Hong Kong Mega Post

I went on a cheap beer binge during my last weekend in Hong Kong. I figured I’d never get the chance to try most of these beers again so I bought a bunch of single cans of beer. Each of these were less than $4HK which translates into roughly $0.50US. Are there better beers to be had in Hong Kong? Perhaps. Are there cheaper beers to be had? Not in this humble reviewer’s opinion.

Bear Beer

This entry comes to us from Harboes brewery. Goes down very smooth. Nice bite at the beginning. No real after taste but that’s good b/c most beers that have after taste are gross. The can is a nice solid green and I love that their mascot is a polar bear. Very unique. I like the crown logo as well. 5% alcohol so you can get a fairly good buzz. Pours out with a nice head, golden brown color. About $3.50 for a can which works out to 45 cents US so a good value. I’m going to give Bear Beer 4 Bundy Faces.

Barrel 1850

Nothing stands out about this beer at all. It’s not good but it’s not terrible. It’s almost as if someone found a way to bump the alcohol content of water to 4.8%. People like to make fun of American light beer for being watery and looking like pee but this same criticism can be levied at Barrel 1850 and it’s not even a light beer. I’m also lukewarm on the can. It tries hard but the red, blue and gold color scheme doesn’t really work for me. Just seems like they were trying too hard to make their non-descript beer look different. Well it got me to buy a single can of it for $3HK (about 39 cent US) but that’s about the nicest thing I can say. I can’t give it more than 2 Bundy Faces.

Pearl River Lager

This beer was skunky going down. Very thin taste. The only thing that saves it from getting less than 1 Bundy Face is that the taste isn’t all that actively bad. It’s pretty terrible at the beginning and gets mediocre from there. Kind of like 95% of all songs made after 1996. Very watery. The can is nothing to write home about either, that is unless you live in a place like St. Olaf, Minnesota. Then again, St. Olaf can boast that it’s the birthplace of Rose Nylund , is home to the Butter Queen competition, the Milk Diving competition and The Day of Wheat festival. See, this beer is so boring that the most interesting thing in this rant is the fictional hometown of one of the Golden Girls. I have to rate it 1.5 Bundy Faces.

Classic 110

Another entry from Harboes. Disappointing compared to Bear Beer. Pours out very dark and with a bigger head than a guy with hydrocephalus. It has a malty aftertaste that borders on skunky. The initial taste isn’t very good and the can isn’t anything special either. I have professed a love of understated designs in the past but there’s absolutely nothing that makes this can stand out. It’s dark green and says Classic 110 on it and that’s about it. I can only give it 1 Bundy Face in good conscience.

San Miguel Light

I was excited to finally find a light beer in Hong Kong but to say that it did not live up to expectations is a severe understatement. This beer was skunkier than Pepe LePew after getting sprayed by another skunk. As far as the aftertaste, if you ever put one of your action figures in your mouth as a kid and remember the taste, that’s what San Mig tastes like; cheap plastic. The can sucks as well. They couldn’t even be bothered to write the whole name of the beer on the can (I know Bud Light does this but they can get away with it as they're a fairly iconic brand) and it has ugly diagonal stripes on the can. The crest is supposed to be a lion but looks like some sort of walrus instead. The picture on the can is of a bottle of San Mig Light. How stupid is that? About the only cool thing on the can is that on the side, it says, “The only beer that nourishes true friendship.” Pretty good slogan although it’s a complete lie. If someone offered me a San Mig Light, I’d be more likely to punch them in the face than shake their hand. I’d rather drink the milk from a mother mole. This beer gets 0 Bundy Faces and likes it. As a matter of fact, I'm going to give this one a Smoking Peg.

Is Predators one of the greatest movie of all time? Yes

Where in the hell did this movie come from? I was watching TV last week and saw a preview for Predators, a movie dripping with awesome, that I had never heard of and was due out this week. How in the fuck did I miss this? My first thought was: it's probably low budget. But I quickly learned that it starred Adrien Brody and Laurence Fishburne, so it's at least got a decent sized budget. My next and final guess was that it must be awful. Also wrong, because after watching it yesterday I learned that it's fucking awesome. In addition to Brody and Fishburne it stars Eric Foreman from That's 70's Show, some hot Brazilian chick, Boyd Crowder from Justified and Danny Trejo. That's an A+ cast, considering that the movie is set on another planet, and there are zero other humans (actually there is a nameless Chinese guy, African guy and Russian guy, but you can guess what happens to them).

