# Why does high alcohol beer taste like.....you know. **URL:** \ **Category:** Miscellaneous and Personal Stuff I Must Share\ **Created:** [November 9, 2002, 6:05am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-high-alcohol-beer-taste-like-you-know/135993 "2002-11-09T06:05:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 2
**Author:** ![Panther](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a698b9/32.png) [@Panther](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Panther)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2002, 10:21pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-high-alcohol-beer-taste-like-you-know/135993/21 "2002-11-10T22:21:15Z")
sorry correction on my last post its Samual Adams Triple Bock and it’s 17.5%. I’ve never tried to post a link here so I’m going to try HTML. \Sam Adams\ Hope that works ---
**Author:** ![Panther](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/a698b9/32.png) [@Panther](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Panther)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2002, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-high-alcohol-beer-taste-like-you-know/135993/22 "2002-11-10T22:29:07Z")
Ok, one more time (I guess that’s one way to change my post count) [Sam Adams Triple Bock Site](http://www.samadams.com/beer/styles/triple_bock.html) ---
**Author:** ![Grelby](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/a5b964/32.png) [@Grelby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Grelby)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2002, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-high-alcohol-beer-taste-like-you-know/135993/23 "2002-11-10T22:38:42Z")
Teenagers drink? 😕 Not this teenager, nor most of my friends. Oh well. So much for being cool _shrug_. ---
**Author:** ![Flymaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c4cdca/32.png) [@Flymaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flymaster)\ **Post date:** [November 10, 2002, 11:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-high-alcohol-beer-taste-like-you-know/135993/24 "2002-11-10T23:39:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Grelby \* > \*\*Teenagers drink? 😕 Not this teenager, nor most of my friends. Oh well. So much for being cool _shrug_. \*\* I didn’t say you weren’t cool if you don’t drink. I also didn’t say that all teenagers drink. And I certainly didnt’ say Grelby and his/her friends drink. I said a lot of teenagers drink. (And then I made up a number of teenagers that I would guess drink. I stand by that number, until shown otherwise. Also, I’m talking teenagers in the 16-19 age group, here. I’m sure among 13 year olds and 14 year olds, drinking is much less common. ---
**Author:** ![samclem](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a9a28c/32.png) [@samclem](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/samclem)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2002, 1:48am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-high-alcohol-beer-taste-like-you-know/135993/25 "2002-11-11T01:48:01Z")
**Flymaster**. Of course a lot of teenagers drink. Some a little, some a lot. Our own little **8ball** is 15. What’s your advice to her? Get smashed every Friday night? Drink every guy under the table? Be the last one standing, whether you’re drinking beer or absolute alcohol? If she were in college, I’d leave her to her own devices. As it is, she might just need someone who cares. But then I’m just an old fuddy duddy butt-insky. ---
**Author:** ![Flymaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c4cdca/32.png) [@Flymaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flymaster)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2002, 4:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-high-alcohol-beer-taste-like-you-know/135993/26 "2002-11-11T04:22:01Z")
No…I agree, teenagers SHOULDN’T be drinking each other under the table. But she’s also not doomed to a life of alcoholism and liver failure, as you seem to be indicating. What she needs is a general recommendation that maybe she should tone it down, not exaggerated fearmongering, which she’s much more likely to just ignore as the rantings of old people. ---
**Author:** ![jackelope](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/a6a055/32.png) [@jackelope](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jackelope)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2002, 5:46am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-high-alcohol-beer-taste-like-you-know/135993/27 "2002-11-11T05:46:36Z")
Anyone familiar with [Samichlaus](http://www.samichlaus.ch/) (warning: link is in German and therefore I have no idea if that’s the right link)? Man, that is some vile stuff. I had a six-pack of it once, when I lived in Colorado, and I couldn’t even finish one beer because it smelled _so bad_. I took it outside and dumped it out on the ground, and I could hardly bear to walk by the place because the spot smelled so bad. Think Vietnamese Nyuk-Nyum sauce (don’t know about the spelling), full of sardines that have spent three weeks sitting in the sun. ---
**Author:** ![Flymaster](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/c4cdca/32.png) [@Flymaster](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Flymaster)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2002, 6:36am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-high-alcohol-beer-taste-like-you-know/135993/28 "2002-11-11T06:36:07Z")
And see, this just goes to show the differences in beer tastes. Samichlaus is one of the higher rated beers among “beer people.” The fact is, most “high quality” foodstuffs turn off a LOT of people. Fancy beers, high priced liquor, various bird livers, wierd mushrooms, duck embrioes, and the like, are all aquired tastes, in my experience. To each his own, I guess. As for most American malt liquors, I think most people will agree that they tast like ass. But they’re not really intended as sipping brews. They have one goal, and one goal only: to get you messed up, cheap. And they work. If you want a good beer, buy one. If you want a cheap, strong beer, they’ll do the trick. ---
**Author:** ![Omniscient](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/omniscient/32/3290_2.png) [@Omniscient](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Omniscient)\ **Post date:** [November 11, 2002, 8:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-high-alcohol-beer-taste-like-you-know/135993/29 "2002-11-11T08:38:57Z")
I’m going to avoid commenting on all the silly beer-snobbery going on here, but I do want to point out that the problem with the products you’ve tested isn’t the alcohol content. As has been mentioned, lots of beers, mostly Belgian, are both high % ABV and tasty. The catch is that you’re drinking _malt liquor_. I used to know the specifics of the brewing process, I’ve since forgotten, but I do recall that malt liquor is a cheap, low quality by-product of the typical brewing process which all macro brewers use. Typically this product would be scrapped, but the creative types at the fine capitalist US beer companies saw that this otherwise useless product could be cheaply sold and marketed as cheap/strong alternative to typical beer. I presume that one _could_ make decent quality malt liquor drinks (aside from the new sweetened malt beverages), but considering the market segment in question, they just don’t. You’re drinking crappy products because they are meant to be cheap, not because they are meant to be strong. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/why-does-high-alcohol-beer-taste-like-you-know/135993.md?page=1)