Category: Worldwide

When a fresh calendar year begins, it’s natural to start talking about resolutions. You know, the kind designed to make you a smarter, kinder, leaner, healthier version of yourself. New year, new you and all that noise. But 2020 was a doozy and 2021 arrived with the world still in the weeds.

So give yourself a break. Skip “dry January” and just sip on lighter beers this month. (We’re still drinking stouts, sorry-not-sorry.)

Historically, the word “light” in relation to beer was an alarm bell that screamed “no flavor!” But in recent years, the pendulum has swung in the other direction. Many of your favorite craft breweries are creating refreshing, full-flavored light beers that prove that low calorie doesn’t always need low flavor.

Check out some of our favorite light beers below.

Avery Pacer IPA

ABV: 4.5%

Calories: 100

Average Price: $10.99 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Proving that light beer doesn’t have to be flavorless, Avery Pacer IPA is low in calorie and alcohol, but high in taste. It’s hazy, juicy, and filled with wheat and oats to create a full-body. Meanwhile, Southern Hemisphere Hops offer a citrus-forward, piney base.

Tasting Notes:

This lightly carbonated, fresh beer is loaded with mango, guava, and other tropical fruit flavor notes. These are heightened by the addition of grapefruit, orange zest, and resinous pine.

Bottom Line:

This is the perfect light beer for IPA fans. It’s refreshing, light, and filled with flavors well suited for hop heads looking for a lighter option.

Night Shift Nite Lite

ABV: 4.3%

Calories: 120

Average Price: $7.79 for a 4-pack of 16-ounce cans

The Beer:

This isn’t your usual yellow, fizzy light beer. While it is a light lager, it’s highly crushable, refreshing, and flavor-forward. Designed to pair with a night of fun (or relaxation), it’s a great beer for a quarantined January house party with your cluster.

Tasting Notes:

On the nose, you’ll find the scent of baking bread and sweet caramel. The first sip is filled with sharp citrus flavors and crisp, refreshing notes. It’s light, highly drinkable, and thirst-quenching.

Bottom Line:

If you’re usually a fan of Miller Lite or one of the other well-known macro brews, Night Shift Nite Lite is a good substitute with a more complicated flavor profile.

Lagunitas Daytime IPA

ABV: 4%

Calories: 98

Average Price: $8.99 for a six-pack

The Beer:

It’s not easy to make a great tasting beer under 100 calories, but the folks at Lagunitas pulled it off. This brew is hoppy, refreshing, and perfect for IPA fans looking to enjoy a low-calorie, low alcohol option. If you’re a fan of Lagunitas IPA, you won’t be disappointed by this beer.

Tasting Notes:

This beer starts juicy and full of tropical fruit flavors but quickly moves into piney, resinous, citrusy notes with hints of orange, lime, and grapefruit.

Bottom Line:

For a light beer, this is a surprisingly well-balanced IPA. The best part? It’s under 98 calories so you won’t feel bad having a few.

Boulevard Easy Sport

ABV: 4.1%

Calories: 99

Average Price: $8.99 for a six-pack

The Beer:

A few years ago, Michelob Ultra was released as “the beer for people with active lifestyles.” Since then, many great craft beers have been launched that taste a lot better than that macro brew. One is Boulevard Easy Sport, a fresh, citrusy blonde ale with electrolytes and tangerine.

Tasting Notes:

On top of being like the beer equivalent of Gatorade (unconfirmed), Easy Sport is crisp, light, thirst-quenching, and full of tart orange, salty, sweet flavors. This one is so good you’ll want to crack a can open after pretty much any strenuous athletic activity.

Bottom Line:

This is the beer for the athlete (or wannabee athlete) who enjoys a beer or two after a workout, run, bike ride, or simply an afternoon spent shoveling snow.

Firestone Walker Fly Jack

ABV: 4%

Calories: 96

Average Price: $8.49 for a six-pack

The Beer:

When you crack open a beer for Firestone Walker, you know what you’re going to get. There’s no corner-cutting with this California brewery. This crisp, hazy, New England-style IPA only has 96 calories, but it’s full-flavored and hopped up with Cascade, Callista. Dry Hop: El Dorado, Chinook, Mosaic, Strata, Sabro, Idaho 7 hops.

