(click on the picture for higher resolution so you can clearly see the awesome kangaroos)
Southpaw Light
Drinking Southpaw Light conjures up memories of the summer between my freshman and sophomore year of college. I’d just started taking a liking to beer (yes, there was a time when Matt Johnson actually didn’t like beer all that much. Hard to fathom, I know) my freshman year of college and needed something cheap to drink when hanging out with my friends in the summer. I was working a miserable temp job at a bank where I had to wear a monkey suit and tie just to sit in a file room all day and rearrange some mortgage papers to occasionally look busy in between games of computer solitaire and listening to my new my Faith No More and Marcy Playground (shut up, you know you loved that Sex and Candy song too) cds all for the princely sum of $7.50 an hour. Southpaw Light fit that bill perfectly as it was only about $5 or so for a 12 pack and you could get a keg of it for about $30 or $35.
Southpaw Light pours out a nice golden brown. There’s a nice foamy head on it but it dissipates fairly quickly, not that it really matters. It goes down very easily with not much carbonation. The taste is pretty light but I wouldn’t call it watery. The surprising thing about the taste is that it’s 5% alcohol and most light beer is less than 4.5% or so.
I love Southpaw Light’s cans and bottles. Their mascots seem to be two kangaroos who enjoy playing and watching sports together. The bottles have them doing various activities while the logo on the cans all seem to have them sharing a couple of beers after boxing each other. I have to say as mascots go, that’s pretty badass. I can’t think of any other beer that uses a kangaroo as a mascot let alone boxing kangaroos. There’s really not much else special about the cans or bottles but I’m going to give Southpaw Light a solid 4 Kelly Bundys for can/bottle attractiveness based solely on their unique mascot.
All in all I highly recommend Southpaw Light. It’s fairly easy to find (although not here in Schwagville, USA aka Charlottesville, Va), goes down smooth and has a pretty high alcohol content for a light beer so you can get a nice buzz. I recently bought a 24 pack of Southpaw Light cans for about $12 in Charlotte, NC so the price is right. I’m going to give Southpaw Light 4 Bundy Faces. It was a welcome return to the cheap beers of the good old US of A after a month of drinking cheap beers that were likely laced with asbestos or Chinese coal factory run-off in Hong Kong.
