I was picking up milk at Trader Joe’s when I noticed they make scotch. Trader Joe’s brand scotch. I would’ve called it Trader McJoe’s scotch, but none the less, I have ordered my dad, I more refined scotch drinker than I, to investigate. I don’t think he will.

I also came across two different six packs of beer for $2.99 each. For those of you who aren’t pursuing advanced degrees in numerical disciplines, that works out to less than fity cents a can, which is about as cheap as beer comes. I bought one of each and came home for the taste test.

I had the Red Oval first. It’s packaging wasn’t as intriguing, white can’s with a red oval containing the name. I wondered if the simplicity of it’s promotion would lead to a great product, after all, if the beer is that good, why mess around with labels and slogans? For cheep beer it was quite tastey. Like the packaging, it’s no frills, a standard lager that doesn’t really stand out in any way.

The competition was Simple Times Lager. It’s old timey, and old timey is hard to hate. It’s also rocks a 6.2% alcohol content, which is pretty potent for any type of beer, much less a lager. When I finally got around to tasting it, I genuinely enjoyed it. Did the flavor remind me of simpler times? No, but it still tastes good.

And thus The First Annual WFS Blue Ribbon For the Best Cheap Beer At Trader Joe’s goes to Simpler Times lager. Will it surpass Busch as my favorite cheap beer? i can garuantee it will never have the same sentimental value as the Official Beer of Western Washington University, the beer of $1 pitcher nights at the Up & Up, but on quality, I may have to concede that Simpler Times has it beat. I will have to do extensive research before I have a conclusion on that one.

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