Tasting Notes:

If you nose this beer, you definitely won’t expect it to be light. It’s filled with fresh, citrus hop aromas. The taste mirrors the nose, with hints of tropical fruits and fresh, crisp citrus.

Bottom Line:

If you’re a fan of New England-style IPAs, but you’re looking for something lighter, this is the beer for you. If it didn’t list the calories on the can, you wouldn’t even know this is a light beer.

Harpoon Bush League

ABV: 4%

Calories: 115

Average Price: $16.99 for a Fantasy League 12-pack

The Beer:

When it comes to light beer (especially in the craft world) it seems like the only options are lager or IPA. Bush League (which is part of the Fantast League mix pack) is a cold fermented American pilsner that was brewed with flaked corn and Mandarina Bavaria and Hüll Melon hops.

Tasting Notes:

This golden color beer is full of sweet cereal notes along with a whole heap of resinous, piney hop-driven flavors. It’s crisp, light, and highlighted by hints of fresh lime zest, orange, and grapefruit.

Bottom Line:

This light, crisp pilsner is perfect on its own. But pick up the whole Fantast League 12-pack and also enjoy Rec League (pale ale), Farm League (farmhouse ale), and Night League (Black IPA).

Abita Hop 99

ABV: 4.2%

Calories: 99

Average Price: $8.99 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Abita set out to create an IPA that was low in calories and ABV but high in flavor fresh, citrus-filled flavor. They did it by combining Mosaic and Citra hops to create a bright, flavorful, light beer.

Tasting Notes:

On the nose, you’ll be met with hints of mango, guava, as well as fresh citrus zest. The first sip is filled with fresh berries, ripe oranges, and juicy, tropical fruits.

Bottom Line:

When it comes to light beers, this is one of the best. It’s well-rounded, refreshing, and perfect for literally any day of the year whether it’s the high heat of summer or the chilly depths of winter.

Bell’s Light-Hearted Ale

ABV: 3.7%

Calories: 110

Average Price: $9.99 for a six-pack

The Beer:

Bell’s Two-Hearted Ale is one of the most popular IPAs in the country. It should come as no surprise that its lighter counterpart is fresh, aromatic, and filled with citrus and pine flavors that would appeal to the most enthusiastic IPA drinker.

Tasting Notes:

One of the Michigan brewery’s newest releases, Light-Hearted is filled with lemon, lime, and orange flavors along with pine, resin, and sweet cereal notes.

Bottom Line:

If you’re a fan of the immensely popular Two-Hearted Ale and you’re looking for lower alcohol, lower caloric alternative, grab a sixer of Light-Hearted. You won’t be disappointed.

While hiding behind bulletproof glass after stirring up a crowd with false hopes of overturning the results of the 2020 election, Donald Trump attempted to address the “protest rally” slash open coup unfolding in Washington D.C. on Wednesday, but he ran into one small problem. His mic didn’t work. For a good thirty seconds, the outgoing Trump spoke before realizing nobody could hear a word he was saying, and it was a fitting moment for the final moments of his presidency. While noting it would’ve been nice if someone cut his mic years ago, Twitter users couldn’t help but love the symbolism of Trump being silenced during his last desperate grasp at holding onto the White House.

However, Aaron Rupar reports that the technical issue was resolved, enabling Trump to rant about how America is a “third world country,” and Mike Pence needs to do the “right thing” by not certifying the results because states want to do a “re-vote.” (None of this is true.) Trump also took aim at the GOP calling those who don’t back him “weak Republicans” as he repeated his son Eric’s threat to “primary the hell out of them.” Eventually, the president devolved into calling the counting of votes “bullshit.”

Like all things Trump, it was a surreal event punctuated with a palpable fear of armed violence (Trump himself was behind bulletproof glass) and comedic moments like the DJ trolling the crowd by playing “My Heart Will Go On” from Titanic. And there are still two more weeks left to go before Joe Biden officially takes office.

(Via Aaron Rupar on Twitter)

In case you missed it, Senate Republican Kelly Loeffler just lost her seat in Congress after Reverend Raphael Warnock edged her out in a highly-publicized runoff in Georgia.

