The Quest for the Perfect Beer Prank

Jake Metzler is a homebrewing fanatic who loves to write and share his knowledge with others. When he’s not brewing, you can probably find him rock climbing and/or listening to eighties metal.

With April Fools coming just around the corner, I’ve been thinking about pranks that I could pull on my friends. I’m not much of a prankster, as I feel that tricks can quickly turn malicious, and the ones that don’t are often pretty dumb.

But if I could find a few classy tricks to pull on my buddies, I thought I could make it a fun April Fool’s Day. Plus, my friends wouldn’t suspect any shenanigans from me, since I usually avoid this type of thing.

I figured that any pranks would need to be in a familiar setting, so as to minimize suspicion. This meant that most likely beer would be involved. That’s what we do. We all get together, drink a bit, and talk about sports, pop culture, and occasionally our lives.

So I did what any novice would do; I looked up “beer pranks” online. The results were…. interesting.

Everyone knows about hitting your buddy’s beer just right so that it overflows. I think this is kind of a college party trick and has lost its appeal as I’ve aged. Also, it’s just a waste of beer. I was looking for something a bit more involved.

So I started brainstorming and here’s what I’ve come up with:

The Fakeout

There are a couple of pretty cheap prank packets out there with a mixture to stir into water to make it look and smell like beer. I think it could be interesting to hand a friend a bottle of the concoction as I take a drink of my own beer, proclaiming how good it is. Will they spit it out? Or will they try to pretend that it tastes good? I make my own beer, so I have plenty of unmarked bottles lying around and no one would question me handing them one.

The Placebo

I have a couple of buddies who always seem to indulge a bit too much. Are they really getting that drunk or is it all in their head? Or are they just pretending in order to put on a show? Providing the guys with non-alcoholic beer and seeing what ensued could be pretty hilarious. It could also just lead to them complaining about how my beer sucks. But then I could end the joke and pull out the good stuff.

Heavy

If you’re going to a buddy’s house and taking beer, then a good trick is to fill a beer box with something really heavy, and tell a friend that if they carry it in the house, they get the first one. First they’ll wonder how the heck beer can be so heavy. Then they’ll have a moment of disappointment (then hopefully laughter) when they open the box to see rocks, or bottles of soda, or something equally not booze. Just be sure to have a beer ready for them; they earned it!

Self-Esteem Hit

My not-so-fruitful internet search did reveal a couple gems, including a video of a woman buying a guy a beer, then spotting someone else more attractive and sending it to them instead. This would be great to orchestrate at a bar, and even better to get on camera.

So those are my ideas. Do you have any great beer pranks? I know there’s the classic “Dumb and Dumber” scene with beer bottles full of urine, but I wanted to keep it more light heated and less disgusting. I also wanted to avoid pranks that resulted in alcohol exploding, not only to avoid “alcohol abuse” but also because I didn’t want to clean up the mess later.

So what are your favorite April fool’s Pranks?