Why does Corona lager come with a slice of lime? Is it solely for taste or is it used as a form of disinfectant?
To hide the taste.
Corona doesn’t have much flavour on its own.
Why does Sol have it as well, then? (I’m asking these questions for a friend).
Lime comes with Dos Equis and Modelo as well. It’s just what you do with Mexican beers. Roll with it.
Adding fruit to beer has a long tradition in Europe, raspberries, cherries and peaches are often used to flavor Iambic style beer.
What he said ^^
If you tried Corona without lime you would know why they add it, it’s pretty bland stuff.
A bloke I know who lived in Southern California for a while claims that it’s a Mexican tradition to serve a wedge of lime with beer. You would rub the lime around the rim of the bottle to discourage flies from settling there and getting into your beer. Chump Anglos thought the wedge of lime served in the neck of their beer was for flavouring and pushed it down into the beer, and a style of beer drinking was born which amuses Mexicans to this day.
No idea if this is true, you’d need to find some Mexicans to ask.
There’s a summary of some various theories about the origin of the lime here: http://www.allaboutbeer.com/features/242mexicanbeer.html
I’ve spent over two years of my adult life in Mexico, including one year from which I’ve just returned. With any beer in Mexico at a restaurant, you don’t get lime unless (1) you ask for it, or (2) you’re with a big group of Americans and the waitstaff happens to know that Americans think they get lime with thier beer.
Yeah, in some places they may sometimes ask if you want limes, but it’s not frequent, and I half suspect it’s just because I’m an American.
You do, though, usually get lime with the cheaper tequilas.
Corona comes in clear bottles and gets skunky when exposed to sunlight really quickly. A lime will help mask the off-flavor.
And there is no way a lime should come with a Negra Modelo or any other decent beer. Put a lime in my Negra Modelo and I’m sending it back.
Lambics are not really the same thing, as the fruit is used during the brewing process, not added at the time of serving. An European analogue might be something like Berliner Weisse, which can have a shot of woodruff or raspberrry syrup added to it by the bartender.
As an aside, Blue Moon, an unfiltered white beer, comes with a slice of orange. It doesn’t really need it, so I don’t know why, but it is not just limited to Mexican beers and limes.
Lime is not a good disinfectant. It is not inconceivable that these “theories” which imply Mexican food is unclean (flies, infected beer) have at their origin unpleasant (and untrue) racial stereotyping.
I love Negra Modelo. Once, a place stuck a lime in it and I decided to give it a shot anyway. It turned out to be pretty tasty.
That is what I am thinking. Sometimes I get a wild hair for a Corona Light and it is quite obvious when one the beer I get has been around for a while. The lime does take that skunk taste away (sorta.)
It still isn’t bad beer though. I am with everyone else though, Modelo all they way. 
Woodruff? The ones I enocuntered were lime or raspberry. That was a shock, I can tell you. “Hey Roland, what’s a decent Berlin beer to try?” Roland turns around and goes “GermanGermanGerman” to the waitress. She brings two odd-looking drinks. I have a sip of mine. “Roland, this is a frigging lager and lime, as served in english pubs to girls and children. What the hell???”
They have Reinhetsgeboten to protect the purity of their beer and then they do stuff like that. :smack:
Woodruff=Waldmeister? That’s so amazing! We tried asking the Germans what it was, and they were like… “Waldmeister? Es ist… Waldmeister.”
Waldmeister is indeed woodruff syrup. And it’s green, which makes me think slaphead might have tricked his tastebuds into expecting a lime flavor when in fact he was getting woodruff.
She… and I believe Dave likes it that way. 
Ahaha! I still have no idea what woodruff is, but it appears to be some sort of herb. And according to this beer obsessive website the beer is pretty sour/sharp anyway, which would explain my confusion.
Anyhow, it tasted like pretty much like lager and lime, i.e. bloody awful. Thereby proving that adding fruity stuff to beer after it has been brewed is a silly idea.
We now return you to your previously scheduled mexican beer discussion. 