# What is the worst beer you've ever had? **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** beer\ **Created:** [August 2, 2014, 9:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678 "2014-08-02T21:48:49Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![LC\_Strawhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@LC\_Strawhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LC_Strawhouse)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 3:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/41 "2014-08-03T15:44:09Z")
Anyone ever drink [Dow Beer](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dow_Breweries) back in the day and live to tell about it? ---
**Author:** ![Dobbs](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/5f9b8f/32.png) [@Dobbs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dobbs)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 4:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/42 "2014-08-03T16:09:14Z")
I’ve never found a wheat beer that I like, and fruit flavored wheats should be outlawed in my opinion. But I’ve never poured a beer out, until now. I give you Dead Rise. > **[Flying Dog Announces Dead Rise OLD BAY Summer Ale](https://www.brewbound.com/news/flying-dog-announces-dead-rise-old-bay-summer-ale)** > > Frederick, MD — To commemorate the 75th anniversary of OLD BAY┬«, Flying Dog partnered with the iconic Maryland seasoning on Dead Rise OLD BAY Summer Ale. Dead Rise is premiering on tap at the brewery Friday and available throughout the mid-Atlantic... I like Old Bay, and if there is a beer I haven’t tried, that’s what I’m going to have. So when I found these, I had to give it a go. I think an old dead crab floating in the Chesapeake would taste better. ---
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 4:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/43 "2014-08-03T16:27:20Z")
About 10 years ago I did a blind taste test of a bunch of brands that I thought had worst-beer potential (no light beers though) and I found that Schaefer, Piels, and Schmidt were the actual worst. In fairness, all three brands were well into their afterlives as contract-brewed “zombie” beers, so I doubt they resembled their namesake brands from their heyday. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 4:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/44 "2014-08-03T16:42:27Z")
> [@Barking\_Dog](#): > > The worst I’ve had I think would be Arrogant Bastard ale. I know it’s supposed to be good, but I didn’t finish half before I threw it away. I believe it even says on the bottles “you probably won’t like this” and they were right. As I mentioned in a previous thread, I buy bombers of this beer by the case. Love the stuff! And it’s one of Stone’s _milder_ brews. 😛 ---
**Author:** ![Yossarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/9de0a6/32.png) [@Yossarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yossarian)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 4:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/45 "2014-08-03T16:48:37Z")
It might not be the worst beer I’ve _ever_ had (especially if one includes homebrews), but the worst beer I’ve had in the past couple of years is easily **Efes Pilsner**. I drank a bottle of it before I went to Turkey this summer. It was nasty and skunky, but then again the bottle was dusty and way past it’s expiration date (unsurprisingly, it’s not a popular purchase in Eastern Kentucky). So I had it on tap in Turkey and sure enough–nasty and skunky is apparently how it’s supposed to taste. It tastes like the mash bill is 10% barley, 90% sugar. The worst thing about it, though, is that the “Bros” at [beeradvocate.com](http://beeradvocate.com) give it a 90 (“Outstanding”) and have thus lost my trust forever. (The user rating of 71–“okay”–is much more reasonable; after all, despite the terrible flavor I did drink about ten liters of it over the course of six days. By day four I even stopped complaining.) ---
**Author:** ![Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/5daacb/32.png) [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ellis_Aponte_Jr)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 4:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/46 "2014-08-03T16:58:05Z")
Yossarian: That’s weird! I have Efes on tap here (NYC) all the time and I really enjoy it. It tastes to me like a very good, clean, German-ish pilsener. ---
**Author:** ![Emtar\_KronJonDerSohn](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/58956e/32.png) [@Emtar\_KronJonDerSohn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Emtar_KronJonDerSohn)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/47 "2014-08-03T17:04:51Z")
Rogue VooDoo Donut beers are actually pretty good. Heineken had always tasted pretty bad to me until I got some half liter aluminum bottles. They tasted pretty good and I was kind of sad when I drank the last one. No green bottle light infiltration and all that, and they were straight from the importer and very fresh. Arrogant Bastard is one of my favorite beers. It’s very intense and I won’t sit down and drink eight of them, but I was in heaven when the Safeway by my old house mispriced them at $2.59. I’m going to have to agree with Cave Creek Chili Beer. I bought a single bottle on vacation and gave it a taste. I coughed it up through my nose and spent several hours in pretty bad shape. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 5:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/48 "2014-08-03T17:11:08Z")
