Miller Chill is a new light beer sold by Miller Brewing Company.  The beer began testing in March, and was released nationwide in July 2007.  The beer is described as an “American take on mexican “chelada” - ice cold beer served with lime and salt.”  I’ve never heard of chelada, but supposedly this beer is “superpremium,” which I’m assuming is pretty good.

Anyway, I saw Chill on sale at Safeway and picked up a case.  The bottle is a light lime green - lighter than, say, Heineken bottles.  No word yet if it’s available in kegs, but I doubt it.

Chill tastes a bit like corona - with a slight sprite-like taste at the end.  It does have a light flavor, and you can kind of taste what Miller is describing as salt and lime.  In reality though, you don’t get anywhere close to the taste of real lime - instead it’s more of an artificial syrup-type taste.

The marketing of Chill reminds me of Anheuser-Busch’s Tequiza.  Both beers tout mexican brewing styles and ingredients, both claim to have lime flavor, and both play heavily on the ‘refreshing’ attribute.  And it’s pretty clear that Chill and Tequiza are attempts to steal market share from Corona.

Still, I kind of prefer how Corona has a very basic flavor that you enhance with a lime or lemon.  The added lime flavor in Chill is a poor alternative - I mean, there are just too many non-beer flavors going on in each sip.

But Chill is not bad, especially if you’re looking for a light beer.  Just don’t expect true lime and salt flavors, and keep in mind, at the end of the day, it’s still just a bottle of Miller.

I noticed within my peer group, very few people read books anymore.  Does this have something to do with the emergence of the Internet?  I think the Internet has played a large part of this shift.  People are reading shorter form writing online and in magazines.  No one wants to wait for the punchline.  This kind of explains why blogs are so popular, its just crack, small 2-3 minute articles that offer nothing particularly substantive.  As someone that enjoys reading (and admittedly reading less) I’m worried that some of the best writers of our day are toiling in obscurity because people my age rather watch TV.

After moving to a city that openly embraces smoking I’ve begun to get more negative on the subject.  People can be found smoking in every bar and many restaurants in Chicago and its bad.  Whereas in California, people are social smokers outside of bars or in special rooms at clubs or just something that happens once in awhile between friends.  I’m not retarded I know smoking is bad and seeing it all over the place really makes me feel sorry for people who are addicted to something that could kill them.  If tobacco wasn’t such a large part of the founding of America we would have banned it a long time ago.  It really has no redeeming quality to offer society.

Also what’s the deal with so many chemicals in cigarette smoke?  I know just burning anything produces a lot of chemicals regardless of what your burning, but cigarettes reportedly have what, 4000 chemicals?  What the fuck is up with that ? Are they spraying the plants with all that shit or is it just the composition of the leaf?