Reviewers invite Senate executives to visit Cold Spring Brewing

Happy return from break. We are so excited to be back on campus for our final semester. We are also stoked to be doing our favorite activity—drinking beer. It has been far too long since Jmay and I have had a creative outlet.

That being said, we were feeling a bit angsty, so our first review in the new year is none other than Monster. Some of you may be confused, but yes, Monster created their very own alcoholic beverage. We were a little nervous to take on Monster: THE BEAST UNLEASHED, due to its intense tagline, “Don’t be afraid of the big bad beast,” so we brought in two of our favorite elected officials, her Majesty and the VP, (Clair Moonen and Liz Hamak) to help us cage the unleashed beast.

Before we get into our unique selection of beverages, we would like to highlight the duality of Cold Spring Brewing. Not only do they make a wide variety of legendary beers under the mantle “Third Street Brewing,” but they also brew the monstrosities that we consumed today. That being said, we will try to keep our slander of this iconic central Minnesota town to a minimum.

We started with Mean Green, the OG Monster flavor that started it all. Right away, both Liz and her majesty stated, “this smells like freshman year.” We don’t know how they would know what drinks smell like as non-21-year-olds, but we believe their take. They also claimed it reminded them of “All You Can Drink” vodka red bulls at Sal’s and caramel apple suckers on Halloween, proving that The Beast has a very diverse set of tastes.

Her majesty also claimed that we can get a sponsorship, or ‘sponse’ as the cool kids say, so we don’t have to keep buying our own beers… like that would ever happen. While this mean green machine wasn’t a home run, it was satisfactory enough to consider tasting again.

Next up was Scary Berry, which came out a hazy yet vibrant pink color. The flavor was in question for most of the review, ranging from jolly rancher to Scooby Doo shots. The Senate representatives and the reviewers both agreed that gut rot would occur from consuming multiple of these, yet there is no sugar or caffeine, so we don’t know what would happen. What we DO know is be careful with your can of Scary Berry, or else you’ll have a scary berry-colored acid burn hole on your mom’s favorite couch. The only beast this drink would unleash involves the morning after and a toilet.

Peach Perfect was the third of the four in the variety pack, and was voted (yes we ran this democratically because we had senators present) the worst. Once again, a hazy seltzer, only this time with a puke color, which could’ve caused the effect of a pukeish aftertaste. “Punch you in the face peach” would’ve been a better name, as whatever flavoring they put into this can could’ve been cut down by roughly 90%. However, it was suggested a slushie version could make this sucker bearable.

Nevertheless, if you’d like a similar taste, we recommend going to BDubs and combining a taste of all the pop flavors from the machine, with a shot or two of vodka. Good luck, and good night after four of them.

The final, White Haze, was the most bearable by far of the collection. The similarity to White Gatorade brought us back to our childhoods, playing in sprinklers and chugging the small Gatorade bottles in between pickup football games.

We envisioned Clair throwing long touchdowns to Liz, a similar vision to what Vikings fans see with Kirk to Jettas, while Chach and Jmay would lock down on defense like… well, not the Vikings defense (Go Pack GO!). The nostalgia alone made this a keeper, along with a more subtle taste and what would hopefully be a lesser attack on our bowels.

Who would’ve thought that we would actually enjoy drinking a Monster? This is why we do it, folks.