This Is My Blood: Shiner Bock

Not sure why I picked this beer off the shelf during my last go-around. It seemed like a beer I should've had already, maybe? Like, if you gave me a list of 1000 random beers and asked me to "select every beer you've ever heard of," then I would put a check mark next to Shiner Bock, even though I wouldn't be able to tell you where I know it from. I guess it's just a nationally known brand? Especially because it perfectly splits the difference between "we like drinking beers that aren't mass-produced adjunct lager swill" and "we're good ol' boys from Texas and we don't need to fancy liberal city prissy craft beer bullshit."

Yes, as you may recall from the other two Shiner brand beers I've had this year, this beer is from a Texas brewery, Spoetzl. Shiner Bock is far and away their most well-known beer, however. Pretty typical bock—a little sweet, not many hops—except that this was very light on the flavor. I know that sounds like an insult, but I swear it's not. I can't imagine every bock can be considered "drinkable," but this one seems designed for such a purpose. I imagine, if I ever visited Texas, I would be expected to do a lot of binge drinking, and it's important to have such a beer present during a binge.

It also may or may not have been the perfect beer to pair with tonight's movie choice—the Borat sequel. Perfect because Borat starts his second American journey in Texas. Perfect too because it's not advisable to do a spit take with a too-hoppy beer. So let me rope in my short Borat Subsequent Moviefilm review into this beer review, since I want to say a few quick words, but I don't want to make that big of a deal about it (i.e. I don't want to be just another fucking thinkpiece about a goddamn comedy film).

Here's my take: any geographical location in the United States that you could in good faith call "trump country" is already in my mind so backwards and fucked up and frustrating that it's gonna take a lot more than a racist caricature making further fools of these people to move the needle in any significant sense. So if the purpose of this film was to make me "aware" of violently racist hicks any more than I already am, then consider Borat Subsequent Moviefilm an uncomfortable failure. 

 

Really, the only part of the movie that even came close to surprising me was the scene where a "doctor" claimed that it was "god's plan" for a fifteen-year-old to be raped and impregnated by her father. I'm not going to be like my (quite liberal) father-in-law who was in such disbelief of this scene that he can't even fathom that it was anything but fake. I know it's real. I know these people exist. I was surprised to see it in all its depraved realness, but so it is.

That's not to say I didn't laugh at this movie. There were lots of laugh-out-loud shock humor. I'm not above laughing at a character doing a period blood dance. That was funny! What wasn't funny was that, a few minutes before, a very real American man saying straight-faced that he'd pay $500 for Borat's daughter. I get why that's supposed to be funny, but there's nothing funny about a festering wound.

I mean, if we're talking about what I laughed at and what I didn't, then maybe we should talk about the Ghouliani scene at the end. I laughed. I laughed because it was so horrific and so dark and so demented that I couldn't help but laugh into the unending void. No spit take of Shiner Bock here, it was more of a bitter laugh. There's no question that this is the creepiest man on earth taking a young girl (purported to be fifteen) into a bedroom for who knows what. Whether he grabbed his wrinkly ballsack in pleasure can be up for debate, but there's no debate that he flirted with a child, and took her into a bedroom where there were supposedly no cameras, gripping a glass of whisky, handsy as a motherfucker. This is not normal behavior. This is the president's personal lawyer! This is the United States!! What the fuck else can I do but laugh?

My point (and it's not an original one, even hours after the movie was released) is that there's nothing to expose here. This is a comedian holding up a mirror to a country and saying "look what you are!" and all of us are just standing around saying, "um... yeah... we fucking know that already?!" I've known how fucked we are every day for the past four and half years, and single day that unnamed yam-colored conman has opened his flappy mouth. Sacha Baren Cohen, god bless him for at least trying, but I don't need to be reminded of it in this context.

Anyways... this beer was pretty great, and I would definitely buy a 30-bird of it if I see one in 2021. Next time, I'm going to watch some feel-good comedy while I drink it, instead of this feel-existentially-bad comedy.

NOTES

BEER: Shiner Bock

STYLE: Bock

ABV: 4.4%

BREWED BY: Spoetzl Brewery

LOCATION: Shiner, TX

PURCHASED AT: IGA

PAIRED WITH: Borat Subsequent Moviefilm [and a long subtitle that I won't even deign to look up and type here]

GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5

 

BEER COUNT: 441.5