Some Guy’s Adventures Through the Pint Glass, Part 7

Day 7: “It is something that man was not meant to disturb. Death has always surrounded it. It is not of this Earth.”

The Beer Mystery Case (artist’s conception)

The Beer Mystery Case, like the fabled Ark of the Covenant (which, incidentally, mimics the Case’s design), is steeped in history yet shrouded in secrecy. Its power is both mysterious and mercurial, oftentimes granting its users wondrous gifts, other times inflicting upon them nothing but incomprehensible face-melting terror.

This is why I don't drink Coors Light.

One would be right to wonder, then, if the world might have been better off had the Beer Mystery Case, like the Ark, stayed buried in the Egyptian desert forever. One would be right to wonder the same thing about Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull, too, but that’s neither here nor there.

Frankly, to rightfully question the motivations of the Beer Mystery case is far beyond the scope of mere human understanding. The mere notion of it is as laughable as, say, questioning the wisdom of Ryan Spilborgh’s beard. As some famous long-dead English guy once wrote, ours is not to question why, ours is but to drink some shitty beer and possibly barf.¹

So I, with this essential truth in mind and my fate clearly out of my hands, reached into the Beer Mystery Case and pulled out

Miller Genuine Draft, Miller Brewing Company, Milwaukee, Wisconsin.²

There’s a scene in the mock-rockumentary Spinal Tap where one of the fictional titular band’s albums, Shark Sandwich, is said to have been given a scathing two-word review: “shit sandwich.” Funny though that scene was, rest assured that we here at Bowling in the Dark would never stoop to such cheap, easy vulgarity to make a point.³

Miller Genuine Draft, ready to return from whence it came.

Our biggest complaint about Miller Genuine Draft was not its flavor (which was both thin and displeasingly bitter) or its color (which, as can be seen in the photo above, is unappetizingly similar to certain fluids that nobody in their right mind would contemplate drinking⁴), but that the Mystery Case saw fit to give us four of them.

Disappointing though Miller Genuine Draft is—and despite the red flag that comes up whenever something insists on being advertised as “Genuine” (much like a seedy used-car salesman inserting “honest” into his name)—there are, we have to admit, times where a cold MGD might prove to be welcome. For example, it would serve well as a chaser if you’re in the midst of a Nepalese drinking contest, and drinking an MGD would definitely be preferable to being trapped underground forever in the dark, surrounded by thousands of poisonous snakes. And we’re willing to admit that other good reasons to drink Miller Genuine Draft may indeed exist, but at the moment, none come to mind.

Some Guy’s rugged and adventurous rating for Miller Genuine Draft, then, consists of 1 (one) roasted Nazi henchman and 1 (one) smarmy exploding French archaeologist.

Naughty henchman (l), haughty Frenchman (r).

NOTES

1. Alfred, Lord Tennyson, “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” 1854. Quoted verbatim.

2. Because the Miller and Coors breweries merged in 2008 to become MillerCoors—a name suggesting an almost total lack of imagination—Miller Genuine Draft is, technically speaking, a MillerCoors product. But its creation long predates the merger, and Coors already has plenty to answer for, so I will refrain from blaming them for MGD.

3. We will do it, however, just to be jerks.

4. That is, Coors Light.

Some Guy’s Adventures Through the Pint Glass

Special Aloha Edition

There comes a time in nearly every married man’s life when he realizes that he’ll eventually have to cave in to the relentless pressure, pack his bags, and take that Hawaiian honeymoon his wife has been badgering him about ever since they got married two days earlier.

That time finally came for me not too long ago, and I return with good news: you, too, can make it through the interminable weeks in this hellish tropical paradise if you’re properly prepared. A good way to start is by bolstering yourself against relentlessly pleasant weather, horribly clear water, and nauseatingly beautiful scenery by familiarizing yourself with local customs and, if possible, popular slang terms. The following is far from a comprehensive list, but the terms below—coupled with the fact that everybody down there speaks English anyway—should be enough to get you through the day:

Ohana: family. I didn't actually hear this phrase in Hawaii, but it’s used a lot in Lilo & Stitch, and it seems safe to assume that Disney is as dedicated to accurate portrayal of languages as it is to authentic depiction of alien/islander interaction.

Mahalo: thank you.

Aloha: used interchangeably as both a greeting when arriving and a farewell upon departure. Renders any translation of the Beatles’ 1967 hit song Hello, Goodbye nearly meaningless.

Holy shit, check out the albino: I’m not convinced that this phrase is actually Hawaiian, and I don’t have any idea what it means. For some reason I heard it a lot, though. Usually when I had my shirt off.

Howzit: Hey; hello; what’s up. If you stand there and wait to hear “. . . going?” you will wait for a good long while, and look pretty stupid while you're at it.

Mai tai: Tahitian for “Fuck you, brain, you can’t tell me what to do anymore!!”

Ono: delicious.

This last one will come in handy if you decide to eat or drink anything while you’re in Hawaii, for example,

Primo Island Lager, Primo Brewing Company, Honolulu, Hawaii.

This beer was good, and the book was even better. Can’t say
I’d recommend the forty-five-dollar airport sandwich, though.

