Malt Liquor
 

When I was a poor young college student, we bought the best beer we could afford, which wasn't much. Fort Schuyler was $2.99 a case and Canadian Ace was $0.69 for what looked like a half gallon. Both were putrid and you had to drink a lot to get a buzz and that usually meant driving the porcelain bus later in the evening. Consequently, we looked for bang for the buck and that often meant malt liquor. Colt 45 would have been a splurge. Schlitz had a brand that was also beyond my means most Friday nights. The drink of choice was Haffenreffer Private Stock. Back in the day, it only came in 16 oz bottles. It was nicknamed "green death" and "green meanies". I think the alcohol content was around 7% and a six would leave you in the gutter. I remember occasionally looking for a fellow student to split a six pack with.

Today I hear the term "high gravity" and the prices match the gravity in many cases. Yes, the ones I've tasted are far superior to any malt liquor I used to drink. You could almost picture the Falstaff brewers dipping a live skunk in the vat. I drink beer for the taste today and haven't had a malt liquor in 30 years at least. Would any FTer step forward and admit to drinking one in the last year?

Party hearty! Drink a 40!**

**One brand of malt Liquor came in a 40 ounce bottle.

I suspect few if any FTers are familiar with ML, the province of a cultural subset which normally consumes them standing, outdoors, leaning against a building wall, the bottle in a paper sack. Simply "beer" brewed close to the alcohol level allowed by state law for the next category of alcoholic beverage, and not brewed for discriminating palates only alcoholic appetites.

From ML, the next move up is to "Thunderbird" or "Mad Dog 20/20" (non-vintage, screw top, modest price).

The folks at Delaware's Dogfish Head Craft Brewery half-jokingly brewed a craft malt liquor at one time.

Details on the defunct "Liquor De Malt" are from their website.

Gotta admit I haven't had it in quite a bit longer than a year, but I am quite familiar with Mickey's Big Mouth -- very efficient for getting wasted fast.

Cheers,
T.

I think it's certainly more than "few if any".

I don't think I've drank malt liquor since high school, when we would occasionally find someone with an older sibling to buy us some 40's of Big Bear.

College was a lot of cheap beer (Natty Light, Keystone Light, Mil Best Light, etc.)

agreed

Yes Sir, and the "old school" Mickey's had that horrible pull top lid design that almost every time Mickey's was being drunk, someone would slice their thumb. I saw some Mickey's the other day, same bottle design but the top is one big screwtop.

I would if I had, it just seems that malt liquor is not the drink of choice nowadays.

Other cheap beers:
Rhinelander (HAVE to collect the bottles to get the case deposit back!!)
Grain Belt
Falstaff
Red, White & Blue

But then Stroh's came out with the 15 pack vrs the 12 (as well as a 30pack vrs the typical case size). If price was the same, Stroh's was bought, after all, more beers !!

My holy trinity was:

• Buckhorn
• Schlitz
• Blatz

Cheers,
T.

oh yeah!

it all begins and ends with the crooked I, st. ides malt liquor! 8.2% alcohol.

cheers! *clink*

:stepping forward:

I've got several bottles of Red Horse in my fridge - Philippines finest malt liquor.

Singha and Chang are also malt liquors.

+1 for Mickey's Big Mouth

I think that this is pretty well marketed for malt liqour, and it made you look while drinking it. Well, maybe not. But, it was college, so you took what you could get.

This is quite a coincidence...after reading this thread, I had an email form a friend to an nytimes article that in the first paragraph mentions Red Horse. Two completely un-related references to something totally random that I've never heard of and within 10 min of each other :D

ML must be paired with a suitable low-end fortified wine. The more sugar and artificial flavoring the better. ;)

I'm amazed! All these suave and sophisticated up-scalers 'fessing up to have drunk malt Liquor in the penurious days of their youth. Elelavte "few" to almost "many" FTers.

Cheap beers? In Texas, 1950s, back then dominated by Lone Star & Pearl, at 7-11s, Muehlbach and Southern Select were among the cheapest overall, but the chain of convenience stores used to offer "Specials", Regal and Edelweiss (Both from KC?) at $ .78 - $ .89 a sixpack, steel cans, church key required. Shiner (Bock only) was cheaper then then LS or Pearl, no cult status and with a narrow spectrum of convicted guzzlers, mostly older from Middle/Eastern European communities.

