Matt Brewing company’s AKA “New Yorker Brewery Co.’s” pseudonominous version of the beer.  I can’t attest to whether the quality of this beer varies from region to region, but I can unequivocally say that the version I had was skulls (skulls being the newest synonym for “cool” in the modern parlance.)

 

Skulls are dark & mysterious, badass & spooky.  That's why all the kids are saying "skulls."

Fortunately Kirkland Light is totally skulls.  Its light flavored as the name would imply, but not watery.  The flavor has a bit of applesque sweetness and some of the graininess you can typically expect with American macrobrews.  If I had to pick I’d say it’s more St. Louis than Milwaukee, at least as far as the two majors go.  It’s good.  For a light beer Light Beer packs a lot of flavor, pleasant flavor.  It only has 105 calories, so it won’t make you very fat; unless you drink a bunch of them, which is the beer’s one drawback.   At a paltry 4.2% ABV you might have to drink a bunch of Light Beers to have a good time. 

 

Fortunately a lot of beers is kind of the point

Two cases of beer for the price of a case and a half of Miller Lite is a good deal in this life or any other.  Light Beer may not have the catchiest name in the world, but what it lacks in even the most mediocre attempts at creative marketing it makes up for in taste and utterly Spartan cheapness.  I think most people that can stomach a light beer will enjoy the aptly titled Light Beer, and i can say with a healthy degree of certainty that if you even kind of enjoy ramen noodles you will definitely not be disappointed.  Light Beer is just one more reason to shop at Costco.

Ramen Noodles and boobies; FUCKING FINALLY!

Bottomshelf Beer Reviews: Boxer Lager

Now that's what I call marketing

In the Patrick Swayze classic Roadhouse, his character Dalton says, “no one ever wins a fight.”  A bit later in the film he wins a fight by ripping a dude’s fucking throat out, which kind of shits his point I guess; not just because he totally won the fight, but because he looked awesome doing it.  Preach all the pacifism you want, violence is entertaining.  Even In our “enlightened” modern society two dudes punching each other in the face AKA boxing is considered a sport that rakes in millions of dollars a year.  Not that they’ll need the money with Boxer Lager selling itself at “the lowest legal Price.”

 

"LET'S DRINK SOME FUCKING BEER!!!"

You read that right.  I guess in Canada they have laws about how cheap you can sell beers.  Not to get too political, but if laws like that are the price of free healthcare I’d rather fucking die of a treatable illness.  Cheaper beer and free healthcare impact the poorest people of our society the most.  America might have more bums than Canada, but at least they’re all sleeping drunk on the sidewalk most of the day.  Personally, I can’t think of anything scarier than a bunch of homeless dudes in peek physical condition, battle-hardened by the harsh Canadian winter; except maybe Freddy Krueger because he lives in your dreams.

 

I'd hit it, even if I was pretty sure it was Freddy disguised a a hot babe, which says nothing good about me.

I love the whole “lowest legal price” thing.  It’s like they’d give the shit away for free if it wasn’t for the fucking Mounties, and that “fuck you” attitude goes a long way with me.  The owners of Boxer Lager don’t “stick it to the man” by making esoteric beers for neck-bearded Sonic Youth fans, they just make the cheapest beer they can legally sell and put it in a 36-pack.  A fucking 36-pack.  It’s a case of beer and a 12-pack at the same time, kind of like when you see an arcade machine that’s both Ms. Pacman and Galaga.  The only thing better than beer is more beer; and tits I guess.  Boxer Lager is Union made too, so somehow they manage to pay people a living wage, make a profit, and charge the lowest price in the British Commonwealth of Nations.  Also, Boxer Lager has what may be the best beer commercial ever.  It's "Simpsons parody of a beer commercial" good:

Fuck you Tim Burton.

On paper Boxer Lager should be one of my favorite bottomshelf beers, and if it would be if it wasn’t for the flavor.  It’s bad, like almost undrinkable bad even ice-cold.  It goes down sour with a sweet aftertaste.  Boxer Lager’s taste is like all of Tim Burton’s movies for the last 15 years: disappointing in every single way.  I wanted to like it, but it’s the flavor equivalent to Ape-raham Lincoln.  That being said, as disappointing as Boxer Lager may be, nothing about it feels like they pointed a camera at Johnny Depp and said, “act really fucking weird for the next two hours,” which is to say you can tell they’re not phoning it in.  Minhas brewery might not be making the best beer on the bottomshelf, but they really care about what they’re doing.  In that regard Boxer Lager is more like a David Lynch film:  I appreciate everything it’s going for, but Blue Velvet sucked.

 

Seeing Isabella Rossellini naked is almost as good as seeing Ingrid Bergman naked.

 You know what didn’t suck? Roadhouse.  The film did try to inject a nonviolent message into a movie about a philosophy major that beats people up for a living, but I think it worked.  Boxer Lager tries to be a high quality beer at the lowest price imaginable with mixed results.  At least they got the second half right, and it’s not like they go around killing people, at least as far as I know. 

A polar bear fell on me.