GLUTTONY, AS ONE OF THE main canonical Sins, is pretty encompassing. There’s a lot to it and if you want to do it properly, it needs hard work. It’s not quite like Lust or Wrath which you can get done in a morning, or—so I’m told, if you’re into that kind of thing—have them together, bash out a couple of hundred thousand words and publish the results as an erotic fan fiction bestseller. No, to be a Glutton one has to put in the hard yards.
So I’m not one to celebrate the increasing tendency amongst brewers, especially gourmet or niche brewers, to eschew the 750ml longneck or half-litre bottle in favour of 330ml, and four-packs instead of half-dozens. With a small bottle you can’t pour yourself a glass and expect there to be more in it when you get to the bottom, and you certainly can’t share it with a mate or a loved one. To me it’s a victory of packaging and marketing over what should be the main and brutally simple appeal of the product: delicious malty liquid that gets you drunk. Is a small bottle a form of torture invented by advertisers? I think this is a theme I’ve expanded on at length previously so I won’t go into more condemnation of the worst aspects of commercialism.
Mildura Brewery’s Choc Hops is guilty of terrible crimes in this regard. 330ml? Check. Four pack? Check. $16 for that four-pack? Check. Claims of organic, fair trade ingredients? Check. Little signed picture of a chef with his signature? Check. At every stage you’re confronted with the market decision you’ve already made, as if congratulating you on your superior good taste: you have to hold the tiny little bottle in your hand and be constantly reminded by the label—the plastic, hard-to-remove label—of what you’re drinking. Frankly, this kind of thing is frustrating and should be enough to turn me back to old cheap standards that come in a long bottle in a paper bag.
Except that it’s delicious. It’s a really really good beer. The jolly chef on the side of the cardboard packet is not lying to you when he says that it’s rich: it’s as rich as Hell. This is a beer that tastes like the choc-tops your parents used to buy you when you went to see films as a kid. This is a beer that tastes like an illicit block of Cadbury’s on a stressful day at work. This is a beer that now, the morning after having had a couple of these beers last night, makes me think that a chocolate bar might be a good option for morning tea.
And I don’t even like chocolate that much! Save your two dollar coins and buy this beer.
Add a comment
Casey · 5 September 2012, 18:21 · #
Well, this is the most evil thing you’ve come up with since your apple plan worked.
Do we really need chocoalcoholics in the world?
No.
Why if you were on Avalon, I’d stake you with Arthur’s sword and get rid of you good.
Fyodor · 7 September 2012, 18:24 · #
Good to see none of the Usual Suspects – including this blog – are dead. Carry on.
Also: “Cabin in the Woods”. Really quite good.
Casey · 8 September 2012, 17:52 · #
Hello Sideshow, I was wondering if you continued to exist. Do you know I’ve done away with myself completely, except on this blog?
This is because I got my PhD, you know. As Nabs says, I am now da Witchdoctor and I have to be serious. Do you know how ridiculous Dr sounds to mine ears?
xxx
Fyodor · 11 September 2012, 17:10 · #
“Hello Sideshow, I was wondering if you continued to exist.”
Exist and exhaust, ma’mselle.
“Do you know I’ve done away with myself completely, except on this blog?”
Teenage blogicide – don’t do it.
“This is because I got my PhD, you know. As Nabs says, I am now da Witchdoctor and I have to be serious. Do you know how ridiculous Dr sounds to mine ears?”
Yah, totally ridonkulus. But, weeel…it’s not like you’re a real doctor, are you?
Obligatory teasing aside, many hearty congratulations yada, yada. At the very least you now have the credential to witchslap Haiku Hoges* whenever he gets intellectually uppity, which is often.
*M.A. (Banal Sarcasm), Universamity of Teh Interwebs,
People’s Republic of the Inner West
Casey · 11 September 2012, 18:34 · #
Now look Imma say this once. PhDs are the real doctors. The others just have courtesy titles. If they want to look in orifices, more power to them, the weirdos. I prefer a good book and a degree that actually says Doctor. Now that you got your rise, I just want also want to add that as much as I admire the term witchslap, have you met the boy genius? Who could slap him? Certainly no witch. That Devil Drink on the other hand is pure evil. However I don’t wanta get in the middle of a fairly important tryst. But it’s coming. Lake.of.fire DD, Lake.of.Fire. You been warned.
Liam · 13 September 2012, 18:18 · #
“Witchslap” yes that is the neologism of the month.
Fyodor · 17 September 2012, 13:27 · #
“Now look Imma say this once. PhDs are the real doctors. The others just have courtesy titles. If they want to look in orifices, more power to them, the weirdos.”
Don’t knock it ‘til you try it.
“I prefer a good book and a degree that actually says Doctor. Now that you got your rise, I just want also want to add that as much as I admire the term witchslap, have you met the boy genius? Who could slap him?”
Och, aye, look a’ tha’ bright-eyed fella, with his wee bonnet.
You just wanna put him in your pocket and take him home for a nice saucer of milk.
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