Thursday, April 23, 2009

An Alcoholic Study in Contrast

This is my beer fridge.



As you can see, you have some pretty good stuff (Samichlaus, Terrapin Coffee Oatmeal Imperial Stout) slumming with some pretty dreadful stuff (Iron City Light, and the previously mentioned 8 pack of Miller High Life stubbies, of which you can see there are 6 left).

I've had that IC Light for about 6 months, and have been afraid to drink it because I've been told that it's simply the worst beer on the planet. I've had that Samichlaus for over a year, and haven't wanted to drink it because it's such a rare, special beer that I'm waiting for a special occasion, and nothing special enough has come up yet (I think maybe I need to review my standards).

More importantly, I have no idea how to get rid of that Miller High Life. I wonder if beer bottle origamy is possible. Maybe a hat, or a broach, or a pterodactyl...

21 comments:

  1. I note you have a problem. you are treating your good beer the same as your shit beer. you have made them untouchable. use the high life to unclog your kitchen sink and give the IC to a dog. it's always funny to see a dog pissed

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  2. The only reason these beers are on the same shelf is for the purposes of this photo. Normally, the bad beer is one shelf lower and further back in the fridge, much like an Indian wife (figuratively, of course....I realize Indian wives are not normally stuffed into a fridge, although crazier things have happened).

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  3. Steve ... I grew up in Pittsburgh and you DO NOT want to drink that IC Light. You will suffer an enormous headache and almost unrecoverable levels of self loathing afterward.

    Trust me on this. I know.

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  4. I know I don't want to drink it. Having grown up in the Northeast, I'm more than familiar with the reputation of Arn Fuckin' City (I know a guy who tried to convince me IC was better than Yuengling, America's Oldest Brewery... bullshit!). But, I've had some pretty bad beers in my day, so self-loathing isn't outside my wheelhouse.

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  5. Looked in my fridge tonight and all I have left is one little French bottle of cheap shit to drink, that's so bad you wouldn't pour it down the sink.....looks like a nice malt instead for me tonight!

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  6. Was it Kronenbourg, the Stella Artois of France? If so, then yes, I'd pitch it. And any Stella which I happened to find near me as well.

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  7. Here's what you do with the Miller High Life:

    Leave various bottles strewn about Chelsea's front yard.

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  8. Life was so much easier for me before my neighbor went to AA.

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  9. i would drink it after i got piss drunk drinking the good stuff.
    then throw it at your neighbor. probably wouldn't hit them and would just hit their house instead. but we could laugh about it

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  10. Maybe you could use the dud beer for cooking eg a beer batter for frying fish?

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  11. wtf is wrong with stella?

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  12. I refuse to throw out even bad beer. Just drink 6 goods ones to warm up and then force all the bad ones down in a single seating.

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  13. Any beer you wouldn't drink, you wouldn't want to cook with either. Same with wine. Naut et al have it, keep it as the beer to polish off after the good stuff when the taste buds are distracted.

    Or blend it out with good stuff. We tried this with some of our more neurotoxically-overhopped homebrewing efforts at the Old Chateau Dodgy Brewhouse, blended them in the glass with anonymous bland lagers to dilute out the evil. Find some monstrously overhopped Pilsner than you can barely stand to drink more than half a pint of (in NZ Emersons or Speights Pilsners might be contenders) and make beer shandies using other, shitter beer.

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  14. Snow, Stella is Belgium's answer to Heineken. It is ridiculously overpriced, and managed to become popular simply because the douchenozzles running the company created this brilliant marketing campaign based on serving it in a special glass and shaving off the excess head. That's what's wrong with it. It's a friggin' light lager for God's sake. Would you pay $8 for Fosters or Budweiser?

    Abe, not a fan of fish, but beer batter onion rings or in chicken would be fine, I guess.

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  15. I disagree with Dr Y about using the crap beer for cooking, e.g. pancakes. The beer taste doesn't come through in such batters. Trust me, I'm a drinker and eat things like beer battered fish, pancakes and gummy beers.
    Okay, I lied about the gummy beers.
    Otherwise Dr Y has fine advice.

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  16. don't knock the wifebeater man... it's cheap as chips over here and does the job a treat... you cannot begin to mention it in the same breath as fucking bud or fosters...

    i know it's not special in anyway but it's not in the same ballpark as bud and fozzies...

    soon though, i shall be residing en Flandres... the heartland of good beer... and i shall send you updates!

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  17. Dickbar, it's unbelievably expensive here, which of course makes stupid Americans think it's something amazing and exotic, when in reality, it's a basic light lager, along the lines of Warsteiner, Becks, Heineken, Labatt, Molson, Fosters, etc. Paying $8 for something brewed by a monk is perfectly acceptable (a bargain even). $8 for something that is the same quality as something you'd get at a ballpark or hockey arena is robbery.

    Oh, and as far as the ballpark....it's owned by Inbev....the parent company of Becks, Budweiser, and other bullshit light lagers.

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  18. from what I hear, it makes people fart really bad too. I have never had it so I don'y know from first hand knowledge but that is what I hear.

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  19. Wifebeater's parent company only just became parent company of Bud et al so it's hardly fair to blame them for the sins of Busches past. Interestingly the International Lagers are dirt cheap in NZ as a lot of them get brewed under licence - and since a lot of the high quality hops used by the Euro brewers are grown in NZ, and the water is very good too, you get very high quality stuff for cheap (particularly cf Australia, which either gets overpriced imports or poorly concieved local imitations - Sydney-brewed Heineken tastes of sweaty arse compared to the imported stuff.)

    My beer fridge (ie my actual fridge) is currently packed to the gills with yet more cheap Grolsch (imported stuff) - six bucks for a four-pack of 500mL cans.

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  20. My issue with Inbev is that they actively pursued not a good brewer, but Budweiser, a brewery whose stable matches the crap that Inbev already produced. It's not like Tata Motors trying to class up their product line by acquiring Jaguar.

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