Beer Review: HG Hurricane Lager — “HG” stands for “Hic! Gahhhh…”

Ah!  A new malt liquor I haven’t tried!  Here I am, sitting down in front of the TV, drinking from a tall can of HG Hurricane High Gravity Lager and some Sour Cream N’ Onion Pringles.  Otherwise known as a Cincinnati wedding reception banquet.  If the TV had been stacked on top of a milk crate on top of a spool, then we’d have a Fairfield OH thanksgiving dinner.  And if that TV had been tuned to one of them lumberjack competitions, we’d have Date Night at the Walt Liquor household.

This particular brew looked like, from the artwork, one of those brews that combine caffeine and beer, but I think it’s just simulacrum put out by Busch to grab a few bucks from the low end of the market.  It’s perched right in that no-mans-land in between good malt liquor and bad regular beer, an awkward spot in beer space that seems like it should be the best of both worlds yet appeals to no one.  It’s the equivalent of the robotics world’s “uncanny valley” — they’d do much better if they just committed fully to making crappy cheap malt liquor, or retreat back behind the mediocre-beer defense walls and continue making Bud Light.  I’ve seen references to Hurricane Ice, which must be marketed to an even smaller demographic, namely people who want to go straight to jail, tonight.  It’s not bad, actually seems to have a bit of fruity orange flavor to it, but it’s just oddly awkward.  When you drink from a can this big, you instinctively cringe with each gulp as you learned from drinking malt liquor.  At least I did, using the patented take-giant-swigs-of-ice-cold-crap-beer-so-you-minimize-the-tasting technique honed over the years.  When I didn’t get the usual sour soapy proto-malty aftertaste, I was strangely relieved that it wasn’t malt liquor, followed a second or so later by disappontment that it isn’t even a bad regular beer.  For some reason I kept doing this same pattern for at least 10 minutes, probably because the malt-liquor cringe is a hard habit to break when you drink from a can the size of a scuba tank.  After a while, though, the 8% alcohol content catches up with you, and lo and behold, you’re unexpectedly drunk on a Tuesday night.  And coincidentally, “Unexpectedly drunk on a Tuesday Night” was my wedding song back in Fairfield.  Sung by the wedding band, “Sour Cream N’ High Gravity Pringles”…