(Photo: Facebook)
We’ve all been there. The morning after a birthday/big game/house party/Wednesday, the harsh light of day beating through the window, you drag your carcass out of bed in search of something, anything that will make your pounding hangover subside, an attempt to take the edge off…then you see it: the can of warm, half-flat PBR on the counter. Dare you?! A hair of the dog can’t hurt, right? Bottoms up and hope for the best.
Well, a brewery in New Zealand says, enough is enough. Time to free morning beer from its stigma as “desperate hangover cure” and into a whole new perspective: elegant breakfast!
According to the NZ Herald, Moa brewery has released a new beer, a “cherry-flavoured, wheat lager,” that is being marketed as a breakfast beverage. Of course, this has simultaneously excited and outraged society. Some sources go so far as to call it “normalising pathological behaviour.” Hmm, pathological? The Moa brewery co-owner makes a valid counterpoint:
“Look at cultures like Germany where a lager in the right circumstances is part of the culture, or Italy where the grappa is used as a morning pick-me-up. Cultures around the world consume alcohol in the right way, and that includes breakfast.”
Beer as breakfast: a welcome addition to the table, or a plight upon society?
see, i think beer, like any other alcohol, can use a little spruce-me-up-water-me-down-juicy-somethin’somethin’ for breakfast time. that’s why in Europe they’ve got the Shandy: half lager, half sparkling lemonade. it may sound kinda nasty but i’ve tried it and it not only works well at breakfast, it makes piss beer (cough *pbr* cough) actually palatable.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shandy
according to a friend in stuttgart, they often do Shandies with banana juice instead of carbonated citrus stuff in that neck of the woods… uh, yeah.
I just returned from a sailing trip in the BVIs where the daily morning ritual was a half-and-half mix of beer (preferably Carib, but any light lager will do) and Ting, which is a Jamaican grapefruit soda. Don’t know how widespread this concoction is (our crew calls it a “Bada-Ting”) but it’s a great hangover cure on a hot day.