After my drinking partner, Nick, returned to the Land of the Teabags aka the UK, my bar visits shrunk from a daily occurence to once a week. Not much fun drinking on your own, since AA deems solitary drinking as a sure indication of having crossed the line from drunk to alcoholic. I might qualify for several other signs of advanced alcoholism, but haven’t had time to read the Seven Steps.
What’s the difference between drunks and alcoholics?
Drunks don’t go to AA meetings.
They go to bars, but not me, for chugging beer in front of the Buffalo Bar with Thai friends is more fun than wobbling of a cheap bar stoool with a bunch of pisssed europeans who don’t know shit about baseball. Pisan and I know each other several years. I rent cars from him. We drink the profit, while watching the traffic mayhem on 3rd Road. Our beer of choice is Leo Beer, but the other day I succumbed to the local 7/11’s special on Archa Beer.
5 large bottles for 100 baht.
Back in front of the Buffalo Bar Pisan made a face.
“What?”
“Mae aroi?”
“You drink before?”
Everyone shook their head.
“So how do you know?”
There was only one way to find out.
Glasses. Ice. Beer.
Clink of glasses. “Chong gaeo.”
A healthy tug of beer and it tasted funny.
Pisan thought the same as did his friends.
“Mae aroi.”
We were in agreement and had a hard time putting down the remaining bottles.
This experiment doesn’t bode well for Singha’s excursion into the cheap beer market dominated by Leo Beer and Chang Beer, the later known as the Thai version of Stella Beer, the British wifebeater.
Isaan Beer goes on sale today at 100 baht for 3 bottles.
Sort of cheap, but not strong.
4.7%
I don’t know any Thais drinking Singha, despite the company’s claim to targeting the beer for the high class or hi-so, then again all my friends are lo-so and loyal to their Leo. One of our friends even named his first son after the beer.
Isaan Beer officals figure that the beer will be popular in the NE and expect every Isaan rice farmer to try it at least once.
“Northeastern people are patriots. We’ve done surveys throughout the region and found that they are very proud of their dialect, culture and food, so we’ve applied that to beer. It’s made in the Northeast for northeasterners.”
The planned production from its Khon Kaen plant is planned to max out at one billion liters and sales were center on the NE.
1 billion bottles into 10 million rice farmers.
100 bottles a year or 3000 baht for Isaan Beer from every proud provincial.
More beer is better than less beer.
Happy Beermas.
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