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The worst beer tasting

Discuss beer or anything else that comes to mind in here.

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Ralphus
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The worst beer tasting

Post by Ralphus »

So one of my friends organizes a very well run beer tasting every three months or so. It's generally full of exciting, interesting and highly rated beer. But last night we decided to try something different. We were aiming for the some the of the worst beers we could get our hands on. With no research and two short trips to the LCBO we came up with the the following:

1) Labatt Blue
2) Labatt Maximum Ice
3) Lucky Lager
4) Sapporo
5) Budweiser
6) Busch
7) Kokanee
8 ) Carlsberg
9) Dos Equis

The girls poured them into plastic cups and lined them up on the table. Only they knew the contents and it was our goal to guess each from the list. Collectively they were so bad it was actually funny - which of course was the goal. Lots of screwed up faces and jokes were made at the expense of those terrible beers. I have also never heard so many twists on "These are your Carlsberg years" :)

Guess wise we did fairly well. I was able to pick out Blue, Sapporo, Budweiser, Kokanee & Carlsberg. Others picked out Dos Equis, Busch and Lucky - but no one got Maximum Ice.

Best Beer: Sapporo
Worst Beer: Carlsberg*
Biggest Surprise: Maximum Ice

It was a fun night and it certainly made me appreciate how bad things can get. Thank god for well made alternatives! We followed off the tasting with some Rogue Dead Guy Ale it was heavenly in comparison.

* We found out afterwords that the samples of Dos Equis were topped up with Sapporo because there wasn't enough to go around. I think that the Dos Equis would have taken worst beer award if it had been a legit sample!

peterchiodo
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Post by peterchiodo »

Last time I sampled Labatt Blue and Lucky (I usually baseline my buds with a mainstream beer), I found them to be very very similar in profile. I personally think they are the same beer.

I know big breweries usually have five or six wort streams for twenty or so brands. They typically blend streams per brand but in some cases will use the same wort stream for multiple brands.

I wish I could have been there for the sampling...did you do it blind?

Peter
Grunt, Lion Tamer, Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery

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Sanchex
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Post by Sanchex »

was the lcbo all out of yankee jim?

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Ralphus
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Post by Ralphus »

You could be right about the Blue / Lucky thing. A few of them tasted very similar and I guessed Blue when Lucky came up. The tasters knew what beers were available - but not what each beer was.

Yankee Jim .. that's funny. It was on the long list but didn't make the cut. I was the only one who had tried it before.

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Bobsy
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Post by Bobsy »

Ralphus wrote:Yankee Jim .. that's funny. It was on the long list but didn't make the cut. I was the only one who had tried it before.
I took Yankee Jim to a BYOB wedding may years ago when I was a poverty-stricken immigrant. I remember thinking it was better than the Schlitz.

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