Primo Island Lager is, according to the Primo Brewing Company’s own website, ono-licious. Oddly, because ono means delicious (see above, again, if you have the worst memory on Earth), onolicious therefore translates rather clumsily as deliciouslicious.¹ I’m not going to dwell on that here, though; if you feel the need to read an asshole’s opinions on language use, check here, here, here, or here.¹

Know your Onos. From left to right, Oh no; Ohno; Ono; Ono-licious.

Primo Island Lager is not the heavy, thick kind of beer you might drink on a cold snowy night with your hands wrapped around a steaming bowl of hot chili. This is a good thing, of course, because it’s brewed in a place where the temperature rarely dips below the mid-60s. The visionary who brings his meaty, paint-thick winterbrau recipe to the Hawaiian islands is nothing less than a big fat idiot who’d better be prepared to accept failure.

Seriously, though, who really gives a shit how this beer tasted? This is where I drank it:

So without further ado, and at the risk of short-circuiting the positronic brain of any robot who happens to be reading this column, Some Guy’s carefully considered but somewhat logically-circular rating for Primo Island Lager is: Three (3) bottles of Primo Island Lager. High praise indeed.

For more of Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, check here: Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5  Day 6

NOTES

1. Linguistically speaking, this makes as little sense as the half-octopus, half-platypus creature known to science as the platypustopus. You’ve never heard of this animal before, but I know you want one.

2. Wow—looking at it right now, I realize that’s an awful lot of links to me being an asshole about language use. I’ll be happy to point you to a moment when I’m not being an asshole, as soon as one actually presents itself.

Next Time I Would Rather Break Than Bend

Warren Zevon, 1947–2003

The seventh anniversary of the death of Warren Zevon (January 24, 1947–September 7, 2003) passed with little more public attention than he received during most of his lifetime. Zevon had only one American Top 40 hit—1978’s “Werewolves of London”—and while to this day it receives rare but consistent airplay, the only other Zevon song I can recall hearing more than once on the radio in almost thirty-six years of listening is “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.”

At this point, your best bet at finding Warren Zevon on the radio is to wait—not very long—to hear Kid Rock’s “All Summer Long,” a song best described as either a clumsy tribute to or a cruel and unholy bastardization of “Werewolves of London” and Lynyrd Skynyrd’s “Sweet Home Alabama.”

And that’s just not right. Even a thoroughly crappy artist like Kid Rock doesn’t deserve the ignominy of being forever identified with a Kid Rock song, for God’s sake. Warren Zevon’s own music—as opposed to a crappy, mutated mash-up of one of his notable riffs—deserves to be remembered, and I’d like to do what I can to help with that.

This will not be easy. I know almost nothing about Zevon that I didn’t learn just now on Wikipedia,¹ and of the thirty-two Warren Zevon songs in my music collection; five are duplicates² and another three are cover tunes. So you shouldn’t consider this an expert’s comprehensive list of a great artist’s greatest songs, it’s just a humble list of cool tunes that you’re guaranteed to like,³ courtesy of a buddy who just discovered a bunch of thirty-year-old music and wants to pretend he’s better informed than you are. And also, he smells better than you, because he’s me.⁴
 

Werewolves of London: I’m not going to go into this song in any particular detail because you’ve almost certainly heard it. I will mention, however, that the mascot of the Werewolves, a short-lived minor-league baseball team based in London, Ontario, was named Warren Z. Vaughn. And that’s cool.

Mr. Bad Example: Complete with horn section, this is probably the bounciest song you’ll ever hear about an amoral misanthrope who steals, swindles, and whores his way through a charmed life. “Mr. Bad Example” is a great example of Zevon’s deft way with words and an off-kilter sense of humor:

I got a part-time job at my father’s carpet store
Laying tackless stripping, and housewives by the score
I loaded up their furniture, and took it to Spokane
And auctioned off every last naugahyde divan

I’m very well aquainted with the seven deadly sins
I keep a busy schedule trying to fit them in
I’m proud to be a glutton, and I don’t have time for sloth
I'm greedy, and I'm angry, and I don't care who I cross.

My Shit’s Fucked Up: From his 2000 album Life’ll Kill Ya, “My Shit’s Fucked Up” is a wry (and obviously vulgar) complaint about the unstoppable march of aging. Except for the fact that it includes a brilliant cover of “Back in the High Life Again”—which, if you ask me, runs slow, sad circles around Steve Winwood’s version—I know nothing else about Life’ll Kill Ya. If you own it, tell me what you think.




Boom Boom Mancini: I’ve long held a half-baked theory that a songwriter’s talent can be measured by what proportion of his or her songs aren’t about love, sex, partying, or getting out on the dance floor and working it.⁵ This is why I tend to avoid pop and R&B music, and “Boom Boom Mancini” is evidence that my dumb theory may hold water. I wouldn’t have guessed that a song about a boxer would interest me at all, but the driving rhythm and straight-ahead, stripped-down rock sound of “Boom Boom Mancini” changed my mind after the first measure. Plus, there’s not a word in it about love.⁶




Hit Somebody (The Hockey Song): It’s about hockey—the best sport in the world—and it includes a spoken performance from David Letterman. What more can you ask for?⁷

Renegade: The character Zevon creates in “Renegade” displays a desperate and perhaps misplaced pride, a fruitless defiance against a power that he knows will break him. Or at least that’s how I’m reading it; Zevon’s use of post-Civil War and modern-era Southern imagery makes it hard to see his being a renegade as a positive thing, despite some well-crafted verses:

I don’t want to grow old gracefully
I don’t want to go ’til it’s too late
I’ll be some old man in the road somewhere
Kneeling down in the dust by the side of the Interstate

I am a renegade
I've been a rebel all my days

Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead: I was disappointed to find that this song lists few if any things that can be done in Denver, regardless of your body temperature, but it’s a fun little song anyway. The movie Things to Do in Denver When You’re Dead, a critical and box-office disappointment starring Andy Garcia and Christopher Walken, takes its name from the song, rather than the other way around. And except that the song is played over the movie’s end credits, the two aren’t even remotely related. This, frankly, is a good news for the song.


