Apples are the best fruit, because in addition to being delicious, they are also versatile. Apples can be juiced, pied, carameled, candied, fermented, distilled, cidered, crisped, jacked, brown bettied!, eaten plain without a fuss like you're some kind of goddamn health monster determined to live forever, jellied, and put on fast-food salads. The apple's superiority is self-evident, which is why we must repudiate all those who have besmirched its good name.
We'll start with the Beatles, who were a very good band, but not the best band [Editor's note: Actually ... never mind], and therefore not qualified to name their record label after the best fruit. Shortly after the Beatles insulted the apple, Adam and/or Eve—and I think a snake or maybe the devil—also discredited the best fruit by eating it naked and without the express written consent of Johnny Appleseed, our finest American. Then Steve Jobs got himself a great little gadget company, but their phones won't deserve to be associated with the best fruit until the screens stop shattering with each stiff wind or dirty look. Maybe they should coat them in that abominable wax the grocery industry slathers all over our precious apples.
The Deadspin staff doesn't know shit about apples.
Which brings us to the most egregious apple-offenders of all: the bad folks at Anheuser-Busch, who just can't stop assaulting us with their fake-cider sugar-booze atrocities. I like real hard cider so much that I have pre-resolved to drink more of it in 2015, and I've been happily fortifying unfermented cider with applejack and bourbon all the live long fall. There is no greater advocate for liquefied, alcoholized apples. But I just can't stand the pestilent crud-water the Budweasels keep foisting upon an unsuspecting public.
Their latest insult is Shock Top Honeycrisp Apple Wheat, which purports to be "Belgian-style wheat ale brewed with cider and spices with natural Honeycrisp apple flavor and other natural flavor." Let me solve for you the riddle contained in those last three words: apparently in the Budosphere, "other natural flavor" means "utter contempt for mankind."
Shocktop Honeycrisp Apple Wheat smells like yesterday's beer filtered through the day before's socks, plus green-apple candy. There's no hint of Belgian witbier, just stale ale spiked with the drool of an angry army's worth of Jolly Rancher-suckling toddlers and maybe a hit of honey from whichever broke-ass bees supply the toasting stations at budget-motel continental-breakfast buffets.
That said, Shocktop Honeycrisp Apple Wheat is not the worst-tasting thing you will ever drink, and not just because I forbid you to ever drink it. Should you defy my orders, you will be treated to something that's no better or worse than, I dunno, whatever other Fuck-You-A-Ritas and TurdLokos are currently on the sweetened malt-beverage market. It tastes simple and stupid, but you could probably force one down under the wrong circumstances. But please, protect your circumstances. This shit's only 5.2-percent alcohol, so it lacks the sole benefit of the least-worst of its kind.
Stop wrecking apples, Anheuser-Busch.
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Will Gordon loves life and tolerates dissent. He lives in Cambridge, Mass., and some of his closest friends have met Certified Cicerones. Find him on Twitter @WillGordonAgain. Image by Jim Cooke.
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