> [@Barking\_Dog](#): > > The worst I’ve had I think would be Arrogant Bastard ale. I know it’s supposed to be good, but I didn’t finish half before I threw it away. I believe it even says on the bottles “you probably won’t like this” and they were right. Some folks just aren’t worthy. I’ve had many beers that I would not say I liked, but I’ve never not finished one. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 5:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/49 "2014-08-03T17:21:24Z")
It was mentioned by the OP and I’ll mention it from personal experience: Beer 30 Lite. I’ve had just about every beer mentioned in this thread, and Beer 30 Lite is far, far worse than any other. Some friends and I stopped in a gas station in the midwest (I believe this was Beer 30’s distribution area for the 3-4 years it was made) and saw a 30 pack of it for $9.99. This was in the year 2009 or so, and long after 30 packs were $14-16 or so for the cheapest macro brew garbage. We bought it mostly on a lark, and figured it’d be bad but probably no worse than Natty Light or something. Boy, were we wrong. I’ve never in my life not finished a beer I’ve opened, and I’ve had some that were agonizing to drink through. I got about 1/4 into a can of Beer 30 Lite and stopped, I just said “I can’t do it.” It was simply undrinkable. ---
**Author:** ![Crafter\_Man](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crafter_man/32/458_2.png) [@Crafter\_Man](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crafter_Man)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 5:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/50 "2014-08-03T17:39:05Z")
Back in college I had some Coors Extra Gold at a bar. Really awful stuff. Tasted like someone dumped a cup of sugar in it. ---
**Author:** ![running\_coach](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/running_coach/32/15836_2.png) [@running\_coach](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/running_coach)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/51 "2014-08-03T17:41:33Z")
> [@Crafter\_Man](#): > > Back in college I had some Coors Extra Gold at a bar. Really awful stuff. Tasted like someone dumped a cup of sugar in it. That’s just the way diabetes was diagnosed way back when. ---
**Author:** ![Mister\_Rik](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mister_rik/32/491_2.png) [@Mister\_Rik](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mister_Rik)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 6:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/52 "2014-08-03T18:57:13Z")
> [@Barking\_Dog](#): > > The worst I’ve had I think would be Arrogant Bastard ale. I know it’s supposed to be good, but I didn’t finish half before I threw it away. I believe it even says on the bottles “you probably won’t like this” and they were right. I bought a big bottle of that just because I got a kick out of the label. While it wasn’t terrible, I’m unlikely to buy it agin. Sometimes, a beer can have too much alcohol in it. When I drink beer, I like to make an evening of it, and I can’t do that if I’m stumbling after two bottles. > [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](#): > > About 10 years ago I did a blind taste test of a bunch of brands that I thought had worst-beer potential (no light beers though) and I found that Schaefer, Piels, and Schmidt were the actual worst. In fairness, all three brands were well into their afterlives as contract-brewed “zombie” beers, so I doubt they resembled their namesake brands from their heyday. I remember Schmidt! Animal beer! Schmidt was my “go to” beer when I was in my 20s and drinking a lot more than I do now. This was in the late-1980s - early '90s. Schmidt was the least expensive beer that was still tolerable to my tastebuds. I actually liked it better than the more popular Rainier. I was puzzled for the longest time by the slogan on the can: “The Beer that Grew with the Great Northwest”. Because it was brewed in Wisconsin\*, and I live in Washington. What’s this “Northwest” business? It wasn’t until some time later that I learned that the Wisconsin-Minnesota vicinity was called the “Northwest” earlier in US history, and that’s why Washington-Oregon-Idaho are called the “_Pacific_ Northwest”. - Though I see from my earlier link that the Olympia brewery took over making Schmidt at some point, so I suppose the stuff I drank came from there, not Milwaukee. And Schmidt did disappear here around the same time Oly did. > [@Emtar\_KronJonDerSohn](#): > > Heineken had always tasted pretty bad to me until I got some half liter aluminum bottles. They tasted pretty good and I was kind of sad when I drank the last one. No green bottle light infiltration and all that, and they were straight from the importer and very fresh. I don’t recall the last time I had a Heineken, but I always had the same problem with Molson in the green bottles. Skunky! > [@](#): > > I’m going to have to agree with Cave Creek Chili Beer. I bought a single bottle on vacation and gave it a taste. I coughed it up through my nose and spent several hours in pretty bad shape. We sold that at a bar where I worked in the early '90s. I had it once or twice. One day, this good-looking young woman in a leather jacket came in and ordered one, and proceeded to chug the entire bottle in one go. Without blinking. We were all :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Barking\_Dog](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/ccd318/32.png) [@Barking\_Dog](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Barking_Dog)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 7:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/53 "2014-08-03T19:07:09Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > As I mentioned in a previous thread, I buy bombers of this beer by the case. Love the stuff! And it’s one of Stone’s _milder_ brews. 😛 I’ve had some of the other stuff they make. I quite like their IPA, in fact. Maybe the bottle I bought was old and had gone off? I don’t know. But it’s the worst beer _ **I’ve** _ had, and the only one I couldn’t chug down. ---
