We all know there are a few essentials for every guys camping trip. Tents, sleeping bags, chairs, combustible fuel, man food, and of course booze. Lots and lots of tasty booze.
We normally like to break our camping spirits into roughly three categories. The Beer, the Shot, and the Drink.
Every camping outing needs its fair share of beer. Beer is one of those subjective things. Everyone likes what they like. You could go the cheaper route and go all domestic. There is nothing wrong with Bud or Coors. They are consistent and fairly priced. But frankly, we find domestic brews to be a little like drinking water. You don’t get much taste and flavor, unless you live downstream from the treatment plant if you get our drift.
While we would much prefer to take along one of our favorites (Kona Brewing Longboard Lager) we went a little different direction this time around. We grabbed a 24 pack of Widmer Hefeweizen and threw it in the cooler. Now we know that Blue Moon Hefeweizen is the Uber popular brand of this style of beer now. And frankly, there is nothing really wrong with Blue Moon. But Widmer packs a slightly different “I’m not in some douche bag bar” feel to it. Perfect for a camping weekend and for us. Produced by the Widmer brothers of Oregon, this Hefeweizen is dubbed the original and has been produced since 1986. They claim that all other Hefeweizen are based off of theirs and we think that to be the truth. Apart from Blue Moon which is served with an orange wedge (what, do we have scurvy?) this beer goes best with a lemon. We think anything that can stand up to a lemon, can stand up to our drinking. If you are a fan of the Hefeweizen style of beer, we recommend you give this brand a try if you are loyal to another. You may just realize what you have been missing. And it tastes great in a beer bong of course.
Next up is the all important spirit that is used only for doing shots. Being put in charge of the festivities, I opted for the spirit most known for shots, tequila of course. What could go wrong here? First off, I need to address something…Everyone, repeat after me please. “Jose Cuervo is not for doing shots.” Yeah, you can get a 5 gallon jug of it at Costco for 15 dollars, but that doesn’t mean it is worth the bottle it is in. This isn’t meant to knock down Senor Jose. It’s ok in a margarita, but it doesn’t belong in the shot glass. After that was eliminated, I naturally turned my thoughts to Patron. Patron is an all around good tequila too. But why drink what everyone else drinks? We like to be different here at the WGUB, so I went down to my local liquor store and hit up the owner for his thoughts. One note here, if you are not friends with someone who owns a liquor store, quickly rectify this. You can get some great leads on some spirits that don’t get the face time of the popular brands. This led us to Herradura Reposado tequila for our trip. The key to a good tequila is that it should be something you can sip, almost like a cognac or fine whiskey. The Herradura has a nice subtleness to it that isn’t overpowering like Patron can be. I find Patron to be very peppery, while the Herradura has a smoother cinnamon flavor to it.
Upon pouring our 5th shot of the night and asking who was joining me, it brought forth the following responses from those in attendance…
WhiteGlossy: “At 4 I get a little fuzzy… At 5 I can now convince myself that it tastes exactly like a warm summer’s breeze. Also, I am now super strong… Incredibly hot… And everybody thinks I’m freakin hilarious. My response… “Let’s kill this bitch!”” (I can only assume he is speaking about finishing the bottle, which at this point I would oblige him just to see what happens.)
Paystee: “Do you rape me after six?”
Better yet, it didn’t make us feel like we had been hit by a train the next day. Of course we felt like we were going to crap our pants, but that might have just been Pastee’s cooking to blame. He’s funny, but he can’t cook for sh!t.
And finally that brings us to the Drink. This is usually reserved for Saturday (in our case Sunday as well). This is the drink you want to hit when you are just coming out of the fog late Saturday. We of course could have chosen an old favorite (The Kraken) but of course I wanted something different. I have a minor addiction to Vodka. I love tasting them and trying them in just about every type of drink. Wanting to try something different, I was turned onto Silver Tree Small Batch Vodka. This isn’t the mass produced vodka like Skyy, Svedka, or Absolut. And you can taste the difference. After tasting, we read up on what really goes into this vodka and we found that it was a nice mix of potatoes, malted barley and summer wheat that gave it its nice soft finish. This little bottle got us through the rest of the weekend just fine.
So there you have it folks, if you got a camping trip planned in the near future and want to get a little relaxed, we recommend these suggestions. But whatever you do, just do it away from the fire pit.
