Arguably The Only Beer You’ll Ever Need

Mmm, beer.

Howdy, brokesters… apologies for the lack of TBC musings as of late. Happy new year and shit.

If you follow me on Twitter/are stalking me in real life, you know that I spent the holiday season getting blotto in my beloved home state of Wisconsin. Yes, America’s darling Dairyland. Land of cow tipping, cheese curds, and of course, Olympic-scale beer consumption (and the most adorable accent on the planet… ask me to say the word B-A-G, I dare you).

Well, it just so happens that during my visit I stumbled upon an interesting article that prompted me to hold a blind beer tasting with my family. According to the article, there are nine beers nobody is drinking anymore, as evidenced by a big ol’ drop in sales. Some smarty-pants beer analysts (um, how do I get that job please?) claim it’s because of “the economy and lack of innovation from the brewers.” I blame it’s-probably-because-most-of-these-beers-taste-like-ass, but being that a good chunk of them are either named after and/or made in my hometown of Milwaukee, I felt compelled to find out for myself what the hell was going on.

The family blind tasting included the nine beers* in the article plus a couple thrown in for good measure: 1) Pabst– because everyone & their grandma is drinking it and I wanted to see how it would fare sans its annoyingly hip image; 2) Hamm’s– because my dad was jonesin’ for one (he hadn’t had one in years) and wouldn’t let me do the tasting without it. I’d like to state for the record that my pop predicted he would like the latter two beers the best, blind tasting and all. And he did. Well played, dad.

Furthermore, none of these beers were sold in anything less than six-packs, yet the total cost of everything was still less than what I would have spent eating lunch at Whole Foods. So there’s that. Then again, isn’t that why we drink beer in the first place?

cool enchantment, bitches

*THE BEERS (in order of increasingly shitty sales):

9. Milwaukee’s Best Light (aka: shitty sales, but not the shittiest)

8. Miller High Life Light

7. Amstel Light

6. Miller Genuine Draft

5. Old Milwaukee

4. Milwaukee’s Best

3. Budweiser Select

2. Michelob Light

1. Michelob (aka: the shittiest in sales)

Not ranked: Pabst & Hamm’s (loved by hipsters & dads. NOT doing shitty sales)

I won’t bore you with the agonizing decision-making process my family and I had to endure in order to proclaim the winner, but needless to say, it was grueling to force ourselves to drink some of these and they totally deserve their shitty sales. Specifically, I remember Milwaukee’s Best tasting like what I imagine a coal-miner’s ass smells like after a 14-hour shift and being fed nothing but Taco Bell (Ironically, Milwaukee’s Best Light didn’t suck too much). MGD was also exceptionally foul… just in case you thought I’d be biased.

That said, in what turned out to be a completely anticlimactic finish, the runner up was Pabst and the winner by an overwhelming majority was (drumroll)…. Hamm’s! Oh, what a gloriously underappreciated beer! The beer born in the land of sky blue waters, the beer of cool enchantment, the beer refreshing, the beer with a million taglines. Mmmm.

The bottom line is this: Birthdays, holidays, badminton tourneys, breakfast… there’s never a shortage of good opportunities or reasons to drink cheap beer, but you don’t have to drink a coal-miner’s taco aftermath. Furthermore, if a fancy beer analyst says one beer sucks and a hipster or dad says another beer is amazing, they’re all probably correct. If nothing else, you should just buy any of these beers to help out the economy. Because biznass, son.

– TBC