THE PUMPKIN ADVENT CALENDAR OF ALCOHOL: December 3 : 2-3% by volume
TESCO’S VALUE LAGER
The good old red, white and blue. What feelings does it provoke in you? Patriotic pride at the Rugby? Shame at the way it was co-opted in the seventies as a BNP symbol? Nostalgia for the plastic flag waving of 1977’s Silver Jubilee? In me it conjures up just one feeling. The slight discomfort of having once drunk a can of Tesco’s Value Lager. Trade dress resiliently Red, White and Blue.
The can resembles all of Tesco’s range, flagging down the loser who wants to pay less than the odds for poor quality goods. I often think though that more time an effort has been put into making these items substandard than if they just went for the simplest production technique. I think it must be pretty hard to brew a lager that is 2.9%. But the Value stuff is.
Imagine piss in a soda stream. Then imagine that without the distinctive bouquet, aroma and (for all I know) taste of piss. There you have it. A thin, yellow, fizzy liquid which tastes like brackish water. There must be a spring out there which produces naturally carbonated, stagnant water. And that spring goes directly into the Tesco’s Value Lager plant. The huge hit of 2.9% is more than enough to make you give it up as a bad job and drink meths instead.
The one time I drank Tesco’s Value Lager was around a nameless friends house who thought it would be funny. Despite paying only 30p for the 440ml can, there was nothing funny about buying it, or me drinking it. Our friendship has now moved on and he has found that he has had to be exiled out of London for some time, mainly on the (lack-of) strength of this lager. Foul stuff.