Last Thursday night threw up another instance of a real issue I have about buying beer – whether or not to break open a six-pack.

I was in Dan Murphys  looking to blow the $50 gift card I got for Christmas. Rather than buy beers I’ve had and liked before I opted for a range of beers that I’d been putting off buying for a while.

If only the Kostritzer at Dan Murphys came in easy-to-remove packaging like this and not a frigging box.

That essentially means beers from Europe because, while I will buy any beer from the US that I see on a Dan Murphy’s shelf because I think it will taste great, I don’t feel so sure when it comes to European beers. I think that’s got something to do with living in the United States for a few years when I was a teenager. And a little to do with being an idiot.

And so I don’t want to spend my own money on beers I’m unsure about so I’ll wait until I get a gift card because then it’s someone else’s money I’m spending (yes, I know that technically, it’s still my money, as it’s my present I’m spending. But you can just shut up with your logic, okay?).

Anyway, one of the beers I was aiming to try was the Kostritzer black lager. But there was a problem – that beer has a stupid form of packaging for its six-pack. It’s an enclosed box, which makes it difficult to break up the six-pack to get one beer.
Well, difficult for me anyway, because I have a bit of a problem with breaking up six-packs. Not in terms of lacking the strength to tear the cardboard apart, but in terms of leaving a ‘‘five-pack’’ in my wake.

I figure those ‘‘five-packs’’ must be a big pain in the butt for bottle shop owners, because it makes them so much harder to sell. I’m sure that no-one has ever walked into a bottle shop and thought ‘‘I’m thirsty, but six beers is one too many to satisfy. Oh why does no-one sell five-packs?’

But on the other hand, I want to try some new beers but I don’t want to have to buy a whole six-pack because it could be terrible.

If someone else has already turned a sixer into a fiver, then I have no dramas about taking a single. Way I figure it I’m doing the bottle shop a favour by reducing the number of singles they have to sell (because I presume that’s the ultimate destiny of broken six-packs).

But, curiously, my guilt about breaking open a six-pack rises the harder a beer is to extricate. So the Sierra Nevada style six-packs, where I can lift the beer straight out, don’t cause me much concern. The next step up, the six-packs that feature cardboard yokes around the neck, are a bit different because they require a bit of tearing on my part to get the beer out.

Then there’s the boxed-up six-packs like Kostritzer, where you really need a knife – or a key – to break through the cardboard before tearing it open. How do I know a key works? Well, because after looking around to ensure there were no witnesses, I ripped open that sucker.
Then I felt guilty about it for more than strictly necessary. And I’m really hoping I’m not the only person who feels like they’re doing something wrong if they break up a six-pack.