My blood got pumping during the opening credits actually, when I saw that the film was produced by Robert Rodriguez and Trouble Maker studios, the studio that has brought us such legendary films as From Dusk to Dawn, The Faculty, Sin City and Machete. There was actually a Machete Preview before the movie, and holy shit that looks awesome as well. The general premise of Predators is that the predators kidnap soldiers, hit men, mercenaries and psychos from earth, transport them to some alien planet and hunt them for sport. Just typing that made me tear up. So a bunch of loner whack jobs must team up against predators, their creepy alien dogs and booby traps set by other now dead humans in order to stay alive. That's it. No big "twists", love themed subplots or boring dialog. A day after watching Predators, I still can't think of one thing about it that isn't awesome.

Knight Lager

Now most of you reading this know that I’m currently in Hong Kong for work for a month. Now Hong Kong has lots of things but cheap beer isn’t one of them…or so I thought. Most beer here are imported from other countries and lots of them are “fancy man” beers. Also when you buy beer here, you’re either buying 4 packs or 640ml individual bottles. However, when I went up to Victoria Peak to do some sightseeing, I ran across a grocery store that had 12 packs. My curiosity was piqued so I browsed their beer aisle. There were the usual suspects but I ran across a 12 pack that I couldn’t pass up. Knight Lager. It was 28HKD which is roughly $3.50 or so in USD. I couldn’t pass up an opportunity to try Hong Kong’s version of cheap beer even if it meant that I had to lug the 12 pack onto the tram back down the mountain.

First off, I’m going to use Bushey’s extended Bundy Scale which includes Kelly Bundy and Steve Rhodes heads. Since I basically had to go to a grocery store on the top of a mountain in Hong Kong to find Knight Lager, I’m going to give it 5 Steve Rhodes heads. The can says it was brewed by the San Miguel Brewery in New Territories, Hong Kong but I prefer to think that instead of being the beer that the San Miguel company scrapes out of the bottom of the barrel after they finish brewing and bottling their main product, that it was brewed by enlightened monks who came up with the recipe for the beer after an intense round of meditation. Unfortunately, the former is far more likely.

Now for can attractiveness. I have to give Knight 5 Kelly Bundys. I like the logo and can design a lot. The dark blue can and regal design conjures up memories of my favorite beer of all-time, Strohs. I also like the vague claims that Knight Lager is “Export Quality” and “Special Lager”. What exactly constitutes a beer that is “Export Quality”? I have no clue but I like the fact that they’re bold enough to say that their beer is awesome enough that other countries should buy it. Also, on the side of the can, it says, “Knight Lager is brewed from the finest ingredients, delivering the full rich taste of a truly special beer.” Now, what those ingredients are is never stated. I learned from Leon Gillespie, a friend of mine here and the boyfriend of my co-worker Emily,that cheap beer here in Hong Kong is likely to be rife with chemicals so those special ingredients most likely include paint thinner or anti-freeze so it’s probably best you don’t know what’s in Knight Lager.

Well, now that we’ve covered scarcity and attractiveness, we need to cover the main thing, the taste. To say I’m disappointed is an understatement. For a beer that comes in such a cool can and that you can only find in a random grocery store on top of a mountain the taste just isn’t there. The first one I drank actually was kind of bad. Went down kind of harsh and had a skunky aftertaste. I guess maybe I got the one terrible one in the batch (probably went a little heavy on the anti-freeze in that one) b/c the subsequent ones I’ve had haven’t tasted like much. I’ve had 5 of them in the days since the initial one I drank and while they’ve gone down smooth, the taste just isn’t there. It’s a light lager but that doesn’t mean that the taste should be non-existent. However, it clocks in at 4.5% so you probably get a pretty good buzz without having to drink a whole lot of them. Which is a good thing b/c according to Leon, a Knight Lager hangover is not something you want to experience. He’s also used Knight Lager to play a game called “Hermit” with his friends. Hermit involves you and your friends each getting a 12 pack or a set amount of beer. You each go into a separate room with no lights, no tv, no cell phone, no outside stimuli of any kind and you can’t leave without finishing all of your beer. Whoever is the first one to finish wins. What you win I don’t know but I’m sure winning a game of Hermit is something you can put on your resume. In any case, I’m only going to give Knight Lager 2.5 Bundy Heads overall. The taste isn’t offensive or anything but it’s just not memorable. It gets an extra .5 Bundy Heads because of the extremely cheap price.