Warnock, a pastor at the late John Lewis’ church, becomes the first Black senator in the state’s history, and the first Democrat elected to that post in 20 years. Perhaps more importantly, his win inches the Democratic party toward majority control of the Senate. But while Warnock’s camp, and progressives everywhere, are celebrating, Loeffler is having a hard time accepting her clear defeat.

The appointed official and former businesswoman spoke in front of a crowd of supporters last night as the count took a bad turn for her campaign, refusing to accept the projected outcome and vowing she’d come out on top once all the votes were tallied.

Her delusional optimism — and her insistence on sporting plaid button-ups and puffer vests in an attempt to con the good people of Georgia into thinking she’s actually not a millionaire who allegedly participated in insider trading when the pandemic began — might be commendable to some. To Twitter? It’s just another excuse to dunk on a Trump supporter who tossed out her conservative values to simp for a right-wing pandering TV personality with narcissistic tendencies. Please, do enjoy the roasting that follows.

Killian Hayes, the young French point guard who became the No. 7 overall pick in the 2020 NBA Draft last November, has suffered a torn labrum in his hip and the Pistons are currently determining a course forward that may or may not involve surgery, according to Shams Charania of The Athletic.

Having missed Summer League and making an enormous leap from the German League to the NBA, this development time was quite important for Hayes. The Pistons installed him as the starting point guard even with Derrick Rose also on the roster and other veterans around who would otherwise have set Detroit up to compete for a playoff spot. That was a testament to their investment in Hayes, but now it threatens to be a lost season for the 19-year-old.

Most often, labral tears involve the shoulder for basketball players, such as Paul George at the end of the 2018-19 season. But the labrum is simply the cartilage structure in a bone socket, whether that be the shoulder or hip. Surgery to repair the tear could force Hayes to miss several months.

In the meantime, the Pistons will continue to chart a course forward around a core of Jerami Grant, Sekou Doumbouya, and their other two first-round picks from 2020, Saddiq Bey and Isaiah Stewart.

A lot changed in 2020 but, living in Austin, Sun June are used to seeing perpetual change. The city itself is constantly in a state of transience, with Sun June finding friends either moving to or away from Austin. But amid changes comes the inevitable nostalgia for the past, which Sun June touch on in their newest single “Everything I Had.”

The song arrives alongside a DIY video depicting the band’s vocalist Laura Colwell revisiting places of import from her past. Speaking about the track’s inspiration in a statement, Colwell said the song reflects transient feeling of Austin, Texas:

“‘Everything I Had’ is about feeling stuck and wising you could go back in time. It misses when things were new and easy and full of promise. It feels very ‘Austin’ to us, because things change here so quickly and it’s easy to fall into a rut and feel like the city is moving on without you. Friends are always leaving town too, so sometimes it’s fun to think moving to LA or New York would solve all our problems. It’s also fair to say that the song has taken on some new meaning during the pandemic. We’re all missing someone or something right now.”

The single also offers a preview of their upcoming LP Somewhere, which Sun June call their “prom record.” “The prom idea started as a mood for us to arrange and shape the music to, which we hadn’t done before,” the band said in a statement. “Prom isn’t all rosy and perfect. The songs show you the crying in the bathroom, the fear of dancing, the joy of a kiss – all the highs and all the lows.”

Watch Sun June’s “Everything I Had” video above and check out their Somewhere cover art and tracklist below.

1. “Bad With Time”
2. “Everything I Had”
3. “Singing”
4. “Bad Girl”
5. “Karen O”
6. “Everywhere”
7. “Once in a While”
8. “Finding Out”
9. “Seasons”
10. “Real Thing”
11. “Colors”

Somewhere is out 2/5 via Run For Cover. Pre-order it here.

Kevin Smith’s proven himself to be both an early and steadfast supporter of Zack Snyder’s Justice League director’s cut. And he couldn’t resist using “Snyder Cut” to describe his own original vision for the ending of 1994’s Clerks. Granted, this alternate ending is not a new revelation, Brian O’Halloran (who portrayed Dante) previously told Rolling Stone that he “hated” it. Smith ended up shooting the scene before deciding to go with the closing-up-shop ending that actually suited the spirit of the film well.

Smith did including the scene — in which Dante is killed during a robbery — on the 10th anniversary DVD, and yeah, it is dark stuff. Is it gritty, though? Sure. Even grittier than Caitlin inadvertently having sex with a dead man in a darkened bathroom.