"Micky's" must have been among the original "easy opens", a pioneer of pull-tabbery.

My church key still hangs from an old key ring, and somewhere I've a couple of old Shiner wooden hulls for returnables.

Ah yes. There was a time when Annie Green Springs was the nectar of the gods. Boones Farm was a slightly less palatable alternative.:)

Lagunitas has Brown Shugga', another craft malt liquor. It's not bad and at $7-10/6-pack cheap for the punch
http://www.lagunitas.com/beers/brownshugga.html

Shaefer's here in CT is pretty bad... but for $4.99 in an otherwise pricey town is hard to beat. I drink it every time I have a bad day in the market and feel like i need to do something "austere".
:D

My understanding was that, in the US, "Malt Liquor" applied to any beer that had an alcohol content above 5% regardless of what market it was aimed towards.

The term malt liquor definitely has connotations of cheap, poorly made beverages consumed only for the effect of the alcohol, but I've had many high quality beers that technically fit the malt liquor label.

Feel free to correct me on my above assumptions, I'll admit I'm not 100% clear on US liquor laws :)

I bought a six pack of Red Bull (by Schlitz, no relation to the energy drink) in the early 90s from a gas station next to my hotel. Nasty stuff, didn’t make it through one can! :eek: I left the remaining ones on top of the coke machine and went back for a six pack of Bud. :D

The Red Bull to which you refer is Schlitz Malt Liquor. The original SML was the Blue Bull and was popular enough in the late 70s to merit frequent TV commercials ("Don't say beer, say bull! Schlitz Malt Liquor Bull!") and in the 24 ounce cans was a mainstay of my younger days. The red bull was even stronger, and like the 8 ball (Old English 800), made me "earl" (a reference to St Ides commercials). IIRC none of these was as popular as Colt 45, which Lando Calrissian assured us "works every time" (maybe for you, Billy Dee), it only worked to make me naseous the next day

I have a couple 40's of Mickey's a month -- complete with ghetto koozie. Old school. Used to drink O.E., but lost the taste for it.

Chris

He missed what I always understood to be the key differentiator. Malt liquors got high alcohol by adding an adjunct - sugar, dextrose, corn, rice - something other than the malt, water, hops, yeast.

In the U.S. alcohol regulations are set on the state level. That's actually in the U.S. Constitution as part of the 21st Amendment that ended prohibition. Some states do require beers above a certain alcohol content to be called "malt liquor" but there's no single national rule or standard.

With the growth of craft brewing and high octane beers, several states have relaxed or eliminated the naming requirement.

Here's a game for you guys. It's called Fists of Steel.

(Requires at least 3 people, one of whom is the "umpire")

1. Two or more participants each produce two 32oz cans of Steel Reserve.
2. The umpire tapes one can in the grip of each of the participants' hands with duct tape.
3. The participants are free to do whatever they like, except pour out the beer. The only acceptable way to dispose of the beer is to drink it.
4. When a participant has an empty can, the umpire verifies it and removes the tape.
5. The person first to get both hands free is the "winner".

Optimum strategy is to consume the beer quickly. It warms rapidly due to body heat, and normal activities such as going to the bathroom are significantly more difficult with cans of beer taped to your hands.

The optimum strategy is sort of implied in the rules, as well ;-)

I used to be able to down a 12 oz can of beer in a bit under 5 seconds. However, I fear that this does not imply a potential sub-minute performance with 64 ounces, though.

Maybe there should be a belt system added to the game. Black belt for under 2 minutes, brown for under 4 minutes and so on...

Cheers,
T.

That brings back some memories. ;)

The kids these days call it "Edward Forty Hands" and 40s of Hurricane seem to be the poison choice. Also, while more difficult, it does not necessarily require an umpire. Trust me.

I have drank many a Red Horse and Singha.

Joose anyone?

It's like 24 ounces of 9 percent malt liquor mixed with caffeine and other energy additives for something like $3. Worst thing ever.

We used to drink Big Bear and Olde English quite frequently back in college. We bought that stuff by the case. Much cheaper than beer, and beats the heck out of drinking that horrid Nati Lite junk! Intoxication effects are much quicker with ML...

I learned Fists of Steel in Florida, where 32oz is the largest sized container available.

