Dad’s Little Helper: malt liquor

Happy Fathers Day, dad dudes! It’s the only day of the year where your kids won’t give you a hard time for finishing the whole Sunday paper on the pot or commandeering the remote control! And you deserve it. But is it weird to have Richard Nixon to thank for your special day? From what we understand, the dick proclaimed Fathers Day a permanent, national day of observance back in 1972, right when Vietnam was freaking you and your buddies out.
What better way to celebrate our dads, we thought, than to toast to them — their support, their advice and all their lessons in sensitive masculinity — with a high-class glass of malt liquor.
It may just be the one day of the year where beer can really say “I love you.” Evan looks back fondly on turning sixteen in Berlin, Germany and sharing a couple of cold Warsteiners with his father, Roger, at a Steglitz beer garden. And Alex holds memories dear to his heart of dad, Billy Brown, drinking the occasional King Cobra 40 oz. (That classy brand of brew is a whole other post entirely.)

So, this weekend we cracked a frosty brown bottle of Dad’s Little Helper, a malt liquor from Rogue Brewery — think Mickey’s brewed to strict purity laws. The kitsch value of this beer makes it as corny as our dads’ jokes: off-color and endearing. No, literally off-color: Dad’s Little Helper, true to form, is piss yellow. Held up to the sun, it looks like a foughty through and through. There’s no head to speak of, no nose save for scant scents of sweet starch. The carbonation is surprisingly subtle. And the stuff feels strong. As for taste, the syrupy corn and malt flavors hit the middle of the mouth nice and straight-forward. The result is a familiar foughty taste without the sting of acrid booze. If Rogue set out to imitate, and perfect, the actual taste of mediocre malt liquor, by George they have done it. For the most part the beer is pleasantly smooth and guzzlely, assuming it is frosty.
Even if your dad has better taste in beers than this, we think its worth bonding over. For memory’s sake if nothing else. Cheers dads!
Dairy Pairy: Chive Double Gloucester
Soundtrack: Billy Joel’s Glass House