**Author:** ![Yossarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/y/9de0a6/32.png) [@Yossarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Yossarian)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 8:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/54 "2014-08-03T20:08:30Z")
> [@Ellis\_Aponte\_Jr](#): > > Yossarian: That’s weird! I have Efes on tap here (NYC) all the time and I really enjoy it. It tastes to me like a very good, clean, German-ish pilsener. Actually, I’ll change my choice–not because I like Efes, but because (1) I still drank the shit out of it, and (2) I just remembered the actual worst beer I’ve had in a while. Lexington, Kentucky, has a really great burgeoning craft brew scene: West 6th, Blue Stallion, and especially Country Boy all make great beers. However… once a year for the past two years West 6th and Country Boy team up to brew a collaborative beer–“Country Western.” This year’s Country/Western was simply horrible. It was allegedly a Brown Ale, but it poured like a stout and tasted like shit. To keep it as “Kentucky” as possible, they included quite a bit of sorghum in the mash bill and aged it in bourbon barrels. The result was cloying and treacly and just nasty–as though it was brewed by a homebrewer with no restraint who was trying to make the biggest beer possible on his second attempt out of every malt [morebeer.com](http://morebeer.com) sells. But otherwise, if you’re in the area you should absolutely check out Country Boy! The rest of their beers are great (especially their “Alpha Experiment” series.) ---
**Author:** ![iiandyiiii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/iiandyiiii/32/7924_2.png) [@iiandyiiii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/iiandyiiii)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/55 "2014-08-03T20:13:43Z")
Spent a week in the Dominican Republic several years ago. The big DR beer is Presidente, which is served ice cold nearly everywhere. And it’s perhaps the most refreshing and tastiest beach/hot-weather beer I’ve ever had. So a few years later, back home, I went to a big beer store looking for rare imports and found Presidente again. And it was the most awful beer I’d ever had – just undrinkable. So Presidente in the DR is awesome and so, so tasty. It was so good that the girl I was with at the time, who didn’t really like beer that much, loved it. But Presidente in the US is terrible, awful, no good beer. I don’t know if it’s a different recipe, or a matter of freshness, or what. ---
**Author:** ![kayaker](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kayaker/32/441_2.png) [@kayaker](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kayaker)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 8:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/56 "2014-08-03T20:24:05Z")
> [@iiandyiiii](#): > > So Presidente in the DR is awesome and so, so tasty. It was so good that the girl I was with at the time, who didn’t really like beer that much, loved it. But Presidente in the US is terrible, awful, no good beer. I find the same thing with Carib. We order and chug it by the bucket (six bottles and ice in a bucket). Delicious. I found a case up here and we were barely able to choke it down. ---
**Author:** ![Martin\_Hyde](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/47e85d/32.png) [@Martin\_Hyde](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Martin_Hyde)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/57 "2014-08-03T20:30:09Z")
Beer doesn’t hold up well in sunlight, that’s why brands like Newcastle and Heineken suffer a lot from being shipped across the Atlantic in their clear/green bottle respectively. Both taste a lot better out of can or keg, since they’ve been shipped in a much more protective container. ---
**Author:** ![InsomniaMama](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/ad7895/32.png) [@InsomniaMama](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/InsomniaMama)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 8:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/58 "2014-08-03T20:30:20Z")
I had a real [Rauchbier](http://www.schlenkerla.de/indexe.html) in Bamberg, just like you’re supposed to. It’s been about 25 years, and I still complain about it. Nasty. ---
**Author:** ![MadTheSwine](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MadTheSwine](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MadTheSwine)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 8:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/59 "2014-08-03T20:55:10Z")
> [@tapu](#): > > Pabst. From age 6-12, or thereabouts. > [@DCnDC](#): > > Heineken. For years I kept thinking I was continually getting old, skunked Heinekens, then one day I realized that’s just what it tastes like. These are the two that came to mind. First time I had a Natural Light I took it back and told the bartender it was spoiled, he gave me another one. took that one back as well. He asked if I had ever drank Nat Light before. I said “no.” he said " I think that’s just what it tastes like." ---
**Author:** ![DeptfordX](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/e68b1a/32.png) [@DeptfordX](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DeptfordX)\ **Post date:** [August 3, 2014, 10:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678/60 "2014-08-03T22:56:54Z")
That’s exactly what happened the one time i tried Castlemaine XXXX. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-is-the-worst-beer-youve-ever-had/694678.md?page=4)