For beer, looks aren't everything

Beer Fever with Weaver: Bundle up with Sam Adams

Samuel Adams Winter Lager? $7.99 for a six-pack at Hannaford By a show of hands, how many of you faithful readers are coming off a miserable week? I'm talking a week so bad that each meal feels like a mini Christmas and Friday's "Beer Fever with Weaver" (OK, fine, or Thursday's "Grey's Anatomy") is like the light at the end of the tunnel of infinite graded assessments. Five hands just shot up in my apartment, and considering I live in a quad, I'm going to assume that this past week just wasn't that much fun for anyone.

Beer Fever with Weaver: Harpoon brings Christmas early

Harpoon Winter Warmer?$8.25 for a six-pack at Uncle Tom's Market Picture this: It is a Friday night in mid-November. You are sitting in your room, doodling on the margins of your problem set. The sky is overcast and spitting something that looks white but soaks you through like rain. Inside, you're huddled up on the couch, blanket wrapped around your feet, heater clunking and emitting random puffs of lukewarm air. The power goes out, the TV blinks off, and any chance you had at comfort flies out the window to join the icy winter air. Fed up, you throw on your mittens and grab a beer (can't let those get warm). Popping the cap floods your nostrils with sweet cinnamon and mild nutmeg. You smile and envision Christmas Eve dinner and your brand new pony. One taste and you're up on the coffee table, jumping around to the Mariah Carey in your head and screaming "Dance Party!"

Beer Fever with Weaver

For beer, looks aren't everything

This piece represents the opinion of the author:

Alex Weaver

Columnist

November 3, 2006

St. Pauli Girl Lager?$8.25 for a six-pack at Uncle Tom's Market.

Recently, while doing research for my honors thesis on the early stages of advanced senioritis, I was perusing my latest edition of "You're a Stud!" magazine when a familiar and enticing advertisement caught my eye. The page was completely black but for a gorgeous woman, whose body and tight dress are comprised of golden, bubbly beer, and her hair of dripping and full-bodied foam. She is standing in a sassy "oh-no-you-didn't" pose: hands on hips, thigh bent, head cocked. The slogan, leading right into the neck of a bottle of St. Pauli Girl Lager, seemingly takes the words right out of her (and my) mouth: "You never forget your first girl." It is with this image in mind that I made my most recent trip to Uncle Tom's Market.

As I was paying, I became engaged in a conversation between Uncle Tom and an elderly gentleman. The gent told the harrowing tale of three sanitation trucks secretly shipping full cargos of Sam Adams to Pittsburgh when they were stopped by the police and ordered to dump their full contents into the adjacent field to be ground into the earth by steamrollers. It was when the elderly man described pulling over to "suck the beer out of the field, goddammit," that I gracefully took my leave.

So goes the story of how I arrived at this week's beer. This week, I truly am going to provide all the objective details before I impart my opinion. This way, you won't immediately feel like St. Pauli Girl is perfect for hydrating while mowing the lawn, or best to keep in stock for first years in case the Natty Lite is running low, or even as a housewarming gift for your new obnoxious neighbors.

So here, make up your own mind: St. Pauli Girl is a German lager that is a rich golden color and pours from the bottle crystal clear with a porous carbonated head. It is light in body with a taste that is grainy and smooth, sweet and dry. It hits the palate much like a Heineken, with a crisp kick that finishes off slightly bitter, yet not harsh. It is brewed using English two-row barley and hops from Germany, both of which combine to produce a 4.9 alcohol by volume. Lastly, the real kicker in my mind, is the aroma.

Once, when I was little, I was wandering in the rough neighborhood that raised me when I came across a Schlitz tall can lying against the curb. Being eight or nine years old and expecting cream soda or something of the like, you can imagine my surprise and horror when I popped the top to reveal the bubbling contents that had been festering in the summer sun for what I can only imagine was a number of weeks.

Suffice to say that I didn't try any of it (thank you, Mom and Dad), but I will never forget the smell. It singed the hairs in my nostrils and reduced me to tears (seriously, I'm pretty sure it did). Chalk it up to the green bottle or whatever you want, but substitute "Schlitz tall can" for "St. Pauli Girl Lager" and you get the general idea.

St. Pauli Girl is an average-tasting, overpriced, skunky-smelling German import that no one will find offensive-tasting, but that everyone will probably buy only once. It is just an average beer in every sense of the word.

So, why, Germany? Why are you stealing our dignity?

I, for one, blame the damn St. Pauli Girl?she is as gorgeous in the advertisements and on the beer labels as she is in real life. I would know (and you can too!), because there is an annual contest to determine the new "St. Pauli Girl."

This year, it's Brittany Evans, who grew up in southern California. She is 5' 3" and weighs 110 pounds. Awesome. Germany not only exports a bad beer to America, but it sends along a beautiful girl just so Americans will assume that it is good enough to buy. Well, who can blame them? It worked on me, and it probably will on you.

I think we've all learned a valuable lesson this week. It really isn't the pretty packaging and enticing message that make a product worth buying. Instead, it is what lies within, what is really at the heart of the product, and whether or not you truly need it.

Take the "Ab Lounger" that Chuck Norris endorses, now being sold for the amazingly low price of one dollar through infomercials broadcast at all hours of the night. If one was to buy it based on the advertisement alone?that is, presuming that using it for a week will give you the body of a porn star with the ability to roundhouse kick through a cement wall?then they would, of course, be sorely mistaken and scrounging for those lost quarters at the next tollbooth.

Well, unfortunately, the same can be said for St. Pauli Girl Lager. St. Pauli would be quite the catch: she is blonde, beautiful, and comes armed with six brimming mugs of beer at all times. But in the end, she is only good for one casual date that finishes with an awkward hug and a lost phone number.

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