Day: December 1, 2020

Advent Beer #1: Hell by Flötzinger Bräu

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

What’s I’m hoping is that every single beer in this advent calendar is a 16 oz tallboy, and that I don’t get any sissy 12 oz coke cans, because then I might actually feel like I’ll have gotten my money’s worth.

But the first beer in the calendar was this beer I guess is called HELL by Flötzinger Bräu.  Because I do not read a lick of German other than phrases that might’ve been spoken in Wolfenstein 3D or Inglorious Basterds, I have no idea what is actually written on the can, and no idea of what kind of beer it actually was.  Regardless, as I’ve stated before about how I typically haven’t found a German beer that I didn’t like, I figured it probably wasn’t going to be bad.

I cracked it open and poured it into a pint glass, and I suppose that’s going to be my plan throughout the entire month because I tend to think that beer tastes best when it’s in a pint glass, and it was a nice golden color with a very light and subtle aroma.

The taste almost reminded me of an Asian beer, based on the fact that its flavor was about as intense as its aroma, which is to say it was kind of light, and the flavor kind of ends abruptly.  It’s a good flavor, and easy to drink, and I found it to be quite enjoyable.  Like if I were at a party or a wedding reception, and this was the only beer available versus drinking shitty wine or low-shelf spirits, I could easily see myself crushing 3-4 of these without much problem.

According to the snobs at Beer Advocate, this was a lager with an ABV of 5.2%, which makes it a little higher than a Budweiser, but tasted way better.

Either way, this was a good start to the advent calendar.  I wonder if Costcos in other countries are getting the same advent calendar as we are in the United States, or if they’re doing some kind of trading of regions, because I can’t help but feel woefully sorry to whichever country drew the USA advent calendar.  I’d have to imagine it would be the Costco in Shanghai, because they tend to think American shit’s shit doesn’t stink, and would probably tolerate 24 days of Bud, Bud Light, Bud Select, Miller High Life, Miller Lite, MGD, Milwaukee’s Best, you get my point

Holiday writing exercise: Reviewing Costco’s Beer Advent Calendar

~ dannyhong ~ Leave a comment

I’m not entirely sure why I decided to turn this into a writing exercise, but here we are.  Mythical wife heard that Costco was doing a wine advent calendar and being the lush that she is, we basically had to drop everything and head over to Costco, despite the fact that they’re always a madhouse these days because they’re a safe(r) place that mandates masks and the de facto place where people go to hoard and amass supplies, whether they need them immediately or not.

So we go to Costco and surprising nobody, they’re flush out of wine advent calendars.  There’s not even a space where the pallet used to be, because according to employees, they were bum-rushed so quickly and cleaned out that they had ample time to repurpose the floor space and make it look like it had never existed there in the first place.  However, at the entrance of the store, we spotted these beer advent calendars, and as a consolation prize, mythical wife picked one up.

During dinner, out of curiosity I scoped theFacebook Marketplace to see if any shitheads were re-selling the wine advent calendars, and lo and behold, sure enough, there’s someone selling them, for a surprisingly modest $20 markup.  Mythical wife doesn’t even hesitate to tell me to take them up on it, and the following morning, I’m traversing a suburban jungle, find the seller, and make a quick transaction.  Apparently, they had purchased several of them, anticipating the potential resale capabilities.  As I said, shitheads.

Long story short, with the wine advent calendar in tow, the beer advent calendar has been bequeathed to me.  And because  I often find struggles with content to write about, I’ve decided to use this as a means to exercise my writing chops, and write about daily beers, and it should be quite well established that I am the furthest from a Beer Advocate beer snob there could possibly be: I loathe IPAs, I like sours, goses, hefeweizens, lagers, porters, and basically most things that aren’t IPAs.

But most importantly, it’s giving me a reason to write daily, and hopefully I’ll have the gumption and drive to actually follow through with 24 days in a row of reviewing beers that I’ve probably never heard of.  But they’re all German, to which I can’t really say that I’ve yet to encounter a German brew that I didn’t enjoy to some degree.