Simpler Times beer
The deal: $4.99 for a six pack of bottles, $3.99 for a six pack of cans. That’s 66.5 cents per can.
the answer to complication
What is: Lager and pilsner beer, available at Trader Joe’s. It’s a new offering at the TJ’s in NY, but apparently has been available in the stores elsewhere in the country for some time.
In simple terms, it’s the recession beer.
Ah, yes, remember those simpler times before your pension disappeared in an updraft into golden parachutes or your retirement went over the falls in a bailout. Let’s think back to the black-and-white days of the Great Depression, and remind ourselves that people get through hard times with friends, and people make friends during hard times with beer, and that beer is the simple cause of — and solution to — most of life’s problems.
Why?:Because it’s the new PBR.
Such sacrilege! But it’s true. Because at that price, and with a 6 percent alcohol content (that’s 1.8 percentage points higher than Bud Lite), it doesn’t have to be very good. But I would place the taste a step and a half above the taste of the Pabst, despite the latter’s insistence that a 116-year-old fair win is the only validation its ever needed for taste approval. Plus, it’s ludicrous speeds ahead of other discount contenders such as South Paw, Genny Lite or,yikes, Schaefer.
Plus, Simpler Times doesn’t have any pretensions pretenses attached to it yet: no sneering glances from bartenders who wonder what size girl jeans you’re wearing or how long you spent cultivating the child molester mustache like when you order a PBR; no conversations about the best methods to get the stains out of your wife beater like when you order a High Life.
Coworkers at TJ’s have been snatching it up with ravenous appetite since it first appeared a few weeks ago. This conversation about sums it up:
Me: Curtis, what did you think of that Simpler Times beer?
Curtis: It’s good enough!
It’s made by Wisconsin company Minhas Craft Brewery, which doesn’t even list Simpler Times on its web site. Minhas, you’ll surely know, is the brewer of other such wildly popular brews as Rhinelander, Mountain Creek, and — a favorite at trendy Upper West Side lounges and loft parties, Extreme Rockhead Malt Liquor.
As our country faces these rough days ahead, I think we can all agree a little dose of the Simpler Times will make everything just a bit easier to handle
Alas, we received the following email yesterday at FIPS HQ:
Inverted Soapbox 