Dark + gritty + original vision? Check, check, check. Take it away, Kevin Smith with illustrative script pages on Twitter:

Ah, memories. Smith uncovered the draft while writing Clerks III, and while the development would have been an ultimate irony (Dante wasn’t even supposed to be there that day!), I’m onboard with O’Halloran’s opinion that this would have been too quick and easy of a wrap-up. And it would have made Clerks III, as Smith has been writing it, a probably nonexistent happening.

Speaking of the threquel, shooting has obviously been pushed back due to you-know-what, but Smith previously revealed to EW that the script was inspired by his own heart attack. “Randal has a heart attack, decides that he came so close to death, and his life has meant nothing, there’s nobody to memorialize him, he has no family or anything like that,” Smith explained. “He comes to the conclusion at mid-life, having almost died, having worked in a movie store his whole life and watched other people’s movies, he tells Dante, I think we need to make a movie. So Dante and Randal make Clerks. That’s the story of Clerks 3.” Boom.

A bottle of Pappy Van Winkle whiskey is the great white whale for many a whiskey drinker. The stuff has reached mythic levels of popularity, due to it’s lauding and limited availability. For the average drinker, it’s damn near impossible to find a bottle (even though it’s released yearly). If you do spot a bottle, you’re going to pay an astronomical markup for the stuff — thereby adding to the mystique.

And your frustration with the whole circus around the juice.

This year, if you live in PA, you can circumvent that rigamarole by winning a chance to pay very close to retail for a bottle of Pappy Van Winkle’s line. Pennsylvania’s Fine Wine & Good Spirits and the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board are running a “lottery” this week that’ll award entrants a chance to buy bottles of Pappy without the aftermarket getting involved.

“In an effort to more equitably distribute limited availability high-demand products to both individual consumers and licensees,” Food Wine & Good Spirits stated via a press release, “we offer a Limited-Release Lottery for our most popular, rare products.”

You can register for the lottery on the liquor store’s website before January 8th. The catch? You have to be a Pennsylvania resident. If so, you’ll have the chance to enter one, multiple, or all six drawings. The prices for each expression range from $89 for the 12-year-old bourbon to $399 for the 23-year-old bottle of Pappy — undeniably a great opportunity for anyone looking to get their hands on this coveted whiskey.

Theoretically, if you’re drawn for all six bottles (very unlikely), you’ll have to pay $1,149.94 to actually take those six bottles home. You’d pay ten times that amount easily right now on the aftermarket.

Buffalo Trace, which owns and produces Pappy Van Winkle, has been very active in acknowledging the ridiculousness of the secondary market’s markups of their various products. When they dropped the 2020 line last the fall, Buffalo Trace said, “If you are a customer trying to buy a bottle at a licensed retailer who has marked it up above MSRP, we encourage you to file a complaint with the Better Business Bureau or contact your state Attorneys General office.”

The brand’s boss, Julian Van Winkle, reiterated that sentiment:

“Unfortunately even though we suggest what we believe to be a very low and fair MSRP,” Van Winkle told Paste. “We cannot control the price retailers charge, and some retailers mark it up even though we and the distributors that those retailers buy from ask them not to.”

While we understand that this feels like a great chance for the average person (in Pennsylvania) to actually get their hands on some good whiskey at a fair price, we can’t read about it without sighing. Yes, it’s great that you can actually buy a coveted whiskey for close to it’s MSRP. And it’s certainly more egalitarian than allowing investors and opportunists to dictate price. But having to win a lottery for the chance to buy a bottle of whiskey still feels… off.

Mostly because it underscores how those aforementioned investors and opportunists have created a system that means many Pennsylvania aficionados will never get to try Pappy without winning a lottery.

In the end, it’s best to think of this more like a ticketing system to avoid a Black Friday style stampede. Hopefully, aftermarket sellers don’t clog the lottery (by having their friends and family enter for them, etc.). If that pitfall can be avoided, perhaps Pennsylvania — by taking a bit of a stand with their supply and giving people a chance to buy some Pappy at a reasonable price via random chance — will lead the way for more retailers and liquor boards to do the same.

After all, once you get past the hype, this is still some pretty special stuff.

