The Drink Of The Weekend: Kona Longboard Lager

As part of our mission here at Why Daddy Drinks to revel in the humorous lunacy that is fatherhood, and to promote the drinking of quality beverages, we bring you our weekly segment highlighting something that should be in your glass. This is The Drink Of The Weekend.

This past weekend was notable for a couple of reasons:

1. I spent a good portion of the day sitting around letting five pounds of pork shoulder slowly cook its way into about 4 pounds or so of pulled pork.

2. It was the 2013 college football season opener for the Cougars of my alma mater, Washington State University.

Longboard Lager…Liquid Aloha

Not that I only watched the Cougars as they took on the Auburn Tigers down in Alabama. That game didn’t start until 4 p.m., and it was going to take about 9 hours to create the pulled pork. So, I placated myself with part of Johnny Manziel and No. 7 Texas A&M beating Rice, Eastern Washington pulling off the upset by knocking off No. 25 Oregon State, and my Beloved Seattle Mariners managing to hold on and beat the hapless Houston Astros for the third-straight game.

However, it was Wazzu that really mattered. This was the start of Year Two of the Mike Leach Era, and our hopes are high that the Cougars can improve on last season’s 3-9 campaign. I won’t go into too many details of the game…If you want, you can read my running diary here…But, suffice it to say, it wasn’t meant to be the Cougars day, as too many interceptions led to Auburn winning 31-24.

But, like any true Wazzu fan, win or lose, there was one given that was going to occur in this game. I would be drinking beer.

Now, back in the day, Football Saturdays were near-religious experiences for us in the Epsilon Gamma chapter of the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. And like Jesus, who turned water into wine and hung with the prostitutes, we, too, knew the Good Times to be had with free-flowing liquor and girls of a certain “morally casual” attitude on game days in Pullman, Wash. Many pre-functions included inviting the girls of a sorority over and having Champagne breakfasts that consisted almost entirely of Champagne and, maybe, a box or two of donuts. Beer made up for the lack of breakfast foods, and by 11 o’clock, we were pretty much ripped to the tits as we headed off for Martin Stadium and the day’s kickoff.

And by halftime, with the Cougars often behind, those of us who could still operate most of our limbs would stagger back to the frat house and pass out for a while. I mean, we usually had a party set for that evening that we had to rally for.

Things are a bit different today. Saturday mornings consist of a lot of coffee, which I need to deal with the onslaught of demands, crying, wants and needs of my two young daughters, and besides, those little girls do enough damage to the living room so that we certainly don’t need me adding a bunch of empties all over the floor. I make sure those all end up in the recycling now, anyway.

Learning A Word A Beer

But, when it comes to Watching Wazzu, beer is on the menu. And this weekend that menu was headed up by the one and only Kona Longboard Lager.

What is there NOT to like about Longboard Lager? It’s made in Hawaii. It calls itself “Liquid Aloha”. Just drinking one practically puts me on the beach in Kauai. In fact, even though I was drinking Longboard Lager, I could have slotted in any of Kona’s great island-inspired beers: Fire Rock Pale Ale, Big Wave Blonde Ale, or the seasonal beers, Pipeline Porter, Koko Brown or Wailua wheat ale. The only downside to Kona beer is that its Castaway India Pale Ale is only served on tap in Hawaii. If it were available on the mainland, I might not drink anything else.

And if that wasn’t enough, Kona beer provides proof that drinking can be educational. It’s right there, under every bottle cap. You can learn basic Hawaiian. Not just words like “Aloha” [Goodbye. Hello], but “Moana” [Ocean] and “Ku’u Aku” [To Relax].

Longboard Lager also comes in handy when you need something to slow cook your pork shoulder into pulled pork. No, it’s not as Hawaiian and Kalua Pork, but when I put that pulled pork on a bun, and washed it down with a Longboard Lager, well…I wasn’t so upset about the Cougars losing their season opener. It was Liquid Aloha.

Pulled pork sandwich. Steak fries. Kona Longboard Lager. Thank me.