Many years ago, the winter of 2000 to be exact, I was deep in the jungles of Vietnam sipping a sweet nectar they called “Tiger Beer.” We would ask “toi un Tiger beer, moi lom lom” and they would come back with a cold (for Vietnam standards anyway) Tiger Beer for us. There were other beers there in Vietnam, Saigon Beer for example, but none of them had the flavor of the blue bottle.
Since that wonderful trip in 2000, I don’t recall ever having Tiger beer again. I always knew I could get it if I wanted it, but for some reason I avoided it. That was until I received a fateful offer by Melissa Tavss from The Baddish Group to try some Tiger Beer on the house. Having been so long and with the changes in my tastes over the years, I had to try it. Would it live up to the memories? Would the flavor of this beer take me back to the Mekong Delta watching long shabby fishing boats putter around with the mountains in the back ground? Would I smell the exhaust of thousands of two stroke motor scoots and hear the constant stream of beeps that turned into white noise? Who knows, but I had to find out!
So I took Ms. Tavss up on her offer and asked to send along a sample. Within days there was a box waiting for me and I have to say, I haven’t been this excited about a tasting in a VERY long time. Now one sits, chilling waiting to be drank. Will rediscover and old fond love or will my memories be dashed by a pedestrian beer? Time to find out…
