Worst Beer Ever Tasted

[pnapoli]

there used to be a bar in west philadelphia called the track and turf tavern, and it was the only bar i've ever seen with meister brau on tap.  slowest bartenders ever, old tvs in the corners tuned to philadelphia park horse racing, old men sitting around in the afternoons watching the races.... it's different now.

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too bad. sounds like a cool place.

the idea of meister brau on tap is just killing me.

[intraining]

sorry about this, but the first sip of micro beers is horrible, but the rest is fine.

i went to a beer festival in catford town hall and had this really strong german beer, had to down it IN ONE to move on to the next. yuck. don't remember the name.

[mike_r]

koch's golden anniversary (aka "golden shower") i don't know what the anniversary is but it sure tastes golden.

[stephenc]

Worst ever:

1. Cruzcampo (holy shit, this stuff tastes like diarrhea)

2. Schlitz

3. Taiwan Beer

4. Beijing Beer

5. Heineken

[lesfen]

I hate to sound like a hater, but I think that the only beer that I absolutely cannot tolerate is Sierra Nevada. (Shudder) It does seems to have a fierce following tho'. The folks that I know that do love it will spend hours trying to convince me that I really do like the taste of pine sap.

I'm gonna have to defend the Shiner Bock tho'... I took my first real trip to Texas this past spring (you know, aside from 3 hour layovers and driving through the state on my way to Cali), and my future in-laws introduced me to it. It's on my Christmas list this year.

[VenerableBede]

ahh yes, there are indeed some bad beers here. . i'll second the sam adams triple bock (i have a friend that described it as drinking soy sauce). nevertheless, at some point in 1995, there was available lone star ice and old milwaukee ice. . .that was some awful, awful beer. another awful beer that i remember is lucky lager. . .and i completely agree with the folks on here who don't like corona, count me in.

now, i will say that shiner is no where near as good today as it was, even in the 90s. i went to college in texas, and the guys drank shiner (12 pack bottles for $8), and the girls drank coors light (pronounced kerrs light). but i feel i must defend some of the beers on here. . .natty-boh, i.c. light, and old style to name a few. those are some of my favourite beers, simply on kitsch value alone, not to mention the local flair. . .if i'm in chicago or pittsburgh or baltimore, that's what i'm gonna order. . .i only wish that you could buy natty-boh at orioles games, like you can get i.c. light (and iron city) at pirates games and old style at cubs games. . .oh, and for ironic purposes (like the PBR and Schlitz craze that has been and continues to go on in "hipster" circles). are the beers bad, of course they are, but it's more than just the beer sometimes.

for those canadians on here. . i was a bar in state college, pennsylvania (home of penn state), and they had 4 or 5 types of molson on draft there. . i was loving it. . molson canadian, all night! course, i don't remember getting home that night.

[2roost]

I have purged its name from my memory now but I once had an English Beer with lavender in it, it was the only beer in my life that went down the sink after 1 sip.

Lavender Stout - what was I thinking.

I also must stand and defend Genny Cream - I haven't had one for 20 years but "in the Day" it was just fine - times (and recipes) do change though.

Edited December 20, 2004 by 2roost (log)

[jld]

I had Left Hand Brewery's Milk Stout, and near lost my lunch. It was awful. I tried my best to drink it, but probably only ended up drinking a quarter pint.

[MarketStEl]

Olympia... "It's in the Water".

The memory makes me want to hurl... right up there with MD 20/20.

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long-delayed followup:

You're obviously channeling the Firesign Theater, Michael.

"It's In the Water" was their ad slogan--a ripoff of Olympia's "It's the Water"--for "Bear Whiz Beer":

"See that bear lappin' up that clear mountain stream? Kinda makes a guy thirsty, doesn't it? Well, that's why I like to lock my lips around a tall can of cool country Bear Whiz beer.

"It's like my father said--'Son, It's In the Water. That's why it's yellow!'

[sound of sipping]

"Bear Whiz beer."

[MarketStEl]

Since the beer I just described is fictional, but probably bears a strong resemblance to my own Worst Beer I've Ever Had nominee, I may as well go ahead and post the genuine article:

Moosehead, which I usually referred to as "Moose Piss."

The label said it came from "Canada's Oldest Independent Brewery." I figured that was because no other company wanted to touch it lest it contaminate their existing product lines.

Since Molson's been brought up, I will simply state that I very much liked Molson Export (sold in Canada as Molson Ale). Pity it's harder to find on this side of the border than the very bland Golden and the slightly better Canadian.

And while we're talking commercials, there was a very good Molson TV commercial from a few years ago that featured a couple of Americans who, upon running out of beer, start hiking across Canada to buy more Molson, to the strains of a Canadian rock band whose name escapes me singing "I'd walk one hundred miles" or something like that.

