United Nations of Beer

Fix beer

by Ashley Cotter-Cairns
(UNOB HQ)

Fix Beer

As a bit of an Asterix fan in my youth, I immediately felt some kinship with a bottle labelled Fix beer.

Getafix was among my favourite characters. He was responsible for brewing the magic potion that kept the indominable Gauls in their toes and, as beer is about as close as adults get to magic potion, I was immediately intrigued and couldn't wait to crack open a bottle.

Now marketing is all well and good, indeed, necessary, but an all-natural beer with "no additives" is something quite out of this world. Excuse me for a moment, Elvis just walked in and asked me for a swig. That's how out of this world the claim is.

Of course, if there IS a Fix beer spring somewhere near Bracebridge, Ontario, then I'll apologise duly. As long as they let me go skinnydipping there, once. With Angelina Jolie. I don't ask for much...

Meanwhile, back in the real world, this beer is waiting to be reviewed.

The initial aroma is very sweet, almost scarily sweet, a promise of future trips to the dentist for root canals. But you will be pleasantly surprised (unless you like sweet beer, or novocaine) when you take a sip.

There's some initial sweetness, granted, but the closest reminder I get from Fix beer is Corona. That icy-cold, thirst-shattering cut across your palate, like slicing your tongue on a yoghurt lid you couldn't resist licking clean, the benign aftertaste, the hint of bitterness begging for lime.

There's a fairly long aftertaste that gradually fades, in a pleasant way, until you take your next gulp. Fix beer is all right.

Once the idea of the Corona concept bit me, I had to try a bit of lime. I immediately wished I hadn't bothered. It's not shocking with lime, but it does mask Fix's character. The experiment brought back a thousand horrible memories of drinking crap beer in crap pubs and clubs in crap company in my former crappy life. Which is a crap thing to be reminded of.

You won't hate this beer, nor will you take pictures of it and paste them into a little book you keep secreted in the toilet for those "lonely moments". Fix beer is worth trying. You can drink quite a lot of it without feeling bloated, but you may be belching like a bullfrog for a while after you've finished. The thinking beer fan's Corona, 'cos it's way cooler to be seen holding.