Imported from Munich, Germany, this is not the Lowenbrau from my youth.

For the longest time I didn’t even like Lowenbrau — I was a beer snob even in my teen years — but being that my friends were always buying it by the case — and we’re talking case after case after case … in a single weekend … and we would all be drinking it on the Santa Cruz beach, amid the sand and the surf, the wind and the waves, surrounded by flocks of tanned California girls with their tiny little bikinis … it sort of grew on me.

We’re talking the fake Lowenbrau, brewed in America by Miller.

After 2002 Lowenbrau switched back to an imported beer, but that was long after I’d moved on to other favorites. So I have not actually tasted an imported Lowenbrau, at least not that I can remember. Which means, not anytime within this millennium.

To get into the spirit, I’m listening to something I used to listen to way back when. The Clash. Yes, perfect. “Rudy Can’t Fail!”

It’s Lowenbrau drinking music.

I pop the top, and take a sniff. (Again, why do we do this? Is it not pretentious? Why don’t we also lick the bottle, or chew on the label? Mmm… quality condensation, mixing with the exuberantly bitter twang of gold-foiled paper and imported glue…)

You know what, my friend? It smells like beer! In fact, it smells exactly like Lowenbrau.

Amazing.

I tip it up, lips to glass, toss some back.

Um. Um… Well. Here’s a “Duh” moment. Germans really know how to brew beer.

It’s delicious, much better than my memories of the fake “Lowie” (as we used to call it). Light carbonation, medium body just bursting with a rich maltiness that hints of brown sugar, but the sweetness muted by a perfectly balanced hoppy bitterness.

Oh yeah, and the memories come flooding back. Bear with me my friends, I’m about to quote myself — something I actually wrote while drunk on Lowenbrau in the 1980’s:

Windswept beaches in sweet sunlight
The happy sounds of waves and laughter
Lowenbrau in my hand, buzz in my head
I am complete.

That summed up Lowenbrau back then, and sums it up now, but now Lowenbrau is even better.

Anyone feel like going on a road trip?

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