Surely we all have more refined tastes now, but given our collective experiences, we've all had our bouts with bad beer. Bad in the sense that drinking more does nothing to improve their taste. Here's my list, descending from "excruciatingly awful" to "piss in a can":
5. Natural Light - The preferred beverage of my college years, just thinking about this beer is enough to induce a hangover.
4. Fat Tire - Brewed with the all important dirty sock to finish.
3. Lucky Lager - They sold this beer when I was in college for $6/case. I think that it was overpriced.
2. Cool Colt - If I wanted my malt liquor to be minty, I would've filtered my Colt 45 through a pack of Kools.
1. Edison Light - May as well pour this crap directly into the toilet and eliminate the middleman.
i still drink bad beer a lot - going back and forth about whether bad beer or good beer causes worse hangovers, when in fact it's Pattyjoe who causes them shits. but at Sewanee we eleveated drinking bad beer to an anthropological exercise entitled the "Cheap Beer Survey." here's what i got for ya.
ReplyDelete5) Pabst Lite - i only discovered this one in OR, but it's worthy of mention.
4) Southpaw - anybody? terrible, water-y southern nonsense.
3) Beast Light - That it was the abundant, glorious "Shake Day beer: at my Frat is all that's keeping it from being in the top two. That and...
2) Beast Ice - yeah. I know.
1) Wiederman's. This slop was thirty cents less per six than Pabst back in Sewanee...and forty times worse. It wasn't that it tasted like it'd been left in a room temperature cellar for twelve years; rather, the shit just tasted like a cellar.
honorable mention: my fraternity elders often praised Falstaff Beer, citing its often featuring silt and actual solids at the bottom of the 40.
Five beers might be tough for me. Unlike the rest of y'all, I grew up here and happened to fall into a crowd that only briefly dallied with the Beast before discovering the microbrew movement. My embarrassing beer stories relate more closely to the word Raspberryweisen than Lite. That said,...
ReplyDeleteFirst, shout out to Fat Tire, Edison Light, Lone Star, The entire Beast family of products, and all malt liquors (especially Mickey's, my malt liquor of choice). I love you all, but either I only drank you once, you're basically water and bad, but not offensive, or you hold too special a place in my heart to make this list.
5. Budweiser. I have never once in my life thought that Budweiser tastes good. I prefer Miller High Life on a hot summer day, if I am going the "bad beer" route. I briefly drank Coors before I was yelled at by the lefties. But Bud? Never by choice.
4. Poretti. An Italian beer that my friend Mark, who spent some time in Italy, made me drink. Tasted like Parmesan cheese.
3. Schmidts. It is the beer left over when the fine folks who produce Pabst take all the good stuff out of the vat. My friend Mark and I once spent an entire week where each night we'd each by a half-rack (that's 12 cans in Oregon) and sit on my couch and consume it all. It was more chore than pleasure. That was the first time it occurred to me that I might have a drinking problem.
2. Pete's Wicked Maple Syrup Porter. What the fuck was I thinking buying this beer? What the fuck were they thinking when they made it? This beer was so bad. I described the taste as like being cold beef broth. It has place of honor in my life as being the only beer I ever bought, but refused to drink. Four bottles sat in my fridge for about a year until I finally threw them away.
1. National Bohemian, or Natty Boh. It's "from the land of pleasant living." That's Baltimore, MD to you and me, Russ. When I lived in B-more and I had out of town guests come in, I would great them at the airport with a sixer of Natty Boh, which we'd consume as I took them on a tour of all of the fine Baltimore ghettos. After his first taste, my friend Mark ended all discussion by stating "It tastes like ass."
Bad beer? Oh yeah, I drank me plenty of bad beer back in my day, friends.
ReplyDelete5. Rolling Rock. I am ashamed to admit how much Rolling Rock I consumed as an undergraduate.
4. Killian's. I am even more ashamed to admit that this was what we considered the "good" beer, to be purchased when we wanted to splurge.
3. The Beast - So many beasts, so many hangovers. This was our standard cheap party beer. I could insert the joke about Milwaukee's Best and a canoe, but it just seems unnecessary. ..
2. Mickey's. O, Mickey's big mouth. I loved you so.
1. Natty-Bo. The king of all bad beers for me. I was, as they say, a Natty-ho.
Damn, I've had a lot of bad beer in my life. Thanks for the memories, Wobs...
You have memories?!?
ReplyDelete5. Abita's Purple Haze.
ReplyDeleteand go ahead an add any "berryweisen" style beer. These are disgusting to me.
4. Natural Light
Though I did drink this one for a while.
3. Icehouse
It's 5.9%, dude! Oh yeah?
2. Hamm's
I don't know people out here in OR drink Hamm's, because this beer sucks ass.
1. Schlitz
Once, I went with the cheapest stuff one time at Kroger (in Nashville) and this was it. The rest of the six pack was given away to unsuspecting friends; "hey, you want a beer?" "yea sure...hmmm Schlitz, never had this." "oh, give it a shot (he he)."
What's with the fat tire hate? Get your heads out of your designer-brand vaseline lined asses!
Y'all have covered most of the evil beers out there but I have a couple to add. Lex and I drove to Colorado for spring break with a gang of friends and I seem to remember drinking a bunch of Olympia beer, made in Washington. It was pretty terrible but I liked the grenade-shaped bottle and the label was cool too.
ReplyDeleteLiving in Austin for a couple years I drank my fare share of Lone Star, "The National Beer of Texas." It's terrible, but not nearly as terrible as Lone Star Lite. I drank like 12 of these one night with my roommate while watching WWF rasslin' and never even got a buzz. Just straight from sober to headache in like an hour.
And I'm with brown beard on the Fat Tire, it's just appeared in TN and I rather like it.
Perhaps my hatred of Fat Tire comes from my time living in the Land of Microbrews Aplenty, and so I could afford to be choosy. But honestly, it tastes like dirt to me, and not in the wonderful "loads of peat in my single-malt scotch" kinda way. I want my ales to have a floral finish to them, but Fat Tire tastes like the brewer mistakenly threw his load of dirty underwear into the mash.
ReplyDeleteNew Belgium has a bunch of other beers that I enjoy, but Fat Tire tastes like moldering gym socks.