Wow, you are bringing back some memories. Olde E was charcoal filtered...and tasted like liquid charcoal. To offset the effects, we would always have a bottle of Malt Duck available. Malt Duck was an impossibly sweet Malt Liquor, flavored with grape. You would drink some Olde E, then wash it down with some Duck....and wait for the intoxication and queasiness to begin! Many a night was spent with friends drinking this concoction in the early 1980's.

I know were talking ML here but that post early in the thread about maddog 20/20 got me thinking and a google search turned up http://www.bumwine.com/ this pretty interesting and funny site.

Thanks for the information! Always glad to know more about that kind of thing.

I'll disagree. "Malt Liquor" isa product aimed at an indentifiable and addressable market segment, few of whom are looking for "high octane" beers or the expensive to produce/distribute "craft" beers.

"Cheap" and "plenty of buzz", in most cases available in a big container are the keynotes, and the folks buying and drinking malt liquor won't be switched to "Chimay", etc., no more so than will drinkers of "Thunderbird" start buying "Harvey's Bristol Cream".

As I read it, gregwiggins's original point was just the opposite.

Because of the legislation, even the "high octane" or "craft" beers were required to be called malt liquors, which turned off the intended buyers because of the cheap buzz reputation.

The makers of Chimay certainly do not think the average malt liquor buyer would look for their product, but they certainly would not want to have their beer called malt liquor.

Cheers,
T.

In Texas at least "Malt Liquor" was always malt liquor and beers with higher alcohol content were still "beer" (or ale). The differences were the nature of the license (and the "local option" status) required to sell them. Malt liquor was the quintessential niche market product, at the end of the cooler in convenience stores, and except for a few (Micky's plus a Schlitz product) almost always available only in big bottles (and these days, some "Tall Boy" type cans).

Does anyone recall the year when Schlitz introduced the original "Tall Boy"? In Texas, it must have been about 1955, but introduction must have been based on the laws of individual states which also regulated the size of beer containers. In Texas, before the Tall Boy, beer (and ML) could only be sold in 12 ounce or 32 ounce containers. Was Micky's the first "Pull tab"?

By 1970 or so, the local Owens Illinois glass plant had converted its total production to disposable beer bottles, and the old returnables quickly disappeared. We completed our first "Convention Center" here in 1971. I was appointed to the Board by the Mayor. The Board's Chair was a former Mayor, soon to retire as general manager of the local "Owenized" glass plant. The Convention Center only sold beer in bottles (disposable) since the nearest can factory was up on the Southside of Fort Worth, next door to what had been anew Carling's Brewery, the first "continuous run" brewing operation in the US. Black Label was so disdained that the plant was soon paying exhorbitant sewer charges because it had to pump over-production down the drain. Quickly, Miller had purchased the brewery, retooled to normal brewing, and used it as a test plant for the new "Lite", which soon became the #1 seller in Texas, dethroning such perennial leaders as Lone Star and Pearl, and once quite popular Schlitz (brewed in Longview, TX, and only kept afloat here by its "Old Milwaukee" down-price brand, very popular on draught in the hundreds of ethnic "Lodge Halls" around the state).

For several years, the newly locally distributed Coors "Banquet" and Miller "Lite" were Texas market leaders. Between refrigerated shipment and the local distributor, Cowboy Hall of Famer, Bob Lily and his distribution manager, ex-Cowboy George Andre', Coors had a good run of popularity here, although local glass plant and General Tire workers were able to keep it out of some coolers because of its non-union production. While in college, we would haul whisk(e)y and vodka to dry counties in far West Texas for illegal sale, then fill up the trunk with Coors, available as far down as Lubbock, to carry back to Austin, where it wasa cult favorite. Of course, back then, "Shiner" was only popular in the few counties around the brewery in Shiner, disdained elsewhere, and "Corona" was the most downscale of Mexican beers, little more than a generic, found in cheap Mexican saloons/whorehouses and on one of the Mexican airlines.

Must’ve been around the same time Party Quarts came out. Different demographic back then. :D


http://i29.photobucket.com/albums/c2...64ndjgyr7s.jpg

I haven't had a Malt Liquor in years but in the day it was usually a six pack of Schlitz Malt liquor talls. I think it was about 3.50 for a six. That and five bucks to split a dime bag and we were set.