They get the case, make it just over the US border, and promptly drop it, breaking all the bottles--right in front of the band, which stops playing.

I think one of the band members at this point says, "You know, you can get it in the States."

[Kyle_Larson]

Foster's=(and I mean no disrespect here) Austrailian for piss.

[jsolomon]

I was recently in Chicago for a cycling event. We met in the morning at the Twisted Spoke for some hair of the dog before we started.

I saw one of the Santas drinking a beer that I didn't recognize: some odd herbal beer with ginseng and guarana. I looked at the waitress and said "I'll have what Santa's having."

Santa [John] fixed me with a pie-eyed gaze and stated, "Santa's [me] making a mistake."

Santa [John] knows best. That was, bar none, which includes a botched batch of homebrew, the worst beer I have ever tasted. It didn't even soothe the hangover I had from the night before with Dave (non-eG-er) and Yellow Truffle.

[the dude]

partially frozen cans of Olympia, defrosted on the floor boards of a Pontiac

[Miguelito]

Did you ever notice how its not always the beer that was so bad, but the circumstances under which you drank that leave the bad taste in your mouth?

Along that line, the worst--ugh--six beers I ever had were Coors Extra Gold after absorbing a massive, humiliating, public rejection from one of the, erm, objects of my youthful affection. Consumed in one sitting with an enormous bag of barbeque chips, if memory serves.

Better off without her though!

[jayt90]

A six pack of Pilsner Urquell, purchased ca 1982 from LCBO. They admitted that it came by ship and was not sent under the best conditions. It put me off that great brand for a few years, until CZ was liberated.

[Jambalyle]

Here is my top-five (bottom-of-the-barrel) list:

5. Buckhorn - this was Olympia's second label. If you thought Olympia was bad, you should have tried Buckhorn. We actually drank a lot of this in college, as our beer (ex-Coke) machine would only work/dispense using for a single quarter. At $5 a case, we actually made money on Buckhorn in the beer machine.

4. Rheinlander - I think this was one of Lucky Lager's second labels. When I was a kid, dad bought this for $1 a six pack. Even at that age, I thought it tasted bad.

3. Whatever keg beer they were pouring at dime night at the Sidetrack Tavern in Bellingham... $.10 dixie cups of whatever was going bad down at the distributor's warehouse. Typically one of the beers already mentioned in this thread, like Olympia, Rainier, Heidelberg, Lucky, or worse.

2. HELL - the brand of bier we bought in Leipzig, East Germany back in 1988. That stuff tasted like hell even cold. The grime on the bottles turned the ice we were trying to cool the beer in a gray-green color. Someone thought one of the bottles was leaking.

1. Brisa - this was some third-label Mexican light beer (circa 1981). The owner of the Up&Up Tavern gave us 20 cases of this swill, as a "thank you" for buying 81 kegs of beer for one of our parties. In a crowd of college guys who would drink damn near anything, we ended up pouring most of this down the drain...

PS (edit): Oh my God... I forgot the can of "Billy Beer"... I took a gulp and threw it right back up. Dad still has a can in the barn if anyone dares to try a sip!

Edited March 14, 2005 by Jambalyle (log)

[nr706]

Here is my top-five (bottom-of-the-barrel) list:

<snip>

4. Rheinlander - I think this was one of Lucky Lager's second labels.  When I was a kid, dad bought this for $1 a six pack.  Even at that age, I thought it tasted bad.

I'm assuming you're referring to something other than the generally excellent (for its style) Rhinelander (note the different spelling) from Huber.

Rhinelander Premium

[Jambalyle]

Here is my top-five (bottom-of-the-barrel) list:

<snip>

4. Rheinlander - I think this was one of Lucky Lager's second labels.  When I was a kid, dad bought this for $1 a six pack.  Even at that tender age, I thought it tasted bad.

I'm assuming you're referring to something other than the generally excellent (for its style) Rhinelander (note the different spelling) from Huber.

Rhinelander Premium

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Not related and my mistake: Rheinlander was one of Rainier's labels, not Lucky Lager (see picture of label)... just seeing the label brings back memories, though most are not so great!

Edited March 15, 2005 by Jambalyle (log)

[Mr. Fagioli]

Read this thread a few days ago and enjoyed it much...I thought about the bad beers I've tried and can think of several in four main categories:

1. Atrocities of my own making.

Sure I botched various batches for various reasons, but the most memorable failure was the most elaborate effort of all, and one of the last beers I ever made: a full-mash Belgian-style white beer. I laboured mightily to find the right ingredients and follow the recipe, but it came out horribly astringent with a chalky mouthfeel. I still pucker just thinking about it.

