Alright - a little history :: The term “bowl game” was first used for College football games and originated with the Rose Bowl.  It was named so because of the bowl shape of the stadium.  The term Super Bowl was first used by Kansas City Chiefs owner Lamar Hunt who meant it as a joke calling the Interleague Championship the Super Bowl after watching his kids play with a Super “Ball”

::  You can’t make this stuff up folks ::

On to the beer.  We’ve saved one of the better grocery store beers for the 4th Quarter.  It comes from England, where incidentally Football is what we Americans call Soccer :)  But we digress…..Newcastle Brown Ale is one of the best drinkable complex beers out there.  It’s brewed with English and dark caramel malts and has a really good English hop flavor without being too bitter.

If you’re about to head out to a Super Bowl shin dig where you might not know everybody, this is a definitely a beer that will impress the masses and one that everyone will enjoy.

So far, we’ve sampled Beck’s Premier Light and Yuengling Light Lager as our Super Bowl pre-game beer. For kickoff, we kicked it up a notch with Pale Ales…Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, Sweetwater 420 Extra Pale Ale and Yazoo Pale Ale. Now it’s time to mellow out while we watch The Boss rock the half-time show. What better way to watch The Boss than to kick back with a classic American Lager?

Samuel Adams Boston Lager is one of (if not the best) BIG BEER…beers. It’s a classic lager…dark golden in color. Really smooth and really good. We could elaborate with fancy words but that’s kinda lame. Buy this instead of Budweiser and you’ll impress your friends. Also, their website is amazing! It’s an education in beer…styles, history, food pairings. We highly recommend you take the field trip!

The other lager we recommend for your Super Bowl half-time show comes from Holland. Grolsch is one of our absolute favorite lagers. 6 packs are easy to find in grocery stores. They also bottle a 22 oz. filp-top which looks extra fancy. We recommend that one. It’s like the Harvard of beer bottles.ac

The Super Bowl is not an excuse for crappy beer. So we’ve decided to highlight some beers that are easy to find in the grocery store but won’t make you sacrifice quality as you watch the biggest game of the year. We got it started yesterday with the pregame show. Light beers will always be the “pregame”, “minor leagues”, “arena league” of beers. Face it, good beer has calories. Don’t waste ‘em on this or this…save ‘em for a few great brews!

We’re kicking off the big game with Pale Ale. Pales are a step up from the basic and mass-produced types that you find spending millions on witty or sexy Super Bowl ads. Most of those are Lagers or Pilsners (barely) and many of these just don’t taste good at all.

A good Pale Ale will be slightly bitter (because of the hops) but for the most part, balanced. We like these three: Sweetwater 420 Extra Pale Ale, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Yazoo Pale Ale. All three are easy to find in your local grocery store.

Sweetwater 420 Extra Pale Ale comes from Sweetwater Brewery in Atlanta. They make a bunch of great beers that you can get pretty much anywhere in the Southeast. It’s a classic pale…one of the better we’ve had.

Yazoo Pale Ale is brewed in Nashville and distributed throughout Middle Tennessee and Northern Alabama. If you’re in town, you know how good this one is. If you’re ever coming through Nashville BUY SOME! It’s our favorite pale ale. *especially great straight from the Yazoo Tap Room*

Finally, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale is probably the most widely distributed craft beer in the USA. You can get it just about anywhere and it’s good! If you’ve seen it in the store and wondered about it…try it!

Next up: our picks for the perfect halftime beer.

Aaaahhhhh  the Super Bowl :  Some watch it for the commercials, some watch it for the half time show, some watch the half time show hoping to see a wardrobe malfunction and oh yeah….there’s that football game that happens too.  Whatever your reason for watching, Super Bowl Sunday is an excuse to have people over for one more “big game” ….. and yes we know there’s still the Pro Bowl but come on!  Anyway, one thing the Super Bowl is not an excuse for is crappy beer.  That being said, we (being the good teachers that we are) have decided to step out of the classroom and on to the field…ok that was a stretch but work with us here.  We’ll hi-lite 2 beers in this Pregame Post.

So, we wouldn’t normally recommend “light beers” in any post but we understand that Super Bowl Sunday is a day when you could be bringing beer for the masses or a day when you just might be having more than one beer, and seeing how most of the food at Super Bowl parties isn’t in the light category you might want your beer to be.

The two light beers that we’d bring to school are Beck’s Premier Light Pilsner and Yuengling Light Lager

Both taste as much like real beer as a light beer can…99 calories in the Yuengling Light Lager and 64 calories in the Beck’s Premier Light Pilsner. Oh, you can normally find a 6 pack of Yuengling Light Lager for around $5.49 in the grocery store. It’s only distributed on the East coast and Southeast. Click here for the list of distributors.