Lager? I Hardly Knew Her

After the last tasting panel it was obvious we needed to pare things down a bit. 18 beers is just way too many to get an accurate taste of in one night, especially if you're looking to have fun while you're drinking. So for the next tasting party we changed things up and dialed down the number of beers and we even changed locales to Weston's River Market loft.

The event was classed up quite a bit by the contributions of Weston's wife, Chambord. She made us little peanut butter and jelly sandwiches, helped fry up some Spam and put in the pretzel handles, and supervised Weston deep frying Oreos. For the rest of our parts we all brought "yard beers" which was loosely defined as cheap lagers, though that's not all that was brought. Chimpotle also brought his bottle of Sam Adams Utopia and beer flavored Pub Corn, one of these was better than the other.

We started off trying some Utopia with Chambord and Yeti's wife, Longhorn. It was more of a brandy than a beer, but it was very good. In the beer world it reminded me of Avery Beast Grand Cru. If you're interested in spending $200 for a big bottle of beer, which is what Utopia costs, I would recommend trying a $15 bottle of Beast Grand Cru to make sure you enjoy the deep, complex, brandy features of the Utopia.

When Chambord and Longhorn left for JP's Wine Bar, we sat down to get to "work" drinking cheap beers. As I took my seat I noticed Weston's cat's water bowl had a continuous flow of water. Chimpotle and I made fun of the childless Weston for caring so much about his cat that they spent $50 on water fountain for it. Since the cat's water fountain was right behind me for the entire evening I must have used the restroom 5 times. The sound of continuous running water really does affect my peeing. Chimpotle did the pouring in the kitchen behind a little wall so we didn't know what we were drinking. We had a couple of higher end beers mixed in with the ultra cheap macro brewed beers just to see if we could pick out the good ones. Below is our tasting notes on each beer and our guesses for what they were.

Natural Light - Tasted like watered down honey or ball steeped water. We joked that someone had dipped their balls in boiling water creating a mistake on both ends, the balls and the resulting brew. The group guessed it was Keystone Ice, my guess was Natural Light.


Coors Light - Smells like actual beer but has no taste and is neither good nor bad. Everyone including me guessed it was Natural Light.

Bud Light Lime - There was no doubt what we were drinking. We thought it tasted like bottled water with lime in it. We concluded that if Bud Light Lime is your favorite beer, then you don't like beer.

We got a little sidetracked by a little game of trickery called "Bros Icing Bros" where if someone was presented with a Smirnoff Ice, he had to chug it. I think Yeti had 2 Ices in rapid succession, Duff had a 22 oz. bottle of it, Weston had 2, Chimpotle and Paul A. Ner each had 1. I escaped "getting iced" by proclaiming that I don't do shots and I don't chug things. Mostly I don't do things 18 year old girls do, I don't shave my legs, watch "Gossip Girl", blow dudes or drink Smirnoff Ice. After watching the festivities, I wouldn't put any of those things past the other 4 guys. Though there was one great thing to come of Bros Icing Bros and that was Chimpo screeching "Iced". If we had any recording equipment with us, I think there would be no doubt that all 5 of us would have that as our ringtones.

Stag - One word was written for this beer and that word was awful. We guessed it was Miller High Life. Strangely when the blind tasting was all over, I had another can of Stag.

Milwaukees Best - If there's one thing that my time in college taught me it was what Milwaukees Best tastes like. We all said it had very little taste and guessed correctly that it was Milwaukees Best.

Schlitz - There was some disagreement on this one whether it was a more premium beer. Paul A. Ner was quite sure it was one of the more professional beers and that it was brewed with care, he thought it was the Left Hand Polestar Pilsner. I guessed correctly that it was Schlitz.

Ed Hardy Light - I really liked how Paul A. Ner put it with his description of this one "has some taste", while that's funny it was also true. That taste was buttery. Mostly at Weston's insistence we guessed this one was Schlitz.

Left Hand Polestar Pilsner - Amazingly we all agreed this one was awful and gross. I think it's obvious that we can pick out the beer that's different and describe it as bad. I think it's safe to say that, while it's not anyone's favorite beer, it's not awful or gross if it's what you're drinking for the night. We guessed it was Stag.

During the tasting when we weren't getting "Iced", Chimpotle and Weston were breaking out their gross sexual website knowledge and showing us these videos. I didn't watch many of them and I certainly didn't watchStanhope version of "The Aristocrats" (Google it, I'm not linking to it). It literally made me cry when watching it that night.

Wittekerke Witbier - This was another one that was obvious what we were drinking. It wasn't the best witbier I've ever had and it had a lot of sediment in it, but it's definitely a beer I'll try again.

Keystone Ice - This was the point of the evening where I was tired of writing stuff down so all I have is the consensus guess which was Coors Light.

Labatts Blue - This one stumped us and a guess was not proffered.

Bud Light Golden Wheat - We all guessed this one because of it's color and haziness and also we all had one before we began because we had a bunch of it. Interestingly, we all hated it when we were drinking it earlier in the evening we thought it was awful and a bad version of Boulevard Wheat. But, in the middle of tasting a bunch of crappy beers, it stood out as one of the better ones.

Miller High Life - We didn't think much of it and decided it was the Ed Hardy Light.

It was interesting when Chimpotle called out the beers when we were done and we compared it to the list. My favorite part of the night was when Chimpo said that I was "surprisingly accurate" most of the night. As for the rest of the evening, I ate too much Spam and probably 20 Oreos. When Schlitz is your favorite beer of the night it's hard to say you've had a good night. But, aside from seeing Weston's balls, we had a good time.

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