Occasionally, we all get a hankering for a lighter, less-expensive beer. Perhaps it’s the cheap cool they provide on a hotter summer day, or the easy, smooth drinkability as they glide down one’s gullet.

Many of the larger American macro-brew companies boast titles that liken themselves to being royalty; this, of course, can tend to cause uproarious scoffing in the company of fine craft-brew connoisseurs. Still, those who proudly call themselves consumers of what are truly considered to be finer beers know that there are plain and humble lagers canned on American soil which, though often paired among the least expensive brands at your local supermarket or alcoholic beverage store, hide golden (albeit foamy) treasure worthy of note.

For this reason, I’m proud to announce the first of a series of features that will be appearing here at Culture of Spirits written by my good friend Smoky Wydell (a.k.a. Dakota Waddell). “Smoky” is a history major living in Asheville, North Carolina, with a penchant for finer craft brews and traditional Southern sippin’-whiskies known for having a little more alcoholic content that their mid-shelf competitors. Nonetheless, having grown up in the rural Smokies of Western North Carolina (one might ruminate that this was the impetus for his nickname, at least in part), Waddell also maintains a bit of reverence for less expensive American lagers and “shwag beers” favored by the “high society” of the lower-middle class. Thus, it is with great delight that I introduce him to you with his first installment of “The Poor Man’s Palative: High Rolling Among the Lower Middle Class with Smoky Wydell.”

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