If you’re sick of the average chat of our weekly booze review and want to see some serious reviews of more quality beers, then check out @stassielijoshbeer on instagram. They are three flatmates who have committed to doing in-depth reviews of a bunch of NZ crafties. Just to fuck with them, this week I asked them to review the most uncrafty beer in existence, Speight’s. Here it is:
Back with a Dunedin classic that no Otago student has drunk in the past ten years, except for out of those 300ml cups that UBar try to pass off as pints on a Wednesday, we’re drinking Speight’s Gold Medal. A drink that has lost its way, in part due to the fact that:
-it’s only 4% ABV,
-kinda tastes like dirt and grass,
-is still at the price point of a premium lager.
Gold Medal is now well and truly living in the shadow of its skinny, boring, younger brother — Summit Ultra.
Speight’s is a beer for the ages, if the ages are vomiting in the UBar toilets or getting drunk with your racist uncle on Christmas Day. It is a staple of the dirty south however, and we won’t ever have it bad mouthed, regardless of how awful it tastes.
There is something in the air when you crack one open. There’s some sense of pride when drinking Speight’s in Dunedin, like you're doing something right. It is the sense of belonging that you always seem to be striving for but never can find.
Dunedin hilariously remains a place where the student population rarely drink this drop. Maybe it’s out of fashion, maybe it’s nostalgic, maybe it’s a genuinely palatable beer — it depends who you ask.
We think it is just alright, but we will drink when we have it. Then again, we are just a bunch of alternative wanks who drank crafties when we were 16, pretend to know what hops are, and have made it our personality trait so you probably shouldn’t pay any attention to that.
Tastes like: muddy water, a southerly breeze
Froth level: telling everyone how your dad was way gnarlier than you in the ’90s
Pairs well with: Swandris, tradition for tradition’s sake
Taste rating: 5/10, mediocre