F*** it Fridays
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“Because you know you checked out on Wednesday...”
Friday, May 6th, 2011 ISSUE 18
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The amazingly great shitty beer taste test! BRENDAN WROTE THIS
“I’m gonna drink a lot of beer and stay out all night!” – Homer Simpson That’s what college is all about, right? Sure, studying and getting good grades are important, but only because they’re the means towards you convincing your parents that they should pay for that oh-so-crucial seventh year of college. Therein lies the rub; if your parents are paying for everything, then what’s the point of having a job? And if you’re staying out all night, who has the time to make money, anyway? So if you’re gonna get drunk, then the booze better be cheap. If the booze is gonna be cheap, then it should suck as little as possible. That’s where we come in. Since The Black Sheep literally keeps tens of dollars in its budget for drinking experiments, the fine full-time staff decided to do all the legwork for you. On a cold, rainy Friday in Chicago we hunkered down in an apartment with a bunch of the scummiest beer we could find in an attempt to decipher which beer was least rancid. Thus, The Great Crappy Beer Taste Test was born. It’s important to note that there’s a method to our beer-tasting madness, we don’t just go about this stuff willy-nilly: The Method: • Other than appearance, the whole taste test was conduct-
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ed blindly; no participant knew which beer was which. The goal of The Great Crappy Beer Taste Test is not to discover which beer tastes best; the purpose is to discover which beer tastes least worse. It’s a subtle difference, people. We bought every crappy canned beer we could find at the Jewel, Walgreen’s and 7-Eleven by our office. Sadly, since our office is based in Chicago’s Wicker Park, none of the stores carried two staple crappy beers: Keystone Light and Natural Light. Not having those beers for the taste test is disappointing, but in all reality you, dear reader, are going to buy what you want, even if it comes in last. We tried to use as many controls during the test as possible. All the beers were kept at the same temperature. Three participants drank approximately 4 ounces of each beer from similar glasses. Each participant drank the same beer at the same time. The person running the test would fill each glass at the beginning of each tasting and rinse it out at the end of each tasting.
During the tasting we asked that the participants rate the beers on a scale of 1-5 based on the following categories: • STREET CREDIBILITY: If you rolled into a random house party with a case of this stuff, how embarrassed would
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you be to hand a can of it to an attractive member of the opposite sex? WHEN IT HITS YOUR LIPS: Initial flavor. When you take your first sip, does it make you wish you were licking a random hobo instead? BITTER BEER FACABILITY: Simply put, its aftertaste. Does it continue to go down smoothly? Or, conversely, if it tasted like a licked butt at first, does it suddenly taste like sweet ambrosia? PLEASE MAKE IT STOP: A test of long-term drinkability. If you had two options-- drink this or drink nothing, how close would you be to choosing horrible, horrible sobriety? THE TALLY: The average of the four categories.
Now, onto the results: Name
Street Cred
Hits Your Lips
Bitterness
Make It Stop
The Tally
Comments
12. Icehouse
1.8
1.2
0.5
.75
1.1
Once Discount Liquor tried getting rid of Icehouse 22oz bottles by selling 24-packs for $8 each. I bought 5 24-packs, planning to sell bottles to my drunk friends for $1 each once the bars closed. The plan backfired and I had to drink all the Icehouse myself.
11. Foster's
2
1.2
1.6
1
1.5
Foster’s: Australian for Crap. The only real appeal Foster’s has is the noveltysized can. It’s good for a cheap joke and you can claim you’re drinking an import. Even then, the huge can has a drawback: you have to drink the whole thing.
10. Corona Light
9
3
1.4
1.1
1.6
“But you didn’t drink it with lime!” says a horde of idiots. Yes, this is true, but beer is like steak, it should be savored without adding anything. If we wanted our drinks to be fruitier, we’d switch to frozen margaritas.
9. Gameday Light
4
2
1
0
1.81
Gameday is the 7-Eleven beer brand, which should say leagues about the flavor-- horrible to begin and even worse by the end. The can looks simple and cool, but that's where the compliments stop.
8. PBR
3.6
1.5
1
1.2
1.83
Hipsters of the world cry foul, but PBR really should stand for “Please, Butt Rape,” as that would be a pleasant alternative to actually having to drink this swill.
7. Milwaukee's Best
1
2.7
2.7
3
2.4
Milwaukee’s Best Ice has the highest ABV of any of the beers in this test, so it’ll certainly get you drunk on the cheap. While it doesn’t taste horrible, the can screams, “I’m gonna get bombed and throw up on your carpet; please kick me out of this party.”
6. Labatt Blue
3.4
2.8
1.8
2.1
2.5
Average in every category, Labatt Blue accurately reflects Canada in its crappy beer ways.
5. Miller Lite
3.3
3.2
3
3
3.1
The beer may not taste great, but if enough of them get shoved down your gullet, that four quickly turns into a seven or an eight… and you haven’t been laid in a while anyway.
4. Bud Light
3
3.3
3.5
3.2
3.2
Seeing Bud Light pull almost the exact same scores as its ‘tard sister, Busch Light, is equal parts enlightening and depressing.
3. Busch Light
2.3
3.9
3.5
3.3
3.3
The Honda Civic of the Anheuser-Busch family, you could shell out a few extra bucks for the BMW (Bud Light), but both products will do a fine job of helping you arrive at your final, alcohol-riddled destination.
2. Old Style
4.2
3.2
3.3
3.7
3.6
An old-school can to go with Old Style flavor, the surprise second-place beer should be honored and cherished like the national treasure it is. It’s cheap as dirt, and with a relatively high ABV to boot, Old Style is an acceptable alternative to the #1 spot…
1. Coors Light
4.2
3.8
4.2
4.2
4.1
Cheap, drinkable in mass quantities, and with a can that doesn’t look retarded, Coors Light is just about everything you can ask for in a crappy beer. Beer snobs may look down on those who choose to drink Coors Light, but to them we say, “Fuck you, does your can change colors?”
OUR THOUGHTS: • Going into the experiment, we were hoping to see the big-name brews like Bud Light, Miller Lite and Coors Light spread out a little more, as it would prove that a couple extra bucks doesn’t necessarily guarantee a (comparatively) high-quality beverage. Well, it didn’t work out that way. If you’re going to pay $5.50 for a 12pack of Icehouse, you will get a beer that’s properly valued at less than 50 cents a can. • Aside from a few outliers (Pleasantly: Old Style, unpleasantly: Gameday Light), the beers that ended up tasting most like ass had higher ABVs than the beers that did well in the challenge. To us, this states the obvious: beer companies hawking these products know that they can’t have it both ways; either their beer is going to be boozy and shitty, or light but less-than-horrible. Since the consumer isn’t willing to pony up the scratch for the best of both worlds, they’re not going to spend their time making a product that won’t sell. • Though it makes sense logically, it’s nice to see some empirical evidence back up the notion that if a beer starts off tasting bad, it won’t get better. Like, ever. We’re looking at you, Gameday Light. • It’s important to note appearance didn’t factor too heavily into the overall rankings. Busch Light received a relatively low Street Credibility score and placed in the top quarter, while Gameday Light was in the top quarter of Street Credibility scores and finished ninth overall.
With that, The Great Crappy Beer Taste Test draws to a close. Illusions were shattered, Livers were lost and the drunken orgy made everyone real awkward on Monday, but it was all in the name of science. If we’ve learned anything, it’s this: A world without beer is not a world we want to live in. Even if the beer totally sucks, like Icehouse.