I was going to do my taxes tonight. I was, I swear. For the last few weeks I’ve been looking the small stack of W-2 forms on my desk and just shaking my head. “Later,” I’d tell myself, smiling like a child who has no clue where the last cookie went. And Friday, March 5th, was supposed to be the day that the taxes get did. You know, so that the government can keep on doing all sorts of great stuff.
But it’s 10PM and it doesn’t look like the Taxman’s come to town. And I’m not laying my money down. In fact, I’m doing what most Americans do when they’re avoiding paying taxes – drinking fine malt liquor.
The beverage of this evening is a twenty-two ounce bottle of St. Ides. While the Brew Review is usually my excuse for sampling some incredibly pretentious lagers, sometimes I like to dip into the opposite end of the spectrum. Ya know, to keep it real. Or something. I don’t know, I’m a white sheltered product of the suburbs.
Anyways, I’m sipping on St. Ides. I snagged a bottle of this stuff simply because I had never noticed it before and it’s uber-cheap. I think might’ve even paid less than two bucks. For a dude like me, that’s a deal I just couldn’t pass up.
When I got home, I tried to find out as much as I could about the beer. Unfortunately, my cursory Internet-browsing didn’t yield too many results. In fact, the official website is defunct and most of what I learned about the malt liquor came from its Wikipedia page.
The long and short of it is this: St. Ides is inexpensive, will get you drunk, and is loved by 1990’s rappers. Seriously. Just check out this commercial:
Apparently when he wasn’t sippin’ Private Stock, St. Ides was how Biggie rolled.
Okay, so what do I think? Well, it’s definitely a beer. The taste reminds me of how a college party smells – like alcohol and sweat and bad ideas. But in a good way. The slightly elevated ABV (8.2%) isn’t noticeable in the flavor, and I’ve yet to decide if this for better or worse. With that being said, the extra alcohol does pop up when I sniff at the mouth of the bottle. Strange.
On the other hand, I’ve yet to experience one of the main (supposed) draws of this beer – inebriation. Maybe I’m not drunk because I ate half a pizza an hour ago. Or maybe I’m just building a tolerance (see: alcoholism). Either way, I’m not quite at the point of doing headspins on the dance floor. And that’s a shame.
St. Ides is the ideal drink to keep the poor poor and the rich rich – it’s cheap as shit and keeps people apathetic so that they don’t question their assigned stations. It was also a solid beer for the evening. I recommend it for broke motherfuckers and people trying to relive the East Coast/West Coast feud.
St. Ides: B-
