Tasting Some Inexpensive Beers During the Super Bowl

by Drew Kaplan · Published February 10, 2016 · Updated February 12, 2016

The lineup of our cheap beer tasting

While much of my recent experience with drinking beer has been with craft beer, I figured I also wanted to experience some of the beers that get commonly consumed in America. This past Sunday for the Super Bowl, I invited people over to bring some cheap beers to get a better sense of what is out there.

Starting off with Busch (4.3% ABV), an American adjunct lager, I noticed it had a pleasant, nice corn nose with a smooth, pleasant on the palate, followed by a pleasant finish. Next up was Pabst Blue Ribbon (5% ABV), an American adjunct lager, which had a similar nose as the previous beer, but it had a more robust flavor on the palate. Following that, we then drank Miller High Life (5% ABV), an American adjunct lager, which tasted pretty similarly to the first two, except that it was noticeably more carbonated than them.

Pabst Blue Ribbon was my favorite amongst the beers

We then moved on to a couple of beers packaged in green bottles. We began with Beck’s (4.9% ABV), a German-style pilsner, which kind of tasted similar to the first few beers, yet it had some skunkiness to it. We then drank Mickey’s (5.8%), a malt liquor, which was not as skunky-tasting, but nevertheless roughly similar in flavor, with more of a malty body than the first few beers.

Natural Ice was surprisingly strong

We then moved on to Natural Ice (5.9% ABV), an American adjunct lager, which was similar to the first three beers in the way that the corn body was noticeable, yet it also tasted smoother and stronger than the first three beers. We then finished up with Tecate (4.5%), an [North] American adjunct lager, which was a pleasant adjunct lager.

I am glad we did that gathering of macrobrews on Super Bowl Sunday. As much as it would have been nice to have consumed craft beer during the Super Bowl, there is something fittingly appropriate to drinking non-craft beer during the game. In the end, I was surprised how strong and strong-tasting the Natural Ice was, although my favorite beer was Pabst Blue Ribbon, with it’s pleasant, yet robust flavor. It was very easily drinkable and somewhat light – it’s definitely an enjoyable watching-football beer to drink!

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