This doesn’t quite exhaust my knowledge of Warren Zevon, but it comes fairly close, and I figure I ought to save the other three songs for next year’s tribute. If you’re willing to drop $6.93 on digital downloads of the songs above, then I’m proud of you and I’ve done my job. Please let me know what you think. On the other hand, if you’ve spent any money on Kid Rock, I don’t want to hear about it.

NOTES

1. Which, of course, means I may well no nothing about him at all.

2. “Werewolves of London,” “Werewolves of London,” “Lawyers, Guns, and Money,” “Lawyers, Guns, and Money,” and “Lawyers, Guns, and Money.”

3. This is not a guarantee at all. Why on Earth would I make a guarantee like that? What the hell do I know about your taste in music? Have we even met?

4. I’m on a horse!

5. Or whatever it is the kids are doing on dance floors these days.

6. You could probably make the case that “the name of the game is be hit and hit back” is about love, but it’d make you a bit of a sicko.

7. This is a rhetorical question. If you have an actual answer to it, please keep it to yourself.

Some Guy’s Adventures Through the Pint Glass, Part 6

Day 6: “I wish it were winter so we could freeze it into ice blocks and skate on it and melt it in the springtime and drink it!”¹

As I sit here poisoning my liver on a warm July night, I can’t help but think that the polar bear has to be the luckiest animal on Earth.

Think about it: name a lazier, more good-for-nothing animal on the planet. Go ahead, try. I dare you. It can’t be done, can it? At the risk of sounding like I’m stealing from someone else’s gig, polar bears are fat, lazy loafers who haven’t had to do a hard day’s work in their whole lives.

At the same time, though, they’ve carefully cultivated a reputation as terrifying, bloody-minded, stone-cold penguin killers. Now, I know what you’re saying:

• “they’re carnivores, killing is in their nature,”
• “polar bears mostly eat seal, not penguin,”
• “there are no penguins in the Arctic, asshole,”²

or even

• “I was with the polar bear that evening, she has an airtight alibi.”

But these trivial excuses become obvious nonsense in the face if incontrovertible photographic proof. Look at the poor little guy—he died so fast, he didn’t even have time to stop smiling.

But take a second look at that photograph. Did you notice the size of the ice floe? It’s tiny—barely the size of an American SUV—and rises little more than a foot or so out of the water. That’s no place to raise a family, and it’s but one small example of a critical global problem: glaciers are receding worldwide, and the Arctic ice pack—the polar bear’s natural habitat—is shrinking and breaking up, leaving these bears with fewer places to loaf and far more time in the water. Less time on solid ground (er, ice) means less time hunting and eating; more time in the water means more drowning and being devoured by MegaShark.

However, the best news of all for these poor lucky bastards is that despite being both lazy slobs and ruthless killing machines, they have somehow retained the ability to be cuter than a whole dump truck full of puppies, and it’s this intrinsic irresistibility that may allow them to dodge a watery doom. People love cute animals—even merciless penguin assassins—and will work their tails off to save them, even if it means shipping ice cube trays up to the North Pole and restocking the Arctic by hand. You really think it’s not about cuteness? Be honest, take a look at the four animals in the following pictures and tell me, if you’re filling up the last three spots on the Ark, which one doesn’t make the cut.

So now that we have this sad polar-bear business wrapped up, I’d like to turn our attention to a subject far more significant and far less publicized: the receding popularity of ice beer, which, much like the polar ice caps, once blanketed vast swaths of the North American continent in chilly misery, turning life into a bleak and perilous struggle for survival.

If you’re too young to remember the Dawn of the Ice Beer,³ ice brewing became popular in the 1990s as a way to increase a beer’s alcohol content⁴ while simultaneously cutting back on that pesky “flavor” thing that, for some brands, was little more than a distracting side effect. Breweries with a reputation for producing complex, flavorful beer—Guinness, New Belgium, Warsteiner, and O’Dell, to name a few⁵—generally steered clear of the “ice beer” fad, whereas Miller, Budweiser, Busch, Natural, and Keystone all jumped in with both feet. So I, despite having avoided ice beer since my college days, have decided to jump in as well by reviewing both

Bud Ice (Anheuser-Busch, St. Louis, Missouri) and
Keystone Ice (Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado).

 

My reaction to Bud Ice was not as negative as I expected, but this is primarily because the details of the tasting are a bit hazy—two bottles of Bud Ice emerged from the Beer Mystery Case on my return from a dinner out with family, and said dinner had involved a couple of 22-ounce glasses of Fat Tire (a beer with a genuine reputation for flavor, courtesy of Fort Collins’ New Belgium Brewery). Upon making it home I poured what I thought were two glasses of water, giving one to my brother-in-law in a display of questionable hospitality, and probably would not have realized my mistake had I not fallen up the stairs a couple of times over the remainder of the evening. Bud Ice is much like Bud Light—and this is not praise—except its taste is a bit thinner, less substantial, and harder to remember the next morning.

