‘Super Tuesday’ Special Report: Caguama vs. Caguama Special Export

A review of Caguama is easy: it's light like Corona but has more flavor (and it's much cheaper!). Just beware of the Caguama Effect.

Those who have visited Southern California over the last couple years might be familiar with the Caguama Effect. This phenomenon occurs when one drinks the eponymous beer from El Salvador. Picture the scene. You settle in for a mellow evening of drinking beers with some buddies. It's a random Monday or Tuesday—work looms, preventing more elaborate festivities. Sipping your first beer, you're enjoying Caguama's crisply nutty flavor. Beer two: wow, this is surprising light for the amount of flavor. Beer three: this is absurd, I can drink this water all night. Beer four: no one remembers beer four. Caguama strikes like a ninja—a black ninja at midnight in the darkest of nights. Game over.

But as the title promises, this is a dual review. The standard brew's misfit brother, Caguama "Special Export" waylaid me with its remarkably vapid offerings.

You can clearly feel the carbonation on your tongue. And that's about it. After a long drag, your mouth tingles with the cold sensation of holding what you can only assume will be delicious beer. But the delicious got arrested at the California- Mexico border and deported back to whatever Salvadoran hamlet it called home.

I held the beer in my mouth longer than any man in his right mind contemplates a $3.99/six-pack beer. My first thought: tastes like…hangover. This beer reminds me of every drop of beer I consumed over that I'm Gonna Regret This threshold (IGRT). We all know it. It's that third 40 of Steel Reserve. It's that 12^th game of Beirut. It's that beverage you vaguely remember sipping while the baritone conductor in your head announces "Proxima Estacion: Vomitville."

Gentlemen and ladies, this beer presents a lacunae of taste that will inevitably be filled by memories of over consumption and times you were too cheap to pay $3.00 more for something darker.

I've been told that Central American drinking water flows brown with bacteria the size of fleas. To prevent ingesting the bacteria—I believe named La Guardia after the NY airport—many people drink only bottled beverages. This fact brings me to the strongest endorsement I can make for Caguama Special Export: my grandmother could bush her teeth with this stuff. Hell, I wouldn't think twice about washing my face with it.

We've all embraced the IGRT with open arms. We've heard her Germanic bark from the edges of sobriety.

And we've all ignored it.

Just as we kept drinking, I will continue to buy original Caguama. It is perfect for long nights of heavy consumption. The price point wont break the bank, the flavor won't deter women, the taste won't leave a cloying film, the alcohol wont leave memories.

In case you needed more reason to pursue Caguama I have reproduced in its entirety the following marketing literature: "Legend has it the fishermen of Central America sought the Great Loggerhead Turtle in warm tropical waters. It was tribal belief that this powerful turtle, also known as the 'Caguama', symbolized good fortune for the fisherman's village."

There you have it, go do your village proud!