The Eastern Market Brewing Co. lager, with an 8-bit Barry Sanders on the can, asks: ‘Don’t set your expectations too high.’ Just like with the Detroit Lions.
| Detroit Free Press
Eastern Market Brewing Co. probably couldn’t have picked a better (or worse?) weekend to launch a beer in tribute of the Detroit Lions.
The Lions are coming off an embarrassing 20-0 loss to the shorthanded Carolina Panthers, their first shutout loss in more than a decade. They’re now 4-6, destined to miss the postseason and potentially a regime change. All of that has fans fired up for change heading into Thanksgiving against the Houston Texans.
Enter Eastern Market Brewing Co., which has been debuting new and tasty beers left and right from its Detroit location and its Ferndale Project taproom this year. Going into the Lions-Panthers game Sunday, it announced a new beer release: “Same Old Lager,” a crisp, 4.5% alcohol-by-volume lager that has one simple request: “Don’t set your expectations too high.”
The can has an 8-bit version of legend Barry Sanders on the label with a Tecmo Bowl football field backdrop, which will surely catch the eyeballs of any Lions fan.
“This classic American lager is exactly what you’d expect,” the beer description reads. “Light, crisp, and always leaves you wanting more. Just keep telling yourself ‘the Next Beer, will be The Beer.'”
Get it? It’s a play on both the Lions fan’s sense of false hope every year and also the reputation of the lager in the craft beer community: Crisp and clean, but lacking in bold flavor unlike other popular styles such as IPA, stout and wheat ale. Still, lagers have a valuable place in the beer portfolio, just like the lovable (?) Lions do in our hearts.
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Same Old Lager is available for home delivery through www.peddler.delivery or in 4-packs to go at either of Eastern Market Brewing’s locations: 2515 Riopelle St. in Detroit or Ferndale Project, 567 Livernois. Another batch of “Same Old Lager” is in fermentation and will be ready for release in December.
Spirits of Detroit writer Brian Manzullo covers craft alcohol for the Free Press. Contact him: bmanzullo@freepress.com and on Untappd, bmanzullo and Twitter, @BrianManzullo and @SpiritsofDET.