Wow, beer has gotten way more intentionally vile since my drinking days. Menthol beer? Spruce? Do they think you’ll drink literally anything in a bottle that’s the right shape?
The worst I have personally tried is an early 90’s Olympia offshoot called Oly. It had a black can with neon pink/green lettering, and was marketed with the slogan “It’s the water.” I feel for the residents of Washington state if the slogan has any truth in it.
I was at a bar a few years back and they had an onion flavored beer. Oddly, it didn’t suck. It went nicely with french fries. I have no idea how they got the onion flavor in and I never ever saw it after that (it was some kind of promotion.)
Wow, you are lucky. That’s far from the worst beer out there.
I’d say some very cheap Yanjing beer in China was the worst I’ve had.
The worst for me had to be a maple flavored pilsner. I don’t remember what the brewery was that made it. I think it may have been Point. I picked it up because it was cheap.
If you want to try if for yourself put several tablespoons of maple syrup in an otherwise decent lager. It was just foul.
I had, what I think was, a very old IPA in an airplane to Portland once. I tried Pyramid IPA a few years ago, and thought that was almost as bad.
After those two, I thought I hated all IPAs but then I tried Speakeasy’s Big Daddy IPA and thought it was pretty good.
Labatt Wildcat. It tasted like beer-flavoured piss.
That’s why I call it PU. In the US, in bottles, it’s always skunked. Always. On tap., it’s pretty good; a typical Czech pilsner.
Tecate. There aren’t many beers I’ve drank that I’ve been unable to finish, but Tecate tastes skunky fresh out of the tap. In cans, it positively tastes like bilgewater.
I must admit, I haven’t tried Colt 45 Menthol. That sounds even worse.
3rd worst - My brother’s USMC Sergent invited us to dinner at his house one night (I think my brother was an E3 at the time) and served us bottles of his just-finished homebrew. He had washed the bottles with (I think?) Tide, and hadn’t rinsed them properly, and my mouth started foaming. My brother was “polite” and finished his.
2nd worst - Pabst Blue Ribbon. I don’t give a fuck what every hipster in the world says. I drank a 6 pack of these at a time in my late teens when I could’ve drank 12 of any other beer without getting a hangover, and I got the worst hangover of my life. Haven’t touched the shit since, and won’t, even though it’s (literally) 25 cents on tap at some places.
WORST - Miller Lite. I’m not kidding or being a beer snob. Shit tastes like sour gym socks. I literally gagged the last time I tried to drink a Miller Lite. I will never try again.
I’ve had many a fine fine bottle of Pilsner Urquell. Those who’ve cited nasty bottles must indeed have gotten skunked beer.
As sublime as a fresh draught Pilsner Urquell is in Plzen or Prague, it does not travel well at all, and it is almost always a disappointment when I forget and pick up a 6 pack in a fit of nostalgia…
On tap in the US, it’s usually OK, but for some reason it dosen’t live up to my fond memories of drinking it in Czech Republic.
Pilsner Urquell is very frequently skunked in bottles in the United States. Something about the trip over in the green bottles isn’t kind to it. On tap it’s much better, especially in the Czech Republic. I flat out didn’t like it until I had it there.
This is what I came in to say. I had part of a can once and on top of it being what I am sure is terrible beer, I think it was skunked. Imagine this: poor college students throwing away beer. It was that bad.
I got mocked for buying Schlitz by an undercover cop when I got picked up for procuring beer as an underage 17 year old. They brought us to the station and made sure we heard the Schlitz jokes…
Wernesgruner from Aldi is quite good, especially as compared to all the mass-produced schlock in American “supermarkets-for-the-beer-impaired”.
In college, on the way home from the bars, we would stop and get a 12 pack of Koch’s. It was indeed *very *bad, but since we were already drunk, we didn’t care - it was cheap.
Ruddles County Bitter. I still have half a six-pack of that shit in the fridge, and it’s a couple of years old, I think. It’s probably still drinkable, I just haven’t been drunk enough to “drink it anyway”.
I went to Czech Republic during Easter this year and stopped for an night in Pilzen. Pilzner Urquell had a beer museum across the street from my hotel. They sold an unfiltered, unpasteurized version of this beer and it was heavenly. I didn’t think much of Pilzen, but I’d probably go back just for the beer.
Yeah, it had a lot of hop bitterness too; I think the brewer pumped up the sugars/malts in the beer to “stand up to”/counterbalance the hoppyness. It was thicker than a normal beer, almost syrupy.
Czech pilsners don’t stay fresh very long; my honeymoon was in Prague, Budapest and London, and the further we got from Prague, the less malty and more sharply bitter the PU became, until we got back to the US, where it also usually has a certain skunky taste unless it’s been kept in the darkness.
I think in general, Staropramen’s better, but PU is still excellent. Same for Ruddles County Bitter; fresh, it’s great.
The worst beer I ever had was a 12 pack of something cheap with a Germanic name, that was like $8 for a 12 pack in 2007. Most light lagers don’t taste bad, but just bland and/or weak and watery.
This one was actively bad, like it was made under less than exacting conditions- wrong temperature, sloppy mashing, cheap ingredients, etc… like the worst homebrew I’d ever made or had.