BeerSaturday - Baja Brewing Spinns the Wheel
It's another Saturday, back home in normality, so let me post another beer review. This time it is a brew I came across quite a bit on my bicycle tour of the Baja California, especially on the southern tip, but waited until the last moment to try it. It's the craft beer with the donkey, I kept seeing between La Paz and San Lucas. However, due to the constant heat and my money on my mind, my go-to beer was the cheap and light Lager Pacifico.
Baja Brewing Co. from Los Cabos
Being such a famous tourist destination, Los Cabos need to have their own craft beer. And they do, with Baja Brewing Co. Since they like to cater to both the tranquil, artsy, colonial tourist town of San José, as well as the crazy, party, cruise-ship city of San Lucas, they simply go by the combined term of Los Cabos, which is also what most Mexicans use to refer to this area. The iconic image of the donkey following the beer is hard not to notice, as it seems to follow you around too.
Rewarding Myself on the Ferry
Leaving the Baja back to the mainland, it was not easy to catch my boat, even though I had bought the ticket in advance. The terminal was an hour's ride outside town, where I had to fix one last flat on the way. Then I had to find the entrance to the terminal, navigate my way through its maze, onto the ferry, and up on the passenger deck, after securing my bike downstairs. Meanwhile none of the good folks working there wanted to tell me which way to go, but several uniformed guards wanted to look into my bags.
So once I was "welcomed" abroad, I took a deep breath, and decided to buy a nice beer. It was the red ale (or amber ale, as it says) called Pelirroja, which is the term used to describe redheads. It was actually quite tasty, and out of their series of beers, the one I liked best. But then came the unexpected game of chance:
Spinning the Beer of Fortune
Baja Ferries had a bit of gimmick game set up for self promotion and to animate people to buy the craft beer. For each Baja Brewing you bought, you got to spin a wheel, where you could win some prizes. Of course, all of them bearing the company logo. The crossing was long, the bar was open till eleven, so I sampled their selection, and walked away with all the prizes!
Okay, let's make that all the prizes that were still available, since the corkscrew had already been won. But that got me a cell-phone holder for a dashboard (not sure how stable, and we may never know), a silly phone-holder-ring (I never use those things, as they make me think of getting my finger ripped off in a freak accident), and a flashlight. The latter seems to be only useful item. It's telescopic and has a flexible neck, but it uses some weird kind of battery I didn't recognize.
I also tried their IPA and the Stout, but found both inappropriate for the heat. This last pic is of their Baja Lager. It's nice, light, and refreshing... but honestly, at that point I may just go back to enjoying a Pacifico.
