Friday Beer Post: Even a blind squirrel occasionally finds a nut.

I apologize in advance...

I really can't believe what I'm writing; I've actually found one of the cheap product gimmicks of the Big-3 brewers to be useful.  Over the last few years the triumvirate of brewing evil, Coors, their partners in crime Miller, and Budweiser, have gone through plenty of cheap ploys to try and get more people to try their swill.  Can linings that "seal in flavor," logos that "turn blue when it's cold," aluminum bottles, "rifled" bottles to pour better, etc.  Each more pathetic and insulting than the last, and none having anything to do with making you beer experience any better.  As a consumer, frankly, they all pissed me off.

However, now, I think they might have fallen into something worthwhile.  The MillerCoors group have been producing, for some time now, "home draft" versions of their most popular beers.  This past weekend, for a casual night of beer pong (yes even us beer snobs occasionally play pong), the roomates and I grabbed one of the Coors Light varieties to go along with our usual pong-playing fare (for the record, Coors' Blue Moon in a can is my pong beer of choice).  I was surprised to find that I enjoyed the output.

I may feel dirty for talking about it, but I kind of liked the whole "home draft" thing.

Home drafts (a couple of liters of beer with a built in CO2 canister) have been around for a few years now.  Heineken's has been the most prevalent.  Since I don't like Heineken, I've mostly stayed away.  Up to this point, I had no idea that they actually kind of worked.  Our thing of CL stayed fresh for days after, and still tasted about as good as a light beer from a major brewery can.  The first pours were a little foam heavy, but it settled down, and it was mostly an enjoyable experience.  For $15 bucks, it wasn't that bad of deal.  There are 1.5 gallons in the thing, which comes out to 16 12-oz beers.

Obviously the whole "home draft" thing is a fad for people too lazy to set up a keg-erator, and not real practical for home consumption.  However, on game days next fall, they might prove useful.  There's nothing to keep when you're done, and you can just trash everything when finished (thanks for taking another hit for our convenience, Earth!).  If you've got a smaller tailgate, this might be a convenient product.

Now that that's out of my system, I promise that next week I'll get back to beer worth tasting.

Happy Friday!