The Mac’s line of beers can aptly be described as fake craft beer. Like weed, Mac’s beers are a gateway to the expensive, harder shit. Before you know it, this drop will have any soon-to-be graduate breatha loudly expressing their political views over a pint and reflecting on their glory days as a student. It’s like Mac’s Brew-Bar changing to Emerson’s; the shift is inevitable. One day you’re drinking a cold Apparition in a dusty flat’s living room, the next you’re 40 sending passive aggressive emails to your corporate workmates whilst drinking Emerson’s Bird Dogs.
The pipeline is real, and Mac’s Apparition finds itself as the middle-ground between the well-known cheap lager brands and the vanilla, oak and wildflower fuckery that's sold for $14 a can. The taste of an Apparition is like if someone added essential oils to a Speight’s Gold Medal and called it a day, giving the beer a bit of twang and fruitiness; just enough to make the beer not too bitter or too sweet. Now you can brag to your RTD drinking friends about the “pleasant touch of hops that really brings the beer together,” as if you aren’t still too scared to go near a porter or stout.
The real benefit of drinking Apparitions is that, with your newfound knowledge of craft beers, you can graduate from those 4% lagers to a 5.6% behemoth of a beer that, in the words of a bystander drinking these, “Really sneak up on ya.” It leaves you with the same effect as if you lost both big toes in an unfortunate Lime scooter accident, making you unable to walk more than one or two metres in either direction without losing your balance, forcing you to use outriggers like a mock-up sail boat or those shitty bridges first-year engineering students have to design. I totally didn’t write this after drinking one.
A box of 12 Mac’s Apparitions will run you $28.99 for a deceivingly strong 15.6 standards, bringing the golden ratio to $1.85 per standard. In terms of beer, that’s probably the closest a box will get to the scarce dollar-per-standard goal without venturing into the realm of Double Browns. While this beer isn't quite as crafty as connoisseurs may desire, Apparitions are a decent starting point for changing from the same ultra-low carb lagers that are brewed in the same two mass-producing breweries and just have different labels slapped on.
Pairs well with: Darts and complaining about the younger generation
X Factor: Seeing ghosts, extreme intoxication
Hangover Depression Level: 9/10. It’ll turn your Sunday scaries into your Monday scaries
Taste Rating: 8/10