On the other hand, my cans of Keystone Ice (motto: “Only 83% as crappy as regular Keystone!”), were my first drink(s) of the evening,⁶ and I was therefore fully aware of my surroundings and in clear control of my beer-tasting faculties. However, that didn’t make all that much of a difference—I left my Keystone Ice experience with no memorable impression of smell or flavor, other than that it tasted sort of like Keystone, but also sort of like Bud Ice. To its credit, though, it did help me get to sleep pretty quickly. 5.9% alcohol content by volume, indeed.

It’s difficult to give an accurate or helpful rating to a drink—in this case, two—that almost completely fails to register in my memory. So instead I’ll give two ratings, because if you’re inclined to buy Keystone or Budweiser in the first place (either their regular or their “ice” versions), odds are your goal is not to slowly savor a tasty beer, but to get a good cheap buzz on and act like a jackass. So, Some Guy’s rating for Bud Ice and Keystone Ice are as follows:

(1) If you’re a grown-up with any sort of developed/sophisticated taste for beer, Bud Ice and Keystone Ice get our lowest rating yet, one (1) happy severed penguin head.

(2) If you’re a college kid on a budget, looking to get loaded on a lonely Friday night without breaking the bank on a high-class beer such as Coors Light, then either Bud Ice or Keystone Ice would be a fine choice. For the sad, sorry purpose of getting you hammered in your dorm room while playing Xbox, Bud Ice and Keystone Ice get three (3) BITTER BEER FACES.

For more of Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, check here: Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5  Day 6

NOTES

1. Barry Badrinath (Jay Chandrasekhar) from Beer Fest, a movie about beer drinking that is only barely watchable even when drunk.

2. You poor, stupid, gullible sap—you’ve bought the polar bears’ shoddy alibi hook, line, and sinker.

3. If you really are too young to remember this, you’re probably too young to drink anyway. Come back and finish reading this column when you grow up, youngster.

4. The increased alcohol content has something to do with how the ice-brewing process removes more of the yeast—or removes it earlier in the process—than happens in regular brewing,thus weakening the flavor. To be honest, I didn’t really look into it. If you actually expected to find beer information in this beer review, then, wow, are you ever barking up the wrong tree.

5. You may not have heard of a couple of these breweries (here I’m addressing potential future readers of Bowling in the Dark, not current actual readers), but they make very tasty beer.

6. There’s a third can still in the fridge, for those of you who are counting down the Case. I’ll get to it later, I’m sure, but probably won’t write about it.

Some Guy's Adventures Through the Pint Glass, Part 5

Day 5: They speak of my drinking, but never think of my thirst. (Scottish proverb)

 

The familiar word claymore comes from the decidedly less-familiar Scottish Gaelic word claidheamh-mòr, which translates (from what I’ve read, anyway; my Gaelic is rusty at best) as “really big sword.” Wielded with both hands by fierce men without pants and often exceeding five feet in length—still talking about the literal sword here, you perverts—the claidheamh-mor for centuries was used to casually and cleanly split human heads in two. 
 

Since the Second World War, the word claymore has probably been more recognizable as the name of an American anti-personnel mine (invented, interestingly, by a Norman A. MacLeod—a name that suggests Scottish heritage, and possibly even a secret life as an immortal swordsman from the Dark Ages). The Claymore mine raised the ante on its ancient counterpart by unleashing destruction not just within its immediate vicinity but up to a range of some one hundred yards.

 

The claymore, in both its medieval and its modern iterations, has spread pain and destruction not only in the country (or countries) of its birth but also worldwide, and bears the blame for the creation of tens if not hundreds of thousands of sobbing widows and orphans.

By an odd coincidence, today’s selection from the Beer Mystery Case is Claymore Scotch Ale, Great Divide Brewing Company, Denver, Colorado.
 

 

One of the first things I noticed about this beer after fifteen or sixteen hours of staring at the label was that, despite its name, Claymore Scotch Ale is not brewed anywhere near Scotland. Denver, Colorado, is in fact quite far from Scotland, separated from it by (among other things) an ocean, island nations populated by leprechauns and/or volcanoes, several American states, and the flattest and least exciting parts of Colorado. That’s a long way for a beer to travel; even the European Swallow is not known to migrate so far (and of course the African Swallow is non-migratory).

 

That said, though, while it may not be brewed in Scotland, it seems safe to assume that Claymore Scotch Ale is nevertheless at least based on some sort of ancient Scottish recipe, one designed to terrify and humiliate the English in medieval drinking contests and later smuggled across the Atlantic hidden in some sort of newly-invented engine part, or possibly a coconut.
 

The beer that resulted from that long trek, Claymore Scotch Ale, has a burned, ashy smell, as if it had been brewed in an old fireplace. And it’s very dark, not in that “dark beer” sort of way but in that “absorbs all light within its event horizon” sort of way. The first sip, however, proves to be surprisingly painless, far less harsh than I anticipated. However, the label’s descriptions of the beer as “hardy” and “wee heavy” show a touch of subtle understatement not expected from the average bit of beer advertising. 
 

