Worst CHEAP beer?
 

I can remember 2 we would buy in college with the change from under the seat cushions.

1. Fort Schuyler - I think a case of 24 bottles was $2.99. This was 1975. I haven't seen it since I graduated a year later, but then I haven't looked for it either. :D

2. Canadian Ace - AFAIK, it was only sold in gallon bottles. The price was somewhere in the area of 50 cents. It was a passaround beer best enjoyed outdoors under a shady tree.

Both of these were bad; watery and bitter at the same time. You were guaranteed a headachy hangover in the morning and one of you would be puking sick before the night was over. These were the Ripple and Bali Hai of the beer world in the mid 70's.

3. Haffenreffer Malt Liquor - I think it came from Rhode ISland. It wasn't as cheap as the others, but the alcohol content per dollar made it a cheap buzz because you might split a six pack with someone. Only 16 oz bottles. Known locally as "Green Meanies" or "Green Death". Reputation well deserved. Possible ingredients included skunk pheromones.

Yours?

Watneys Red Barrel.
If you're English and of a certain age you'll understand.

Not from England
Possibly of a certain age
Always was puzzled by references to Watneys in Monty Python episodes

Care to enlighten me?

Watneys was just the name of a brewery here in the UK. It disapeared a while ago though. That takes me back!!

Schaefer Lager (the one beer to drink when you're drinking more than one)

Never felt good after drinking this, but its slogan is perhaps my favorite of all time...I guess this proves that good marketing goes a long way!

Schaefer was one of the beers my father bought in quart bottles when the "boys" came over for poker on Saturday night. His taste ran to better beers when he wasn't supplying it for others. I remember the slogan. My interpretation has always been, "after the first, you won't notice the crappy flavor."

Before I was drinking age, I remember it being used a lot in British comedy sketches. It was the sort of beer English holiday makers travelling on charter flights on package tours to Spanish resorts would demand. Pubs that provided it proved very popular with these visitors. Otherwise they'd complain for the entire trip how they couldn't get hold of it.

That sounds plausible based on what I remember. Eric Idle would go on and on about Watney's bleeding Red Barrel. I think he was complaining about British tourists who wanted to surround themselves with the familiar while on vacation in foreign parts.

Country Club 40s are pretty bad.

I once saw in a supermarket somewhere in Northern Cal a 40oz bottle, white label that literally just said "BEER" with nothing else.

It looked like a movie prop. It cost a whole $1. Wow.....

Keystone or Huber Bock.

Any happoshu in Japan, yuck. :mad:

duplicate

Beer Chang in Thailand - I've seldom had a hangover like the one after I got plowed on Chang.

And the Swiss Schützengarten which is the bane of my existence as a student in St. Gallen. Of course, since it's Swiss, Schützengarten is not really cheap, but it is the cheapest beer around here (in a generally expensive country).

Billy Beer. Dreadful...just dreadful.

Sincerely,


William R. Sanders
Customer Service Coordinator
Starwood Preferred Services

[email protected]

I suppose the best word to describe it was ubiquitous.
In an age before people cared about the quality of beer Red Barrel was the drink of choice for millions of peope and it was shite.
Flat,weak and gassy with no head.
Perhaps the most well known beer of the 60s and 70s, the much maligned Watneys Red Barrel, can trace its origins back to the 30s; in fact Watneys claimed 1931. Red Barrel was originally developed as an export beer that could be transported for long distances by sea.

Red Barrel, like all keg bitter, was filtered, to remove the yeast. It was then pasteurised and carbon dioxide was added. The "keg" was linked to a tank of carbon dioxide which effectively forced the beer up from the cellar. There was no need for the traditional long-handled beer pump. Keg was usually served chilled and was fizzy, with froth on the top.

Red Barrel was tentatively trialled at the East Sheen Lawn Tennis Club where Watneys' Master Brewer, Bert Hussey, was a member. He was convinced that once sampled it would be instantly popular. By the early sixties, Watneys were able to claim that it was the country's most popular keg bitter. It was also the first.

Red Barrel today is regarded with distain; in the 60s it was a premium product. Watneys negotiated a contract with BEA for Red Barrel to be supplied to passengers. Given that air travel, especially on scheduled flights, was still a privilege of the few, this must have been quite an achievement for Watneys and must say something about the quality image that the brand then had. Watneys were also able to sell Red Barrel at all bars on the new luxury liner, the QE2.

Colt 45, the nastiest beer alive,

Bud Light.

I mean, what's the point of this beer, really? It tastes horrible and there's so little alcohol in it, you need a case or two to get anywhere near a buzz. The worst of both worlds. Just give me a Captain Coke or two, please - or Bailey's on the rocks.

Aww, I'd rank Keystone (Light) as one of the better cheap beers!

I never understand why people think Bud Light has little alcohol in it. It's the same as relatively any other domestic light beer, 4.2% ABV.
For those keeping track, Guinness is 0.1% more in ABV.

Sportz Beer, or Lone Star (even though I drink it like water)

And that's funny about Schaeffer, my ex's dad drank that, and I could never turn it down when he offered, but I struggled through it.

Way back when in Vietnam War -- Carling Black Label.

Nowadays -- virtually all American non-premium beers such as Budweiser just as much as Bud Lite. Busch Bavarian and Old Milwaukee as well.

It's funny, I never tried Carling Black Label. But during the 16 years of my adult life that I didn't drink, Carling was my favorite non-alcoholic beer. Anyone tried both? Are they similar?

Here in PDX all the hipsters think its cool to drink PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon) it is nasty. In college we drank 8-BALL (OLD ENGLISH 800 ). But now in my late 30s I now more refined tastes... Coors Light !!!!