On Tuesday, Donald Trump announced that he would be “speaking at the SAVE AMERICA RALLY tomorrow on the Ellipse at 11 a.m. Eastern. Arrive early — doors open at 7 a.m. Eastern. BIG CROWDS!” The president has yet to show up as he’s spent most of the morning tweeting, but even if he’s a no-show, the event attendees are a real greatest hits of his cronies, including attorney Rudy Giulani, MAGA duo Diamond and Silk, and failson Donald Trump, Jr. (whose voice was shot by 10:30 a.m.).

Trump has heavily promoted the Wednesday portion of the event, touting it on Twitter as a “BIG Protest Rally” that “could be the biggest event in Washington, DC, history” — one aimed at pressuring members of Congress to stop the “steal” of the election from him… In other tweets, he echoed the rhetoric speakers at the rally used by calling antifa “a Terrorist Organization” and cited the size of the gatherings to put pressure on Republican senators who so far have not joined his effort to overthrow the election.

The real MVP of the rally, however, was the person in charge of the music.

Giulani took the stage to “Macho Man” (conservatives love the Village People, who knew?) before ranting about election fraud. “If we are wrong, we will be made fools of. But if we are right, a lot of them will go to jail!” he yelled to the dangerously “massive” crowd. “So let’s have trial by combat… I’m willing to stake my reputation, the president is willing to stake his reputation on the fact that we’re going to find criminality there!”

The DJ also played “I Tried So Hard” by Linkin Park; multiple Elton John songs, including “Candle in the Wind” and “Funeral for a Friend/Love Lies Bleeding” (a Trump favorite); and “My Heart Will Go On” by Celine Dion, because if there’s one song to get people fired up, it’s the one from the sinking ship movie. Either the DJ is trolling, or Trump & Co. lack self-awareness. It’s honestly hard to say which is more likely (it’s both).

The DJ’s work did not go unappreciated.

Thanks to Stephen Curry’s scoring brilliance this week, the Warriors are hovering around .500 once again, but executives around the NBA have been keeping an eye on Golden State early this season, particularly as it applies to the availability of Draymond Green.

A recent report from Sam Amick on his podcast on The Athletic NBA Show indicated that not only have the Portland Trail Blazers circled the water on Green in the past, but franchise cornerstone Damian Lillard has specifically lobbied for such a deal.

“If we were handicapping Draymond trade destinations if the Warriors decided to blow it up…that’s the one. Damian and his group have for the last couple years been campaigning for that,” Amick said.

After an extension during the 2019 offseason, Green is under contract through 2023-24, when he has a player option for $27.6 million. That means there’s no realistic reason to believe the Warriors would be looking to dump him anytime soon, even if he is perhaps the most likely of Golden State’s big three to move on.

That was confirmed by a separate recent report, this time from Chris Haynes on his Yahoo! Sports podcast, when Haynes speculated that Green might be put onto the trade market before long if the Warriors’ fortunes worsened. For now, the Warriors will likely sit tight and see how high Curry can take them, as him, Green, and Klay Thompson are all under long-term contracts.

It’s been over five years since Jazmine Sullivan released her last record, Reality Show, but the singer aims to start off the new year with a new album. Offering a final preview of her forthcoming project Heaux Tales, Sullivan tapped guitar virtuoso HER to lend her delicate vocals for the heartbreak anthem “Girl Like Me.”

HER picks at her watery acoustic guitar while Sullivan sings of feeling defeated after being left for another woman on the tender single. Her heartache translates to insecurity over her body and she considers making some changes to her appearance. Echoing Sullivan’s sentiments, HER sings about changing up her style to disconnect from her past relationship. “Yeah, you gon’ make me a gold digger / Maybe I should look like a stripper / Wearin’ Fashion Nova dresses / All these dudes be so pressed and impressed with it,” she sings.

While “Girl Like Me” may be the last single before the release of Sullivan’s Heaux Tales Friday, the singer had spent the closing months of 2020 teasing the project. Along with saying the LP is her “observation of today’s women standing in their power and owning who they are” in a press statement, Sullivan shared the tracks “Lost One” and “Pick Up Your Feelings” to build anticipation for the album’s release.

Listen to Jazmine Sullivan and HER’s “Girl Like Me” above.

Heaux Tales is out 1/8 via RCA. Pre-order it here.