Costco Beer Advent Calendar 2021 Review Beers 9-16

This is the second of three installments of the Costco Advent Beer Calendar review. If you haven't already, I recommend you check out the first part.

I have spent a lot of time thinking about how to present this information. I’m sure you’ll read this and think to yourself “how is it possible he spent more than 30 seconds on this?” I’ve recently found out that how you format your writing has a big impact on how it’s read; who knew? Certainly not my AP language teacher that’s for damn sure. So when I started thinking about the information I had, I thought what better way to present it than a series of clues culminating in a big reveal?

My initial thought was to somehow create a scene for scene recreation of the 7th season of CSI. For those who aren't fervent CSI fans, this is the Miniature Killer season. I don’t know if it was all the tilt shift shots or Gil Grissom's blossoming romance, but that season has stuck with me. After some brief Googling, I realized this season did not resonate with anyone but me. Then I thought I could do something like Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson in a Few Good Men; truly a classic lawyer movie. But it has come to my attention that I am old. Recently, two coworkers stared at me blankly when I mentioned Speed. Not only did they not know the concept of Keanu Reeves's classic Speed, but they didn't know it existed. I couldn't handle the truth. Perhaps present it like a modern lawyer series such as She-Hulk? This also had to be vetoed. We stopped watching the Marvel movies right before Endgame and I am sure She-Hulk's filled with spoilers. Okay, rapid fire for other considerations that were ditched:

• Phoenix Wright: Ace Attorney: Too iconic
• That one Brady Bunch episode with the brief case: Too dramatic
• Seven: Only so many times you can write “what’s in the box” when writing about an advent calendar (max is 24)
• Serial: Would get sued out the ass using the jingle and I would need a good parody lawyer
• Seinfeld finale: If you know how to turn a truly awful clip show into a stellar blog post, please comment below

Costco Beer Advent Calendar 2021 Review Beers 1-8

Let’s get the burning question out of the way: why am I writing this mega long form piece on last year's Costco 2021 beer advent calendar in September 2022? The answer is obvious. Costco starts selling these in September and I wanted to put the review out just ahead of the 2022 release. Strike while the iron is hot, as I was taught in TikTok Business School.

So let’s go back to October of last year. After writing the Aldi 2021 Preview, I accepted I had no interest in the calendar; I would be ending the year without my parcel of possibilities. Just as I had made peace with the situation, my phone started to vibrate with excitement. A new group chat had formed asking beer advent calendar questions with a ripping pace. Reading through these texts, I yearned for that same excitement. Like a younger sibling wanting to play, I looked into other advent calendar options. I stumbled upon the 12 days of Lidl beer but this was a bust; the closest Lidl is in Georgia (over an hour per beer of driving seemed silly). I then learned of the Costco beer calendar leading to a large hit of dopamine before pure dread. The calendar dropped in September and it was already late October. I swallowed my fear and made the long journey to Costco - I figured worst case I end up with an all-beef quarter-pound hot dog.

But the beer advent calendar gods were smiling down upon me that day. First thing I see after flashing my Costco card was a pallet of the beautiful glossy German perforated cardboard hiding 24 Christmas beers. I immediately scooped one up. I proceeded to fill up on various samples of snacks and frozen food before paying and, of course, getting my $1.50 combo with a hot dog and Sierra Mist (I never know what soda to get, I regretted this Sierra Mist but it did not hamper my beer advent calendar high).

2022 Aldi Advent Calendar Preview

The above photo is a poor Photoshop of the 2020 box made in MSPaint

It was in the process of discovering the 2022 Aldi Advent Calendar information that I realized I went from average Aldi fan to full Aldi insane (Aldisane?). Per their website, Aldi has a seasonal Vista Bay Hard Seltzer Iced Tea Variety Pack exclusively for this summer. I don’t much care for Vista Bay but my curiosity was piqued. I’ve gone to the store for weeks and never been able to find it. I figured supply chains because it's 2022, all we talk about is supply chains. I scoured Untappd to see if anyone had checked them in with no luck. Not a single soul had had one within 100 miles of me. I started to get suspicious; I had to be missing something, I live in a city of 4 million. There isn’t a single person also drinking off brand alcoholic seltzer teas then obsessively logging them into an app? I reached out to Aldi corporate like a psycho and heard no reply. Then I remembered, I have access to additional information: I have the internet.

The Texas Alcoholic Beverage Commission, or TABC, is very strict. Every beer label must be registered, scrutinized by the state, and ultimately approved. There are millions of other rules but as someone that consumes alcohol but doesn’t regulate it, I only know the hits. But what I do know is the TABC keeps public records of all of these labels so almost anyone can look them up with basic understandings of a search bar.

So in my frustration to find Vista Bay Hard Seltzer Iced Tea (why are there so many words?), I searched the database to see if they were even approved by the state. Unfortunately, it looks like I won’t get to try the Vista Bay Hard Seltzer Iced Tea but I did happen to find all 24 advent beers and 12 advent seltzers. Unfortunately after additional sleuthing, I was not able to find any of the wine information at this time.

I did some quick googling to see if anyone else had written about this or made a TikTok about it and came up empty handed. So please play this audio clip before moving on and reading the next line your best DJ voice:

A FORKS AND FORTIES FIRST