2. High-priced and/or imported dreck.

Draft Double Diamond at low/mid-range Indian restaurants always seemed to have a vinegary tinge to it, probably because of dirty lines or low turnover. And yet for a while there I would keep ordering it in hopes of getting something good. I don't anymore.

I find Heineken inoffensive enough, but it's a ripoff. Ditto most megabrews. Grolsch in green bottles seemed to be badly stored much of the time, because it often had a weird rubbery taste to it. (As a poor young homebrewer I would sometimes gag it down for the flip-top bottle.)

But worst of all are some whose names I've long since blocked out. In the late 80s I was living in Toronto, and there was a microbrew craze on. Quite a few people with no more qualification than a wad of cash in their pocket seemed to think it would be fun and profitable to open a brewery. Some of the stuff that came out was great, and some was truly awful. Tasted like cheap homebrew kits (the underhopped can 'o syrup kind) scaled up to microbrewery size. And that's probably not far from what it was. Blech.

3. I am Canadian, but you couldn't pay me to drink that piss.

Canadian megabrews tend to be bland, inoffensive, and pretty much alike. A poster farther up suggested they seemed to come from the same brewery, and that might not be all that far from the truth. According to a friend who used to work for one of the megabreweries, they both have a very limited range of recipes and a much larger number of brands. Whole families of "lagers" and "light" versions of beers are the same beer watered to the desired alcohol content; others are one base recipe plus some added colour or flavour; and other times it's the same beer under a different label. I realize this is just hearsay, so I won't name names. But I think you'll find blind taste testing of lager-vs-lager and ale-vs-ale will bear this out.

4. Frankenbier.

In Canada these days the megabreweries are desperately looking for ways to sell their wares to non-beer-drinkers. Enter <a href="http://www.molson.com/brands/molsoncanada/molsonbrands.php#7">Tornade</a> and similar abominations. Unfortunately I think it does qualify as beer (they call it "alcomalt")...they're essentially concoctions of cheap megabrew beer and flavourings like lemonade or "sangrila". I refuse to try most of them, but I have had the Lemonade and I'm convinced that it's the worst thing ever done in the name of beer.

[Grub]

Bud.

Few years ago, I held a blind beer tasting evening. I highly recommend this -- it was very revealing...

Everyone brought a few samples -- both regular beers, unique and fancy stuff -- anything. I made sure to include a few "ringers" like Budweiser, Coors Light, non-alcoholic beers.

Then, we'd provide numbered cups for everyone, and all but one person would leave the room, while the pourer would fill the glasses up (we took turns doing this job), and make a note of what numbers held what beer. Then, everyone would taste it, and write down their comments (but without discussing it amongst each others).

I learned the following: Pete's Wicked Summer Ale, which I'd enjoyed very much from a bottle, I really disliked from a glass. Obviously, drinking from a bottle, you get no nose, and don't taste the brew properly. I was very surprised to find that I really liked Dos Equis -- which I had lazily, subconsciously grouped together with Corona. I learned that Dos Equis is a "Vienna" style beer, and very different from Corona.

A friend of mine, who is only a moderate beer snob, but who'd never wanna be caught dead drinking Coors Light, ended up making the following note for that beer: Very light, easy to drink. So this kinda blind taste-test cuts down on the snobbery.

However, when it came to the Budweiser, I immediately jotted down "Very light color, no flavor, no taste, gotta be Bud" in spite of not having tasted the foul stuff for decades.

[malarkey]

I might have to amend my list with badly made homebrew. There's nothing worse than the taste of infected beer.

(sadly, I know people who happily drink the stuff)

[Susan in FL]

I might have to amend my list with badly made homebrew. There's nothing worse than the taste of infected beer.

Agreed. Once back in the day when we homebrewed, a batch of ours turned out with uncontrollable head and it tasted horrible. (OK, I know, there are all sorts of opportunities for bad jokes here.) We figured it was infected, plus we've had some Big Ale which was infected, too.

[Tonyy13]

Sam Adams Cherry Stout... Taste's like a urinal cake that is being pissed on... artificial cherry and pee, sounds about right...

[blork]

Way, way back in this thread somebody mentioned Mickey's Malt Liquor hand grenades, and I couldn't agree more. I'm actually not that hard to please -- even your standard mass-produced domestics are generally OK on a hot day when you're in front of the BBQ with a hot dog in your hand. Or they're at least acceptable, as long as they're really cold. Or at least I won't refuse it.

But that Mickey's -- it was like severely watered-down cheapo beer (like half-and-half with awful tap water) mixed with something metalic, as if an alkaline battery had fallen into the bottle and died. Ugh! After the fourth sip I knew it wasn't just me and I tossed it down the drain. Bleh!

[stephenc]

Fosters, Schlitz, and Icehouse are absolutely bottom of the barrel.

These are even worse than the cheap cans of High Life and PBR that I adore.