What the Great Divide Brewing Company’s marketing department probably should have put on the label was that—if you’ll pardon the crude expression—Claymore Scotch Ale will put hair on your balls.¹ And if you don’t have balls when you start drinking a glass of Claymore, you will by the time you’re done. 
 

God help you if you drink two.

 
The first few sips left a noticeable and not-altogether-pleasant aftertaste, but by the end of my second glass, that aftertaste has developed into something far more palatable, sweeter and with the barest suggestion of chocolate. Also, I’m suddenly aware that I can no longer feel my feet.
 
Scotland has given the world the steam engine, the flush toilet, the telephone (which was invented in America, but by a Scot), several good films starring Sean Connery² and Brian Cox, and “Auld Lang Syne.” On the other hand, not everything to come out of Scotland was genius; they’re also responsible for the kilt—known to Scottish Buddhists as trou wu trou³—and the caber toss, which, while not stupid, crazy, or cruel, still ranks right up there with chess boxing as one of the weirdest sports on Earth.

 

It’s hard to say whether Claymore Scotch Ale belongs in the genius category or the kilt-wearing/caber-tossing category⁴—possibly because I’ve had two of them on top of an early-afternoon black-and-tan, so clearly my judgment of good ideas vs. stupid ones is more than a little suspect. I’m happy to report, though, that this is a pretty damned good beer, and if I survive the hangover with my vision intact, I’ll probably find my way to the liquor store sooner or later for a couple more Claymores.
 

Some Guy’s rating for Claymore Scotch Ale: four thumbs up, two tossed cabers, and one crippling, eyeball-bruising headache.⁵

For more of Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, check here: Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5  Day 6

NOTES

1. If you won’t pardon the expression, please stop reading before you get to this point of the review.

2. Also The Avengers and The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen.

3. Translated roughly as “pants without pants.”

4. Please keep in mind, angry Scottish and Scottish-American readers, that I’m not actually disparaging kilt-wearing, caber-tossing, or being Scottish. I’m merely suggesting that they’re not quite as brilliant, all things considered, as the steam engine or the flush toilet. Disagree with me all you want, but please, put down the giant tree.

5. I can’t help but notice that I have few, if any, pictures of actual Scots in this column. As much as that sucks for Scotland, and probably for my credibility, I suppose it’s appropriate for a review of a Scotch ale brewed some 4,400 miles from Scotland. And it’s probably no weirder than the fact that in Highlander, the 100%-Scottish Sean Connery plays a Spaniard, and the Scottish character (Duncan MacLeod) is played by a Frenchman. Although if this is the weirdest thing you can find in a movie about a 400-year-old Scotsman wielding a samurai sword in a worldwide fight for survival against other immortals who die only when their heads are chopped off, then you may be paying attention to the wrong parts of the movie.

Some Guy’s Adventures Through the Pint Glass, Part 4

Day 4: Thinking of the immortal words of Socrates, who said, “. . . I drank what?”

Nestled against an unforgiving shoulder of the Rocky Mountains is Golden, Colorado, home of the Colorado School of Mines, a nationally-renowned engineering school. The small but prestigious Mines is known for accepting a wide selection of gifted high school nerdlings, dorks, and brainiacs and transforming them—through the liberal application of heat, pressure, and homework—into shockingly successful paycheck magnets who have learned to design, build, test, demolish, or extract from the bosom of the Earth things that regular folks like you and me probably can’t even spell.

While you were doing kegstands, going shirtless in 5° weather to a football game, vomiting into your shoes (or somebody else’s), or showing up drunk, stoned, or naked to final exams, your contemporaries at the School of Mines were reading, computing, studying, stressing out, having minor emotional breakdowns, and then studying some more. Pressed to excel, the students at the Colorado School of Mines show a drive and motivation that matches their extreme intelligence, and this is why they’re out there earning bushels of money while the rest of us vegetate in front of the computer for hours on end, reading (or writing) pointless drivel² instead of checking the classified section for jobs.

. . . or at least that’s what they want you to believe, and by and large, the public has bought it. A closer look by a trained eye, however, reveals startling evidence to suggest that Mines students aren’t nearly as smart as they look:

First of all, they’ve freely chosen to live in a town that, on its best days, tends to smell like a frat-house carpet; 

Second, they voluntarily sequester themselves in an environment where the male-to-female ratio approaches roughly 1,732 to 1³;

Third—and most important—Mines students, on the relatively few times where they do relax (weekends, mostly, but also during E-Days, a traditional yearly celebration of drinking, games, and social interaction better described as the Orgy of Normalcy), all these alleged geniuses voluntarily and openly drink gallons upon gallons of

Coors Light, Coors Brewing Company, Golden, Colorado. 
 

It pains me to criticize any sort of alcoholic beverage, because they’re all very close to my heart, like beloved children that make me fall over and say rude things to strangers. And I realize that by criticizing Coors Light, I risk being savagely beaten by an angry mob of Orediggers swinging slide rules and graphing calculators, but I can’t help but tell the truth: this beer sucks.

Not only does Coors Light have an unfortunate tendency to taste like Windex⁴ when not sufficiently refrigerated, but also even its own advertising department makes it clear that even they don’t like the beer. Think about this: Coors Light, the “Silver Bullet,” is or recently was advertized as “the coldest-tasting beer in the world.” The coldest-tasting beer in the world. Seriously.

Look, people, cold is not a flavor. This is as dumb as calling it “the tallest-smelling beer in the world”—even if it’s true, it’s meaningless.

