Obviously, this is all a matter of personal preference. I find it strange that anyone would dislike any Sam Adams product (other than the “Lightship” and perhaps the infamous triple bock, which was not even really like beer at all, with something like 24% alcohol) or Guinness, canned or otherwise. On the other hand, I’m a guy who likes to keep two classes of beer on hand: one for enjoying (Sammy, Pete’s, or something similar) and one for swilling on a hot day (American cheap stuff, and I do find Pabst in bottles to be way tastier than Budweiser or Coors, by the way. People always judge beers without tasting them, on reputation. Say “Schaeffer” or “Schlitz” or “Pabst” to the average person, and he’ll say “yuck.” Then he’ll admit he’s never tried them. They really are quite good, if they’re not old or skunked, of course). But I digress…
The worst beer (or maybe it was a malt liquor) I’ve tasted falls under the category of “strange idea for a beer product.” It was made by the fine folks at Colt .45, and was called “Cool Colt,” and it was actually mint flavored(or maybe “menthol” would be a better description). Mere words cannot describe how odd and just plain bad that taste was to me. Of course, we were around 19 at the time we bought it, and money was tight.
Buckhorn. I drank one of these when I was in high school and I will never forget it. It tasted like any cheap American beer that had been left out in the sun for a week and then more or less recarbonated. Admittedly, it had gone stale in the can, but probably because the brand would have to be pushed off the shelves if dumb high schoolers didn’t buy it.
Olde English 800 malt liquor, also known as “The Green Death”. Drink five or six of those, and you get an instant hangover; in the morning you wake up drunk.
Back in college, we lived on a dry campus. Stroh’s made 30 packs and we bought it like hotcakes since it took as much effort to sneak it in as a 24 pack. It wasn’t the worst beer I’ve ever had, but I’d sympathize with anyone that runs it down.
Sam Adams’ triple bock in the blue bottle is made with maple syrup and was the most revolting concoction in a beer bottle that I have ever had. Tasted more like soy sauce (bleagh!). And talk about overpriced!
Technically, Olde Anguish 800 is known as the “Eight Ball”. The “green death” that you are refering to is “Ranier Ale” in the green can. More affectionately know as “Reindeer Piss”.
Marston’s “Owd Rodger” - do not drink it, I say. Anyway, perhaps they do not export it to the States. Marstons make some really beautiful beer, but this one, I found quite nasty. I ordered half a pint of it, and quickly decided to give up on it and to have some drinkable beer instead.
About 5 years ago my father, who traveled the world while in the military, brought back a case of beer from Mongolia. I can’t for the life of me remember what it was called. It cost my father something like a dollar for all 24 bottles. That should have been a clue.
This shit was loaded with formaldehyde. It tasted like squeezings from a preserved cat I had to disect in my Anatomy and Physiology lab. The stuff was absolutely terrifying. The first drink made my throat constrict, making it difficult to swallow any more. But being such a brave and hardy soul I wanted to at least give it a fair try. I managed to choke down another 2 swags and gave up.
My dad made up for it the next year bringing back some Budweiser Budvar from a military installation in the Azores. It had aged a little too long (it was printed in English, and had an expiration date) and didn’t taste that great, but his effort was well appreciated.
Milwaukee’s Best (aka “The Beast”), in all of it’s incarnations: Beast Regular, Beast Lite, and Beast Ice. I couldn’t even drink that swill when I was an underage college freshman with 3 bucks to my name.
I don’t know if they still make it, but St. Ide’s malt liquor was also pretty vile. I think Ice Cube used to be a spokesperson for it. I can remember an old commercial for St. Ide’s where he sang a jingle which went something like “St. Ide’s: Git it when ya go to da liqour stoh!” Priceless.
mattk: You can still get Kailber (abv 0.02%) here in the UK. Dunno who would want to, though.
Some of the “Real Ale Festivals” run by The Campaign for Real Ale (UK) have some doozies amongst the good stuff. I had a Welsh ale called “St. David’s Day” that tasted of paint stripper–God only knows how the manufacturers pulled that off.
But the absolute worst I’ve had had to be some homebrew made by my Welsh flatmates. The problem was that they were incapable of waiting for the stuff to ferment properly and decanted it into bottles before it was ready. There was a thin top layer of yeast covering an absolutely tasteless middle, and, at the bottom, a layer resembling sand.
Duke - I can ace you on that one. One of my uni flatmates in Edinburgh picked up some home-made scrumpy, which none of us would touch with a lead-lined bargepole. At the end of the year we poured it down the sink; it cleared all of the limescale right off…
Texas Pride. Can’t remember what it tasted like, except bad.
Second place, in my experience - one of the alleged world’s great beers: Pilsener Urquell (which I think of as Inkwell, which is what it reminded me of). Maybe some people like that stuff; it didn’t remind me of beer.
By a long shot…Foster’s
The Austrailians won’t even touch the stuff. It is like the Old Milwaukee down under. Horrible stuff, yet popular in California.