James Cairns

Last weekend, I discovered that beer can make me happy – and I don’t mean this in a generic Homer-Simpson-Duff-lite-blanket-statement-we-all-love-beer kinda way. I had a moment last week where beer made me very happy. Unexpectedly happy, I have to say, ‘kinderlik gelukkig’ as a colleague of mine at Free State University would say when absolutely thrilled to bits.

What was it that brought this wave of euphoria upon me in the Park Meadows Pick’n’Pay, but the glorious return of Amstel Radler.

Again – I must stress that I’m not here as some craven brand ambassador. I was touched by beer, emotionally, positively. Every time I re-read what I have written here it seems hard to remove the sarcasm, but let me assure you, dear reader – there is none.

For years, I have had to stoop to the gutter effluent that is Flying Fish Lemon. Sometimes other options came across my path. Sometimes the Bedfordview Tops would have done the right thing and gotten in a few cases of the ridiculously priced Super Bock Limao or Bitburger Lemon and give me the opportunity to refinance my house in the attempt to satisfy my desire for the real deal, the real Amstel Radler so cruelly and thoughtlessly removed from our shelves all those years ago.

However, good reader, the prodigal beer has returned. What was it that did the trick? A distant brand manager deemed the time right? A portentous ping in the algorithm telegraphed a return for Radler? A bumper crop of some genetically modified starchy grain in an unheard of valley where indentured farmers farm themselves into the ground to satisfy the beer-lords of SAB?

I don’t know, but when I hefted those two sixpacks through the fridge’s swing doors at the back of the Park Meadows Pick’n’Pay Liquor I felt like a harvest king of old, a genuine, real euphoria coursing through me.

Fleeting it was not. It held the entire weekend, without even a Springbok victory to taint the stats. There was no reason to be happy, but the beer.

Dear reader, is it not a great thing, a blessing, a boon that something as simple as a beer in a bottle can deliver me into the arms of such satisfaction?

I’ll tell you, dear reader – it is. It absolutely is.