Earlier this year, Sweden’s PangPang Brewery released Shower Beer, a 6-ounce beer designed to be enjoyed in the shower. It was a clever move by a brewery looking for a little viral publicity—which it got in spades—and a stunt that proved the term “shower beer” had escaped from the frat houses it was conceived in. But despite the sudden ubiquity of the phrase, the shower beer remains an inherently stupid idea. Luckily, there’s something better.
It’s time for bath beers.
Bath beers are everything shower beers are not. We’ll explain.
Let’s start with the obvious. The shower is primarily a method of cleansing yourself. This means shampoos, conditioners, and body washes are all in the mix—and none taste particularly good in your brewski. Last we checked, brewers weren’t conditioning their stouts on, well, conditioner. Compare the goal of a shower, which is to clean your body, to that of a bath. The bath is a means of relaxation, where your aim is simply to chill and unwind. You know what goes well with chilling and unwinding? Beer. We ditched the bubbles long ago, which means there are no squeeze bottles in the equation when we slip into the tub. No soapy loofah. No Pert Plus dripping from your dome. No shaving cream and whiskers on the lip of your bottle. Want lather, rinse, drink, repeat? Have a shower beer. Want an untainted experience? Push down the drain stopper.
To add to that, a shower spits water everywhere, so not only are your washing liquids getting in your beer, so are splashes of H2O. This means dilution. Whether from your lips or from the shower head, your beer is getting the small ice cubes in whiskey treatment, and that’s a disservice to anything worth drinking. Splashing water and beverages don’t mix. A little bit of water with every sip of a finely craft beer makes a difference. A shower is volatile. What you’re looking for are the still waters of a warm bath.
Now, we’d also say the average shower is about 10 minutes long, which means if your aim was to finish that beer, a drinking pace somewhere just shy of chugging would need to be established. That might have been our speed when we were ripping shots of Jäger and using a beer bong on the regular, but we’re grown men and we’d prefer to enjoy our beer at a more leisurely pace—the pace a nice 30 minute soak allows.
We’d be remiss if we didn’t touch on safety. Do you realize how much safer a bath beer is? Drop a glass bottle in the shower and, well, let’s just say shards and nudity don’t mix. Drop a bottle while taking a swig in the bath and all that happens is you gain a buoy.
Finally, and this is really the main point, it is just simply more pleasurable to drink a beer in the bath. A bath means you’re submerged in water slightly warmer than your body temperature. The contrast between that and the cold beer going into your system is damn near heavenly. A shower beer kinda offers that, but it doesn’t quite compare. A shower’s warmth is concentrated, only hitting your body where the shower head is pointed. It’s fine, but it’s nothing like a bath. Don’t believe us? Draw a bath, crack a beer, and let your stresses melt away for as long as your slowly wrinkling skin will allow it.