Beer sales expected to drop, Vortex bottle still stupid

Finally, a reason for the Vortex bottle from Miller. With beer sales expected to drop, beer makers are going to do anything to grab our attention this summer, even if it means make beer in bottles that look like this

Who are the ad wizards that decided people would want to drink beer out of a bottle that looks like the drill-mobile from Total Recall? But is it really any worse than their current campaign, the one where the female bartender tells the guy to come back and order a Miller Lite when he's a real man? Who the fuck do they think they are? It's Miller Lite you stupid bitch, it tastes like asshole. The guy clearly doesn't want a fancy man beer, he's in a bar that serves Miller Lite. And sassy bartender, take a look in the mirror. You look like a supermodel, and you're apparently funny as hell, but yet you work in a bar whose best beer is Miller Lite. So, you're most likely retarded. But yeah, feel free to hurl insults at the poor bastard who has to patronize a bar whose top shelf beer is Miller Lite which is served to you by a rude dumbass.

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Mickey's

I've only had Mickey's a few times but it was my first foray into the world of malt liquor when I was 18 or so. The Ugly Kid Joe song, "Panhandling Prince" starts off with the lyrics, "Sittin on a rusty park bench baby, not much else to do/Smoke cigarettes and drink my Mickey's fine malt liquor brew". Mickey's isn't overly terrible or anything but it's definitely something you'd probably find a homeless guy drinking out of a paper bag.

Mickey's is pretty watery. I'd say the best word to describe the taste of it is "thin". Just doesn't taste like much of anything. It clocks in at 5.6% alcohol so it'll likely get you where you need to go. However b/c it has about as much taste as the average NBA player when it comes to picking tattoos, it'll be kind of a boring trip.

Mickey's comes in a grenade style bottle which is kind of cool and they have a good looking mascot and logo. Each beer has some sort of riddle under the cap which will give you a few minutes of entertainment. However, due to its blandness, I can't give it more than two Bundy Faces. When the most memorable thing about your beer is the fact that it's mentioned in an Ugly Kid Joe song, well, your beer just ain't memorable.

Iron City

My good friend Aaron Klueber introduced me to the wonderful world of Pennsylvania beers during my sophomore year of college at The U. We didn't get to drink IC very much back then as we were bigger Strohs drinkers and it was pretty hard to find IC in South Florida but we relished every opportunity we got to drink it. We specifically made trips to Primanti Brothers sub shop in Ft. Lauderdale just so we could enjoy some good old fashion working man's beer. Iron City is a beer you'd drink after a hard day of getting your balls busted by your foreman, Old Man Gratkowski down at the steel mill.

IC pours out a nice golden brown. It has a nice malt flavor going down and a pretty pleasant after taste. IC is definitely a very drinkable lager and I'd rather drink an IC over a Budweiser, Coors or any other comparable beer. At 4.5%, it's not going to knock you on your ass or anything but it'll get you a nice, pleasant buzz while you watch Ben Rapelisberger throw a touchdown to Hines Ward or sitting through another season of terrible Pirates baseball. It's a tad dry but other than that, the only bad thing I have to say about the taste of IC is that it's not as flavorful as a firebrewed Strohs. IC also makes an awesome light beer as well which unfortunately, is hard as balls to find. IC Light is sold in sweet aluminum bottles as well.

