Tui has done it again. Earlier, with their standard lager, the brewery perfectly captured the taste of a minor fuck-up, a small leak in the life-boat, a failure to look both ways at a railway crossing, a sneaky look down the barrel of a firework to see why it isn’t working.
But now, with this 7.2% gem, they have nailed the taste of a full-blown disaster, they have ploughed the life-boat into an iceberg at full speed, they have de-railed the entire fucking train, they have thrown the box of fireworks on the bonfire. And what’s more, Tui have crammed this pending disaster into a convenient and track-pant-pocket-sized 500mL can.
The first thing you notice when you pull out the engorged can is how cripplingly depressed you are. Like a sudden wave of sadness, the barely concealed taste of alcohol lingers on your tongue for a tad longer than you were expecting. Unlike other strong beers which dial up the maltiness to conceal their wine-like levels of alcohol, whoever was in charge of brewing Tui Strong clearly couldn’t be fucked with any of that.
A can contains a respectable 2.8 standard drinks and costs $3.50. At 1.25 dollars per standard, you could do a lot worse for value. It is cheaper than most veggies in the supermarket, with none of the nutritional value.
I am almost certain that someone at the brewery knocked a bottle of vodka (possibly mixed with piss) into the vat of Tui and they just branded it as a new product. Normal Tui is shit, of course, but these 7.2% Lagers demonstrate that the fine folks at Tui can turn a minor error into a monumental fuck up.
Tasting notes: literally just drinking Tui while sipping vodka
Froth level: running out of blu-tac
Pairs well with: tears, despair
Taste rating: 1/10 “don’t try it”