Last summer, Mrs P stocked up on all sorts of foodstuffs to get us through the pandemic.
Including some “near beer”. Which it turned out she didn’t like.
But there was one tin left, all these months later.
It had fallen out of a crowded fridge so many times that it was badly dented.
But my ethnic heritage would not allow me simply to throw something out. As my Scottish-and-raised-four-kids-through-the-Depresssion Grammie used to say, “There’s still some good in it.”
So today at lunch I bit the bullet and drank it.
It was as bad as I expected - too sweet, less filling.
But, I finally got to throw the empty tin into the recycling bin. Somewhere, Grammie is smiling with approval.
Next up: five tins of tangerine-flavoured beer. (Don’t ask. )
There’s some great non-alcoholic (well, NA here is 0.5% or less) beer out there these days. I’ve put my drinking days behind me for the foreseeable future, but I was shocked to find how much I like NA beers by Athletic Brewing, Wellbeing Brewing, Big Drop Brewing, and even Sam Adams Just the Haze. I think I also had an NA from Brooklyn Brewing that was pretty good, and a decent one from Lagunitas. It helps if you like hops, as I find the hoppy brews do surprisingly well as NAs. Many of them I couldn’t even tell they were NA. The lager styles haven’t been that great, but I can deal with them (I’ve tried Heineken, Zywiec, Bud, PBR, and Clausthaler.) And I tried a dark style beer from Big Drop (Galactic Extra Dark) that I thought was great.
There’s some good stuff going on out there. The other nice thing about it is that something like an Athletic IPA is only 70 calories, which my middle aged body appreciates.
Of course, there’s always the old trick of starting with the better stuff until you get a decent buzz, then switching to a less expensive recreational beverage. In college we used to get some swill that was maybe a buck a six pack…
Sometimes you can add it to some other beer, mix/ dilute it. Specifically after having your first one. You might also try to add some Everclear to bring it up to beer %'ages, as that helps smooth it out (especially IPA’s)
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