Needed or Not? – Peanut Bar

You know what I haven’t been waiting for for 53 years, a giant peanut dive bar on wheels but yet, Miller Lite has joined up with Planters to create a 26-foot nut bar.

The installation also includes: (because it has to by influencer law)

  • A selfie wall that only needs red string to make super creepy
  • A dropped ceiling littered with dollar bills to create the feel of a bar that no millennial would be caught dead in
  • A nut-shaped jukebox with I assume power ballads about nuts?
  • A warm nut machine (also the name of my ska band)

Needed or Not? – The Krakin

Welcome to Red Flag City, our first guest will help you shotgun your beer faster. Wildman Drinking presents Krakin.

Big tip off #1 is Wildman Drinking. Do I want to be Wildman Drinking? I think I am drinking fine. Next is Krakin, spelled wrong to avoid NHL lawsuits from Seattle.

If you are in shotgun land, stay there and please do not come out. So, not needed.

Needed or Not – High Life Truffles

Miller High Life , the (don’t call it the) champagne of beers, is getting into chocolate.

They have tasked the chocolatier Phillip Ashley with creating not just truffles made with the watery beer but “Bar Snack Truffles, a collection of beer-infused chocolates that celebrate iconic bar snacks.” All for $35.00!

The weird and unappetizing flavors are:

– Grilled Cheese: triple cream cheese white chocolate ganache in a blond chocolate shell
– Lemon Pepper Chicken Wing: a fried chicken ganache infused with lemon pepper seasoning 
– Pretzel Praline: salted pretzel and roasted pecans combined with handcrafted caramel and blond chocolate 
– Beernut: freshly roasted peanuts soaked in the beer then ground into our fragrant butter and enrobed in a milk chocolate shell
– Buttery Popcorn: white chocolate ganache infused with movie theater style popcorn
– Sweet Potato Fry: garnett sweet potato mash blended with blond chocolate. 

Needed? – Truffles and chocolate can work well but this is too much savory. So the answer is Not.

Needed or Not? – Mystic Galactic

The bottle of whiskey in the fancy bottle above will set you back $75,000. Why? Because it will be aged in a low altitude orbit above the Earth. The very definition of “space aged”.

But wait, that is not all. You get an NFT, exclusive launch and re-entry parties, a piece of one of the space barrels and a sample bottle so you do not sully the main bottle. If the wooden barrels filled with alcohol do not explode on re-entry, of course.

Part of me wishes that craft beer would bring back the over the moon, wack-a-doodle ideas that cost more than they taste good. Age a beer in a cemetery. Brew a glitter seltzer shandy. Break some rules!

Needed? – Of course not. You can spend that 75k if you want, but you have to spend the same amount on a charity at the same time.

Needed or Not? – Brewsy

Or, and hear me out, I could buy a bottle of wine or can of cider in less than an hour at, say, Trader Joe’s. Instead of straining a pour little cranberry into un-natural positions.

Or, you could head to a home brew shop and learn how-to make your own wine and cider in probably the same amount of time.

Leave poor Ocean Spray out of it.

So very Not Needed.

Christmas Needed or Not – Miller Lite Tree Stand

The corporate beer crew love a good piece of misdirection.  Like a Vegas magician, they want you to look anywhere but AT the beer and Christmas is a time of magic so of course Miller Lite is selling…

….the limited-edition keg stand sells for $49.99 and is the latest addition to the Miller Lite holiday lineup, and shows that they would much rather market then buy good ingredients and improve their beer.

Needed?  – Unless you want an intervention on the 26th of December, not.  But at least it is better than an ugly Christmas sweater.

Needed or Not? – Sportsman’s Club

I have plenty of brewery t-shirts and merch but I have never once thought to myself, I wish that Miller High Life would have a clothing line that was classy, priced between $44-$78.

But apparently if you get a hyped clothing brand to join forces with, then it is greenlit.

Verdict – put that money into your beer ingredients and not clothing.

Needed or Not – Beer Cheese Pretzels

I still do not know what really constitutes beer cheese.  Is there even beer in the cheese? Or is it just a bit of malty flavor?

That being said, transferring cheese flavor to a pretzel cannot be easy.  Adding a beer cheese to a pretzel must be harder.

So, this would be Needed or Not based on one taste of the pretzel.  If it ain’t good, or at least to the American level of saltiness then the vote is Not Needed.

Needed or Not – The Dive Bar

Cut to the chase.  Not needed.  A light flavorless seen better days beer simply ain’t gonna add much of anything to chocolate or ice cream.  I bet that if blindfolded, you could not taste the difference between plain and “High Life”. 

But if a craft brewery added a stout or a fruited sour to an ice cream treat, then I would be 100% on board.  But adding water beer, nah.