And beyond its coldness, you’ll rarely find flavor mentioned at all in Coors Light’s advertising. Instead, you’ll be told that the little mountains on each can will turn blue when the beer is cold. I can only assume that this was developed for beer drinkers with no nerve endings in their hands or tongues, because feeling a cold beer can is usually a good way of telling if it’s cold, and if that doesn’t work, actually drinking the beer generally does the trick.⁵

But that’s neither here nor there—more important is this: what does it tell you when the best selling point the marketing folks can find has to do with the can they put the beer in?

A: It tells you that this beer sucks (see above). If the packaging of your product is an actual selling point, you really ought to consider improving your product.

Don’t get me wrong, Coors Light isn’t poisonous or anything; I’ve had several drinks that were worse and not only lived through it, but probably became a better person for it. Coors Light is merely a colossal disappointment for somebody looking for a complex, flavorful beer. It’s certainly more than adequate as a chaser for that shot you’re going to regret in about forty-five minutes, or for washing down stronger drinks like unsweetened lemonade or lukewarm tap water. I don’t know how old you are, but no matter how young or healthy you are, you have only a finite number of drinks left to drink before you kick off. Make sure you make the right choice.

I’m afraid I have to give Coors Light my lowest rating yet: Three (3) snarling werewolves, one for each can of Silver Bullet that came out of the Beer Mystery Case.

For more of Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, check here: Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5  Day 6

NOTES
1. For example, I’ve never been able to spell “skyscraper” or “coal.”
2. Please note the proper spelling, drivel instead of dribble. As internet misspellings go, this one bugs me almost as much as “wallah” for “voilà.”
3. It could be argued that the skewed male-to-female ratio at the School of Mines does support the notion that the female students are pretty smart . . . but as women in Alaska like to say, the odds may be good, but the goods are odd.
4. Yes, I know what Windex tastes like. I suppose I’m going to get a lecture about this. What are you, my mother?
5. And if your tongue can’t tell you whether the beer is cold, what the hell does it matter what temperature it’s at anyway?

Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, Part 3

Day 3: “All I want out of life is when I walk down the street people say ‘There goes the greatest beer that ever lived.’”

The third selection from the Mystery Beer Case is our second from the Boston Beer Company—whose drinks had for a while been produced (strangely enough) by the Pittsburgh Brewing Company, and are now brewed primarily in Cincinnati, Ohio. Geographical oddities aside, I'm pleased to announce that rather than throwing another weirdo lemon-rind hefeweizen out of left field, the Case has delivered the brewery’s flagship brand,

Samuel Adams Boston Lager, Boston/Cincinnati/Pittsburgh, Massachusetts/Ohio/Pennsylvania.

A Boston Lager is a peculiar brand of beer that, despite being an exasperating and sometimes embarrassing failure for more than eight decades, remained inexplicably popular throughout the twentieth century not only in the Massachusetts area but also, to a somewhat lesser degree, nationwide.

Considered one of the top beers in the world until 1918, the Boston Lager went into a devastating eighty-six year drought in which it absolutely, undeniably sucked—sometimes failing quietly and subtly, at other times imploding tragically on the world's biggest stage—year after fruitless year, leaving behind a trail of increasingly frustrated and embittered supporters.

Rather than placing the blame fairly on a long history of substandard ingredients, poor recipes, and incompetent management, these poor demented fans of the Boston Lager spent most of their time venting their frustrations on more popular and successful beers from the New York City area, or conjuring up wild theories about a mystical Curse supposedly laid upon their hapless drink.

The Boston Lager finally regained some respect after the turn of the century when, in September 2004, it swept a slumping Coors Extra Gold in a four-game series, ending its long drought and once again holding sway as the World Champion of Beer. After the Boston Lager recaptured the championship in 2007, it effectively reestablished itself as a decent drink—one its fans could be proud of—instead of little more than an expensive punch line.

On a side note, its resurgence has revealed an unfortunate side effect: countless fans of the Boston Lager—for the most part an almost-pathetic and sympathetically muted, fatalistic bunch during their team’s drink’s long slump—have, thanks to their beer’s achieving a long-awaited modicum of success, revealed a tendency to be cocky, loudmouthed, insufferable pricks. Contrary to what folks might have wanted to believe, Boston fans weren’t lovable losers, but merely tolerable losers—and once they could shed the “loser” tag, the “tolerable” tag was quick to follow.

Given its history, it’s not surprising to find the Samuel Adams Boston Lager to be a touch on the dark side, more than a little bitter, and even a bit off-putting. It has an alcohol content of 4.75%—which, by an unusual coincidence, was also Babe Ruth’s alcohol content in 1918, his last season in Boston—and to be honest, it’s a bit too hoppy for my tastes. Drinkers who prefer a strong flavor and aroma, however, would do well to give this beer a chance.

Samuel Adams Boston Lager is a beer to be sipped, not hurried through—unless, of course, you find out you hate it and want to move on to the next drink as quickly as possible. It’s dark and robust enough to be a good winter beer, best served slightly warm, when the night outside is as cold as Ted Williams’ head. While the Boston Beer Company definitely hasn’t made my favorite beer, they know what they’re trying to do with  Samuel Adams Boston Lager, and they do it well. Some Guy’s rating for Samuel Adams Boston Lager: one (1) 1978 Game 163 home run by Bucky F. Dent.