I'm going to give Iron City a solid 4.5 Bundy Faces. I will have to caveat including IC in my cheap beer blog by saying that IC is not cheap in Charlottesville. It's $7.29 for a 6 pack and there's a place that sometimes sells IC Light 30 packs for $20. However, that's not the norm as in most places, IC is much cheaper than that and you'll get a great tasting beer at an affordable price. Think of a beer that tastes twice as good as a Budweiser that costs about $2 or $3 less. I love the Iron City logo as well. For the most part I like simple designs and understated color schemes on my beer cans/bottles. The red, black and white colors are simple but catch your eye right off the bat. I do think the bottles could use some sort of logo but I can appreciate the fact that it's simple and just says Iron City Beer and Premium Lager on it. Tells you exactly what you're getting.

As I stated before, it's a bit dry and that's the only thing holding IC back from the fabled 5 Bundy Face rating but otherwise, IC is highly recommended.

Keystone: Why drop the premium, when it clearly is?

While my memory is slipping, I swear to Christ that Keystone used to be Keystone Premium. And if they did in fact pull a name switch, it wasn't the result of a truth in advertising lawsuit, because Keystone is in fact premium. It is also awesome.

I am a huge fan of Keystone Light. Probably my third favorite mainstream beer, mainstream beer being defined as a beer you can reasonably expect to find nationwide, after Coors Light and Busch Light. I've always considered Keystone Light to be a more flavorful Natural Light, plus it has pictures of mountains on its can, which is always a plus. So I decided to the roll the dice with the regular Keystone.

It was the 4th of July 2009, and it was hot as fuck, so the first thing I remember is the Keystone being iced-cold and really hitting the spot. I was also drinking it with Blake Bashore, a man worthy of 10 Al Bundy's, which undoubtedly made the beer taste better than it was. The best way to describe it would be a better tasting Budweiser, which is odd since Keystone is made by Coors. But it tastes closer to Bud than the Banquet Beer, which is unfortunate.

For those of you eager to run out and buy some Keystone, this particular 12 pack was bought in San Diego, CA on the 4th of July 2009. I think it was a drug store, but it might have been a grocery store. I have no idea, since I blacked out with excitement when I saw the red cans. The best part of this beer is hands down its can.

First thing you'll notice about the can is that it's red, the color of awesome things like the Skins. Also, since it's a Coors product, the cans contain the "blue mountains of cold" to indicate when your beer is cold. To quote Matt Johnson, "You know what I use to tell if my beer is cold? My hand." So while the blue mountains are useless, they are doubly useless if they are on a blue can, such as the blue cans of Keystone Light. The redness of the Keystone 1.0 can makes the blue mountains pop out at you, like you're caught in a rock slide. And the only thing that can save you is more Keystone.

To properly rate this beer, I need to consider two additional attributes in addition to taste: can attractiveness and beer rarity. In the spirit of this blog I will keep both attributes Married With Children themed: can attractiveness will be rated on the Kelly Bundy scale and beer rarity will be rated on the Steve Rhoades scale.

Can attractiveness. Maybe it was due to the fact that I was drinking a red, white and blue can on the 4th of July, or maybe it's just an awesome looking can, but I love the Keystone can. While blue and silver dominate, there is a lack of bright red, Eastern Washington turf cans. And that's truly sad. I give the Keystone can four and a half Kelly Bundy's for helping me see the fucking blue mountains, and for general patriotism.

Beer rarity. I think I've seen this beer like three times in my life. And much like Steve Rhoades, when I do see one I'm very excited. As great as Jefferson was, Steve was better. His wife kind of looked like a chick, he had a job, he thought he was better than everyone else, he was just in general awesome. And then he was gone, to the US Parks Department if I remember correctly. I rate Keystone four and a half Steve Rhoades. It's rare, but it's not quite a myth since I've actually had some. I'll reserve five Steve Rhoades for beer that has only ever been seen as a grainy cell phone picture, and never consumed.

Final rating. While the can is awesome, and the beer is hard to find, it's still not blow you off your feet good, like Lone Star or Busch Light. I'll give Keystone four Al Bundy's, and raise it to four and a half if they return the name to Keystone Premium. Cause it is.