Kids Beer

July 22, 2009 · Posted in Food / Drink, Tokyo

I’ve always said more things should have beer in them. Beer is after all one of the 5 food groups, along with rye, barley, gin, and malt liquor. Sometimes sure the product people get it right, with Beer Candy, Vegetable Beer, and Beer flavored Kit Kats, but I often wish they’d just try a bit harder, go the whole hog, really commit, and inject beer into more of the things that we love. When will we have beer medicine? When will we have beer tobacco? When will we have beer books that are written in beer?

Here from the sunny depths of the Izu peninsula comes one of life’s little beer success stories- Kids Beer!

kidsbeer2

Actually it doesn’t say anywhere on this beer bottle that it is beer. Cowards! What it actually says is- ‘Kids Drink’, which is about as precise as calling your feet ‘somebody’s appendages’ or an elephant a ‘grey thing’. Well, it’s true, so don’t bark up the wrong tree.

I’ve been wanting to drink me some kid’s beer for years, ever since I first heard about it on the award-winning blog of well-known numismatist Michael Beddall. He had to go up to fukushima to get his little taste of sweetness, since neither of us seem to have ever seen this concoction in Tokyo. I found it on a recent holiday to Izu.

Here is a picture of the beer, poured and gone psychedelic in an attempt to appeal to kids, who I’m told like bright colored things and shiny toys, a little like magpies.

kidsbeer3

Doesn’t it look like a delicious piece of candy? Yum yum! Let’s drink it!

And how does it taste? Well, it had some fruitiness, plus a sourish bit of yeasty flavor, but not really like beer, but not a bad approximation for kids. It foams up very nicely.

Hurray for beer!

TOKYO

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Comments

9 Responses to “Kids Beer”

pireze says:

July 22, 2009 at 3:02 pm

What level of alcohol content does Kids Beer have?

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leongsoon says:

July 22, 2009 at 4:28 pm

Yes indeed? Is there enough alcohol in there to get them drunk?

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MJG says:

July 22, 2009 at 4:52 pm

Ah, good point you two both, and something I should have mentioned above. It’s not beer at all, but a substitute- hence no actual ‘beer’ on the packaging anywhere. It’s a beer substitute, with some vague beer flavoring, to simulate drinking real beer.

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locohama says:

July 22, 2009 at 7:47 pm

well,when I have kids one day I’ll be sure to put this on their menu. when I was a kid i hated beer and I’m convinced that was because I wasn’t weened properly. thinks of all the years i missed thinking that beer was this awful crap that only adults with diminished taste buds can appreciate (-:

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SY says:

July 23, 2009 at 11:10 am

How did it taste? Hope you didnt finish it yet. yum yum!

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MJG says:

July 23, 2009 at 11:23 am

Loco- It’s all about proper weaning. One breast milk, the other draft Sapporo.

SY- Ah gomen, I drank it all! I thought you didn’t want it after you threw it in the trash in the Izu hotel

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McAlpine says:

July 25, 2009 at 2:42 am

Just as long as there are no stupid Navy hats around, I’m in!

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Akuma no chikara says:

July 25, 2009 at 9:27 pm

This is a great idea. The French give their kids alcohol from an early age and they turn out alright, right…right…….?

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MJG says:

July 31, 2009 at 11:53 am

Akuma, that is why the French are the world-leaders they are today, without a doubt.

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