A Real Buzz Cut: Slim Chance Light Ale

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ALMOST ANYONE WHO likes beer knows popping open a cold one increases your chances of popping a button —or muffin-topping out of your jeans. But most reduced-calorie brews (Amstel, Miller Lite, the supremely dreadful Bud Light) taste like carbonated versions of the water you just bathed a dog in.

Still, our tester, a gentleman who has warmed many bar stools downing caloric Belgian ales and small-batch stouts, found Red Hook Brewery's new Slim Chance Light Ale ($9, grocery stores; also on draft at many bars) to be a revelation. He thought the 125-calorie a bottle stuff hit the palate nicely and amounted to a hoppy, bubbly and crisp quaff. (Regular mircobrews can have as many as 300 calories in 12 oz.!)

The chemical taste so common in mass-market brewskis was mercifully absent, and our picky tester said, "I'd actually buy this at a bar by choice." His only quibble? The stuff didn't get very frothy when poured into a mug—"It was kind of flat," he groused. Still, Slim Chance might allow you to have an extra round without putting on a pound, which he'd toast to any day.