Magnums of wine and champagne are basically the Super Big Gulps of the alcohol world, and Big Beer wants in on the fun. For those who haven’t had a magnum of wine or champagne plonk down on a dinner table, sending seismic reverberations through the wood, it’s a 1.5-liter bottle–double the size of a standard 750 ml wine bottle.
The SevenFifty Daily wine and beer trade news site notes that the magnum trend has been growing among craft brewers for a while now, due to the “showstopping package” and “better carbonation levels.” Since craft brewers are the cool kids of the beer scene, it was really only a matter of time until the corporate bigwigs shilling their mass-produced giggle water caught wind of the idea and started to do it themselves.
British supermarket chain Waitrose offered a magnum-sized beer for sale in 2017 with the bottles emblazoned with the har-dee-har phrase, “Just the one beer tonight.” Then, for the holiday season Miller High Life, which has long claimed itself to be the Champagne of Beers, glommed on to the trend. It makes some sense too since champagne comes in magnums so why not the Champagne of Beers, too?
Now comes news that Heineken is selling magnums, as well. The bottles look like champagne bottles; they’re topped with a cork that will pop out of the bottle, fizz like champagne, and then disappoint everyone by not actually being champagne. That’s 8 pounds of disappointment and as The Sun points out, costs more than buying a few smaller bottles of Heineken (those, too, would be without that undercurrent of hostility from hosts who thought you brought the good stuff to their shindig).
Sure it’s a growing trend and might be good for a laugh, but why risk disappointing party hosts when you could show up with a magnum-sized bottle of Hidden Ranch Dressing and make everyone happy?
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