For more of Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, check here: Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5  Day 6

Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, Part 2

Day two: Give me liberty, or give me drinks

The Research Department here at Bowling in the Dark recently completed an exhaustive cross-cultural national survey, compiling detailed information about average Americans’ familiarity with their nation’s history. We’ve learned that despite a significant emphasis on American history at all levels of public schooling, most Americans’ grasp of their own national origins can be disappointingly spotty.

For example, the following are some of the better-informed answers we received regarding a short list of prominent figures from the American Revolution:

George Washington: believed to have chopped down a cherry tree and then thrown it across the Potomac River, President Washington prevaricated before a Congressional inquiry into the subject, stating that “it depends on what the meaning of the word ‘cherry’ is.”

Thomas Jefferson: In-depth research has shown that Thomas Jefferson may have slept with one of his slaves. A tiny community of pedantic nitpickers¹ said something about Jefferson writing something or other, holding some sort of office, and maybe hanging out with, like, French people or something, but honestly, we couldn’t find any real Americans who actually gave a crap. As the director of the Thomas Jefferson Institute explained, “Dude, he was having sex. That’s fucking awesome.”

John Paul Jones: Sea captain, scourge of the British Navy, and Led Zeppelin bassist, 1775–1980. Remarkably well-preserved for a 263-year-old.² When ordered by the captain of the HMS Serapis to keep the noise down, he famously replied, “I have not yet turned on my amp!”

Benjamin Franklin: a famous colonial inventor, writer, publisher, statesman, and amateur kite-flyer, Franklin was the first to prove the theory that, when electrocuted, the average American shits his pants in a most undignified manner. To hide his shame, Franklin moved to France, where became famous for wearing a fur cap.

Nathan Hale: Gave one single measly life to his country, and has spent the last two hundred fifty years dining out on it. “I regret that I blah blah blah something, something, whatever.” Why don’t you just shut up and pay your own bar tab once in a while, you big fat freeloader.

Abraham Lincoln: Despite being born more than three decades after the signing of the Declaration of Independence, Abraham Lincoln is warmly remembered as a hero of the American Revolution. An experienced attorney and a splendid orator, Lincoln first gained renown for his spirited presidential debates against the 2'4" Stephen Douglas. The towering Lincoln, with a confident grasp of the issues at hand, a wealth of knowledge at his command, and a charmingly rustic delivery characteristic of his rural upbringing, crushed the diminutive Douglas in their final debate with a single blow from his massive, gnarled fist.

John Adams: Star of the movie musical 1776, this often-marginalized hero of the republic was reintroduced to the American public and a whole new generation of awestruck schoolchildren as the voice of a talking car.

Samuel Adams: the Beer Guy. Yep, that’s right, probably the most recognizable hero from the American Revolution—except, of course, for the dude that had sex—is Samuel Adams, the guy that makes that beer. Rather than delve into the complex and probably disappointing reasons why this is the case, or get into a tirade about the state of the American educational system,³ let’s just recognize this for what it is—a really convenient segue into discussing today’s beer selection:

Samuel Adams Coastal Wheat, Boston Beer Company, Boston, Massachusetts (or possibly Cincinnati, Ohio).

While I rarely refuse a wheat beer if one is offered to me, I don’t usually go out of my way to order them. I don’t generally mind the flavor, but something about their murkiness is off-putting. A clear drink (such as last installment’s Carlsberg) is trustworthy: you can tell there’s no disgusting little floaties in it. And a stout—Guinness, for example—is fine too, because frankly it could be filled with a handful of hammered little tadpoles swimming every which way, and I wouldn’t have any idea. So that’s fine. A wheat beer, on the other hand, seems actually designed to be hazy—as if it’s taunting me—and I’m not a big fan of that.⁴

Sam Adams’ Coastal Wheat did indeed come out of the bottle a touch cloudy, though not as much as I’d expected. I sensed a slightly fruity odor, and sure enough, a quick glance at the label confirmed that this is a “Wheat Ale brewed with Lemon Peel.” The label fails to explain, however, why the beer is brewed with the shittiest part of the lemon, the part that nobody ever, ever eats. I suspect that the Redcoats took all the genuinely edible parts of our colonial lemons, leaving stout patriots like Adams to throw whatever scraps they could find into their beer. We’re lucky the Boston Beer Company chose this recipe; research indicates that Samuel Adams had also developed brews that made use of fish heads, newsprint, and tea leaves dredged back out of Boston Harbor.

That said, though, Samuel Adams Coastal Wheat is a pretty good beer. It’s a refreshing break after a long day of whatever the hell it is I do all day. While I may not go out of my way to buy it for myself any time soon—in part because I still have almost 90% of the Mystery Case left—I certainly wouldn’t turn one down if it were offered to me.

Some Guy’s abitrary but indisputably accurate rating for Samuel Adams Coastal Wheat: Two (2) lanterns hanging in the steeple of the Old North Church.

For more of Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, check here: Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5  Day 6

NOTES
1. I think they described themselves as “historians,” whatever the hell that means.
2. He must be Haitian.
3. Or the possibility that I may have simply made up one or two of the above facts about our founding fathers, and the American public’s beliefs about them. It’s also possible that I made up the survey . . . and also our Research Department.
4. I drink pulp-free orange juice, too, which at least means I’m consistent. I don’t see any reason why you’d need or want to know what kind of orange juice I drink, though, which is why I’ve put it here in the footnotes. Don’t tell me you actually waste time reading the footnotes.

Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass

Day One: The Origins of the Beer Mystery Case

Like most Americans, for years I’d heard about the mesmerizing and mostly mythical Beer Mystery Case in the usual legends and bedtime stories, but until very recently I had never actually seen one in person. Imagine my surprise, then, when I discovered a Beer Mystery Case waiting patiently in my office a few days ago—a gift from a grateful if somewhat too-generous friend who has stashed some of her extra furniture in my basement.

I was immediately taken in by the Case’s cagey label (“What’s in the box? I bet it’s tasty and smooth!”) and its tantalizing hint of the potential danger within (“No returns! No peeking! No kidding!”), and without hesitation I swore to myself that I would fulfill the promise of the Beer Mystery Case by savoring each and every unknown drink within and, if the fates smiled on me, getting stupid drunk¹ in the process.

As I continued to consider the Case, however, I came to the conclusion that both the truth and the joy of the Great Adventure of the Beer Mystery Case shouldn’t be mine only, but rather should be shared with the world. Not literally, of course—I’m not interested in any of that “I’d like to buy the world a Coke” bullshit—but by chronicling all its sights, sounds, flavors, and drunken stumblings for posterity. I hope that, much like the expeditions of Robert Falcon Scott, Sir John Franklin, or George Mallory, my foray to the unknown—in this case, a humble effort to get plastered—will, in some small way, broaden and enrich the human experience.

Unfortunately, while I have sixteen years of experience as an enthusiastic beer drinker (or thirteen years, if my mom is reading this), I am far from a connoisseur, and my analysis will likely suffer as a result. In my nine years of college I didn’t really aim to drink in bulk, but even now, my purpose in drinking is to socialize with friends and enjoy familiar tastes, rather than to sip slowly to savor and analyze a bouquet of new and subtle flavors, or to exercise an aficionado’s extensive command of descriptive language.

But what I lack in vocabulary, I more than make up for with plenty of, uh—whatever that word is. So with that in mind, and having been inspired by melancholy Dane Sven Kramer’s Olympic record in the men’s 5,000-meter speedskating (rather than his disqualification in the 10,000 a few days later), the following are my observations about

1. Carlsberg, brewed in Copenhagen, Denm—shit, hang on a second, I'm out of beer. I should have started drinking after I started writing, not before. Now the bottle is empty, and I haven’t observed a damned thing.

As luck would have it, though, the Beer Mystery Case contains a second bottle of

1. Carlsberg, brewed in Copenhagen, Denmark. This beer, as my sources inform me, is what’s called a “pale lager,” and indeed my first reaction was to wonder if “Carlsberg” was Danish for “Bud Light,” which is, of course, American slang for “tap water.” The first sip of Carlsberg, however, proves to have both a robust flavor and hints of alcohol content,² quickly putting to rest my suspicions about its wussiness.

Carlsberg is refreshingly light without being thin, smooth, not too filling, and very drinkable.³ If you’re a less-experienced drinker getting your hands on Carlsberg for the first time, its flavor and approachability definitely increase your odds of inadvertently drinking well beyond your tolerance and coming to your senses several hours later in an unfamiliar house, with your pants on inside-out, making out with a coat rack that’s far less attractive than you initially thought.⁴

Of course, depending on your particular goals for the evening, this can be interpreted as a positive or a negative.

Some notes on packaging: while most beer bottles are wrapped by an adhesive paper label, the body of this bottle is bare, adorned only by the word “Carlsberg” molded into the glass itself, spelled out vertically from bottom to top. This turns out to be a problematic design decision; the curious drinker has to decide between deciphering this cryptic message and not pouring beer into his lap. Note to self: find dry pants.


Final analysis: I have yet to develop a ratings system for the Beer Mystery Case, and, having finished two drinks, I won’t bother to try. My official and legally binding rating for Carlsber’s pale lager, therefore, is one (1) speedskating gold medal and a single (1) bronze in, um, freestyle moguls.⁵

Please check back frequently⁶ for the next installment, in which I will describe one of my favorite drinks—unless it’s something I hate, or one I’ve never tried before. I just don’t know—such is the beauty of the Beer Mystery Case.

For more of Some Guy’s Adventures through the Pint Glass, check here: Day 1  Day 2  Day 3  Day 4  Day 5  Day 6

NOTES
1. Several times.
2. “Robust” is the kind of word that I figure a real beer reviewer would say, so I’m going to use it a lot. Other highfalutin and/or pretentious words I hope to work in as if I genuinely knew how use them include “oaky,” “undertones,” “bouquet,” "fruit bomb," “vituperative, “splenetic,” and “hammered.” Only one of those actually makes sense to me, and I don’t know if any of the rest actually apply to beer drinking, but I like how they sound.
3. I use “drinkable” here despite being fully aware that the notion of “drinkability,” as the center of an advertising campaign, is probably the fourth-dumbest idea in the history of marketing.
4. I know this because I . . . yeah, I heard it happened to, uh, some guy I know.
5. I hereby reserve the right to adjust my rating steeply downwards tomorrow, if the headache already developing behind my right eye turns out to be a hangover.
6. And tell your friends. Unless you hate us, and think this is a waste of time, in which case, tell your enemies.