Lucky Lager

Heileman's Old Style

Stag.
Milwaulkee's Best.
The plain yellow or plain white can with the word "BEER" on it.

In high school, in Atlanta, we drank all the classics:
1) The Beast (Milwaukee's Best)
2) Nady Light, surpassed by Nady Ice (The fun family of Natural Light and Ice)
3) Johnny Three Legs, a local favorite that I believe is out of production (the can had a picture of a chicken with three "legs" and the story of said legs - don't ask)

Nothing, though, is worse then that damn Mickey's with the little green bottle.

PBR or Milwaukee's Beast.

:eek: :eek: :confused: :eek: :eek: :confused:

I love Heileman's Old Style!!! When my friends and I go to Wrigley to attend a Cubs game we let the Miller and Bud salesmen walk on by. The Old Style salesmen, however, are very quickly informed that they will do well to just return to see us should they want to sell out their tray. :D

The key to Old Style, like so many cheap beers, is not to let it get cold.

Back OT, the worst cheap beer is Miller High Life. Yes, Miller High Life is the correct answer to the question posed by this thread. Didn't y'all know that?

PS - Oh, and, Lone Star definitely does not belong in this thread!

Any Miller product...

Old E was definitely some nasty stuff. You could taste the charcoal filtering in every gulp. (Imagine pouring a cheap beer through a bag of Kingsford charcoal...you get the idea).
My nomination comes from my high school years. Malt Duck. It came in different flavors, (I clearly recall apple). Super sweet malt liquour. Nasty, nasty stuff. But it got you seriously zooted. (Late 70's term).

For those special times when the ladies were present, we would crack open some bottle of Champale. Once again, super sweet...

And if it was a really good nite, Riunite or Canei was purchased.

Just the thinking of the brain cells that I destroyed consuming this swill makes me want to hurl...

For those in the NY area may recall the Piels brand especially Piels Light. A cheap beer favored by my college buddies back in the 80's. The worst part probably was not the taste of the beer but rather the air quality for those around you shortly after consuming the beer.

Riunite with ice...that's nice.

Canei?? Yes you can :D

That may have been Ralph's ( Cal Supermarket) plain wrap, all of there generic products were in a white container with the product name in blue.
Not just beer but Scotch, Tequila, etc. along with grocery items. And yes it was used on lots of tv shows and movies.

As for lousy cheap beer I vote for Lucky Lager, it was 2.49 a 12 pack when I was in college, it came in bottles though and had a concentration type puzzle under the cap. The beer itself wasn't that bad but the hangovers from it were horrendous

I always thought there were two from "back in the day" that were pretty awful....Red White & Blue and Buckhorn (from Pabst and Hamms respectively). Milwaukee's best is another that I always considered nasty, but which still survives. And for some reason, I could never get into Miller Lite, although I like MGD and MGD lite (at least for big-mass marketed stuff).

Three that were trashed here earlier, I always thought were actually pretty good....

Watney's Red Barrel....nothing special in the bottled version but a great draft. I was really sad to see them go under.

Stag...before it got "dumbed down", this had a unique, crisp "dryness" that I liked. A very flavorful "blue collar" brew.

Carling Black Label....A little on the sweet side, but usually very drinkable.
(Not to be confused with Carling Red Cap, which was truly great stuff...especially the Canadian version).

My Two Cents
 

As a Notre Dame alum, I am an expert on cheap, nasty tasting beer.

Buckhorn would have to be at the top of the list. So would something called "Hi-Brau" (which tasted like rotten potato peels). The 1970s formula for Old Milwaukee was pretty nasty also.

There was a California based beer called Brew 102 which was right down there in the sewer with Buckhorn and Hi-Brau.

On the good tasting side, Falstaff was OK (ND's late and lamented Senior Bar served it for a quarter a draft).

When I moved to Washington in 1976, a liquor store on Connecticut Avenue near my apartment sold something called Old German by the case of 24 - 12 oz. stubby bottles for $2.99 (bus fare in DC was 30 cents per ride back then, to put perspective on the price). Old German was put out by Yuengling's, which is a quality outfit--they have since sold the brand to the brewers of Iron City, and are concentrating on quality popularly priced brews like Traditional Lager and Black & Tan.

My favorite cheap beer today is Genesee Cream Ale, which you can find around for as low as $10.99 per 30 pack.

I love calling Bud Light "Diet Budweiser" - always makes the bartender pause a second while he/she figures out what the hell i've said.

Glad to see someone mention Red White and Blue, it was terrible.
Others:
Wiedemann (best when frozen and consumed by someone else)
Goebel
Harley Davidson Beer (I don't know who made it)

On the good tasting side, Falstaff was OK


Ah yes...."Fall-flat". The choicest product of the brewer's art. And not bad at all, considering how cheap the stuff usually was.

About 16 years or so ago, we would get beer called Home Beer. Simple, white label that said "Home"- I think it was $6 for a case of bottles. The beer distributor that we got it from also gave cash for empty cans, so we'd save all of the empty cans from various parties and crush them. Periodically, we'd throw a rock in the can before crushing it to boost the weight (they paid by the pound). We would get a couple dollars each time, so effectively our case was about $2 or $3. I think I am still hungover 16 years later!

A decade ago both Carling and Molson reformulated their excellent beers to appeal to a wider market and ... made them taste more like Bud. Very strange strategy, no idea how well it worked for them (in either gaining market share or reducing their production costs), but I stopped drinking them as they lost a lot of taste. Blandness does seem to be a desired characteristic in mass-market beers (usually called "easy drinking", as in water).

Old Milwaukee in a can tastes like the can.

And don't get me started on Schlitz.