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Posted by  John, on March 1st, 2010 
My birthday is a mere 14 days away, but more importantly everyone’s favorite seasonal wheat beer will be available in 29 days. That’s right, Oberon season begins on March 30th.
The best place to celebrate this holiday is to get down to Sidetrack Bar & Grill on the 29th at the stroke of midnight(technically the 30th) for $2.95 25oz mugs until 1:00 AM and random giveaways. It’s a great time every year. If you’re in the area stop by and at least have a pint to help yourself forget some of the tragedies that happened this Winter. By tragedies, I mean snow. Not trying to get deep here. If you miss out on the opening night, no worries. Oberon pints will be $2.00 the entire day.
EP will be in attendance so if you’re planning on joining in let us know. I would promise a free round for any reader who shows up, but I simply can’t. My apologies for being poor. Don’t judge me.
Posted by Toby, on February 6th, 2010  Like most Americans, I’m fascinated with the drinking culture of Great Britain. Not only do the British drink a whole lot, but more importantly, our friends in the UK seem to really enjoy drinking as much as anybody possibly can. In fact, the British Home Office paid for research into a safer pint glass that will make drinking even more enjoyable.
Imagine this, you are someplace in London drinking one of the 126 Million pints of beer severed in throughout the UK every week. Somehow you break your glass. This could have led to tragedy as official figures record 5,500 attacks a year with beer pint glasses (Nerdy Statistical note: this leads to a 0.00008394% chance that the guy next to you is going to attack you with his pint of Boddingtons). Does that seem like a lot to you? Now, however, the governments new hybrid safety glass (coming to a pub near you) can be broken, but held together like a car windscreen with a layer of plastic. That’s right – safety glass for beer pints.
Cheers to the Brits! Bottoms Up!
Posted by Jeremy, on February 4th, 2010 Once a month I venture over to the nearest Costco, located in the sleepy hamlet of Livonia, Michigan, to stock up on life’s necessities. Diapers, baby wipes, 80 pound bags of Goldfish crackers, and beer. What’s that you say, “but Jeremy, they don’t sell Hoegaarden at Costco?” Very true. I actually never really thought about buying beer from Costco, as I find the store to be an indecipherable maze. But lo and behold, one day I got lost somewhere between the storage shelves and water purifiers, and found stacks upon stacks of beer. I waded through the cases of Miller Lite and Moosehead hoping to find some version of Samuel Adams, every store or bars default good beer. After winding through a maze of beer cases more confusing than the hedge maze in The Shining, I eventually stumbled upon my old drinking buddy Sam Adams. At $21.99 for a pack of 18, I was pleased with the deal Costco was offering and ready to grab a box when something caught my eye.
The sign read, Kirkland Signature Beer Variety Pack, $18.99. For those that don’t shop at Costco, Kirkland is their in-house brand, and usually makes pretty decent products for the price. Included in the case were four six packs, an Amber Ale, Pale Ale, German Lager, and Hefeweizen.
 Kirkland Signature Beer Unable to pass on what promised to be an interesting experiment, I decided to grab the case and give it a shot. I am pleased to report, dear Epic Portions readers that Kirkland Signature beers are quite tasty and a real bargain at the price, which averages out to approximately $4.75 per six pack. I’m not going to get into a review about which beer has citrus notes, but I will say that each one is a legitimate effort that deserves praise. My favorite is the Pale Ale, and I did find the Amber Ale to be a little disappointing, but hey, I’m used to Bell’s Amber which is truly magnificent.
Curious about where the beer comes from, I did a little investigating. On the bottle, it says that the beers are from the New Yorker Brewing Co. in Utica, NY. If you google that, you basically get a whole lot of nothing. I talked to the highest ranking manager willing to indulge me while I was at Costco and got a blank look. Finally, through hidden camera work and telling people I was Chris Hanson, I was able to learn that Kirkland Signature Beer is subcontracted to Gordon Biersch. If this name is familiar to you, which it probably isn’t, Gordon Biersch is responsible for providing many of the specialty beers that sit on the shelves at your local Trader Joe’s. This made perfect sense because usually a beer from TJ’s is, as my man from the High Life commercials says, “a good honest beer at a tasty price.” (I love the High Life guy, he hawks a terrible beer, but the commercials are quite funny).
 Miller High Life Guy All in all, if your travels take you to Costco you would do well to give the Kirkland Signature beers a try. You will be pleasantly surprised.
Posted by John, on February 1st, 2010 As someone who genuinely enjoys beer, it pains me when I hear about these ultra low calorie beers. It seems like every week Budweiser comes out with a new low calorie beer then the following week Miller or some other company comes out with a beer that has two fewer calories. They always have some slick tag line like “Tastes Great, Never Filling” and make it out to be a huge deal that they are now producing the beer with the fewest amount of calories, even though the only way 10 calories is going to make a different is if you’re taking out 20 beers a night. I can pretty much guarantee the people drinking 20 beers a night are drinking straight up Budweiser and these drinking sessions only occur on nights where the SPEED channel is re-playing NASCAR’s “Greatest Hits” or “Dale Sr. – A Tribute to the Greatest Human Being the Lord Ever Created”.
I refuse to call any beer with under 100 calories beer. They may call it low calorie beer, but I consider it to simply be high calorie water. Seriously, is Bud Select 55 actually beer? Do you think you could get pulled over while drinking one and explain to the officer that you are drinking a low calorie beer and it shouldn’t warrant an open intoxicant ticket? Better yet, isn’t it a little stupid that people are paying full price for a beer that has half the ingredients and in return, half the alcohol? Look at it this way, MGD 64 clocks in at a shameful 3.2% while ZIMA contains 4.8%. Yes, you can get drunker on ZIMA than you can MGD 64. After a long stressful day, does it make you feel better or worse to know that your “after work beer” is only working half as hard to help you relax? If you could cut off a beer’s balls, MGD 64 and Bud Select 55 would be the result.
The real question here, is why are companies producing beer for people who don’t like the taste of beer? I would assume that if someone doesn’t like the taste of beer or wants to drink while keeping the calories low, they would stick to Diet Coke with Bacardi or a good ol’ gin and tonic. If someone is simply drinking these because they like the taste of beer and not the belly that goes with it, I have to warn you that drinking 15 Bud Selects does NOT make you health conscious, just an alcoholic. Oh, so you stick to light beer so you can suck down 300 percent more than if you were drinking regular beer at a fraction of the calories? Congratulations, you’re now going to die of alcoholism or cirrhosis instead of heart failure. But at least you’ll look like JWOW in the process.
The people who are regular light beer and ultra low calorie beer customers are probably the same folks who order steak well done, send dishes back because they’re not cooked to their liking, watch the WNBA, and think that NFL quarterbacks need more protection.
I would also like you to know that a pint of Guinness, one of the darkest and best beers in the world, contains 127 calories.
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