The "I'd nevervdrink that if it were ALL that was available" thread

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Gin can be a bit of an acquired taste. It's that resiny flavor many people don't like on their first few encounters. As with many things, give it a few tries, it may grow on you. Have you tried a Gin Martini?


I'm with you, I love Gin, too.
Now, did you really like it the first time you had it? Or did desperation ("the only thing around") play a factor?

I "inherited" someone's liquor cabinet. At some point I "forced myself" to drink mint liquor.
It still may be best in ice cream with dark chocolate poured over it.
I learned to like both Gin and Olympia at a friend's frat party I went to many years ago. He bought the cheapest liquor and keg he could. Nothing else there. And they only had limes, no lemons. So we did lime drop shots. At least we didn't have to substitute salt for sugar.
 
Widmer Hefeweizen.
Not that the flavor is bad.
I just had to much of it once when I was younger and learned one of the reasons why German brewers say "Weißbier, Scheißbier". Can't get the association out of my head...just don't enjoy it anymore.
 
Gin can be a bit of an acquired taste. It's that resiny flavor many people don't like on their first few encounters. As with many things, give it a few tries, it may grow on you. Have you tried a Gin Martini?


I'm with you, I love Gin, too.
Now, did you really like it the first time you had it? Or did desperation ("the only thing around") play a factor?

I "inherited" someone's liquor cabinet. At some point I "forced myself" to drink mint liquor.
It still may be best in ice cream with dark chocolate poured over it.
Redundant statement. Martini = Gin. There is no other legit martini, just posers served in a Martini glass.
 
While I like some of them, I’ve had a few Sours that were too sour for me able to finish, and I have yet to have a Milkshake IPA that I find even remotely palatable.
 
Leffe blonde. I used to really like that beer but last few times I tried it, there was a sickeningly sweet artificial vanilla flavor that very nearly triggered my gag reflex. And anything from Budweiser.
 
Gueze. Makes me wretch. My wife called it dirty sock beer.

I think a good geuze is one of life's greatest joys - but I get how one might hate it. I guess most people feel strongly about this style.
 
I’d choose black label over Bud. There‘s something about the flavor of Bud I have never liked.
I agree with your assessment on Pubwriser, I believe it is the flavor, or lack of, that totally turns me off. However back in the 80s I visited their breweries in St Louis and Tampa and the samples they gave us were actually good.
 
The two that immediately come to mind as absolutely undrinkable are PBR and Heineken. I have no problem with cheap beers - I'll drink Coors Light or Miller, and I'm known to bring a 30pack of Milwaukee's Best Light with me to cookouts. But PBR and Heineken taste like they were either aged on zinc-coated framing nails, or they ran out of aluminum cans and used rusty old tin soup cans.

On the other hand, I've only tried maybe a half-dozen non-alcoholic beers in my lifetime, and Heineken 0.0 was by far the best one.
 
The two that immediately come to mind as absolutely undrinkable are PBR and Heineken. I have no problem with cheap beers - I'll drink Coors Light or Miller, and I'm known to bring a 30pack of Milwaukee's Best Light with me to cookouts. But PBR and Heineken taste like they were either aged on zinc-coated framing nails, or they ran out of aluminum cans and used rusty old tin soup cans.

On the other hand, I've only tried maybe a half-dozen non-alcoholic beers in my lifetime, and Heineken 0.0 was by far the best one.

Have you had Heineken in The Netherlands, Amsterdam? It is a fantastic beer over there on draft.
 
Have you had Heineken in The Netherlands, Amsterdam? It is a fantastic beer over there on draft.
This is the thing with green and clear bottles and shipping beer long distances. I’d say 9 out of 10 Heinekens we get in the US are skunk. The other one is Corona. Bars put a lime on top of the Corona bottle when they serve it and people drink it with the lime to try to cover up the skunk flavor. If I want that kind of beer I buy Landshark. Basically the same thing and I’ve never had a skunky Landshark. Because its made much closer and is always fresher when I get it.

Then there’s the question of where these beers are actually made. All of our Heineken might not be coming from Holland, and all of our Corona might not be coming from Mexico. All of our Fosters, for example, does not come from Australia. Fosters beer for the US is contract brewed by Molson in Canada.
 
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This is the thing with green and clear bottles and shipping beer long distances. I’d say 9 out of 10 Heinekens we get in the US are skunk. The other one is Corona. Bars put a lime on top of the Corona bottle when they serve it and people drink it with the lime to try to cover up the skunk flavor. If I want that kind of beer I buy Landshark. Basically the same thing and I’ve never had a skunky Landshark. Because its made much closer and is always fresher when I get it.

Then there’s the question of where these beers are actually made. All of our Heineken might not be coming from Holland, and all of our Corona might not be coming from Mexico. All of our Fosters, for example, does not come from Australia. Fosters beer for the US is contract brewed by Molson in Canada.

The Heineken sold in North Texas all comes from Amsterdam. I only buy cans. If you get a fresh example, it is quite good.
 
Mickey’s. Makes me gag just to type it. And Rolling Rock…ugh.
Rolling Rock wasn’t bad when it was made in Latrobe, PA. The brand was acquired by AB a few years ago and now the bottles say St. Louis Mo and its just another Bud brand. Through some kind of legalese they still have the paragraph on the bottle that mentions the glass lined tanks and it could appear to the unknowing that the beer is still being made in Latrobe. Its almost false advertising.
 
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The two that immediately come to mind as absolutely undrinkable are PBR and Heineken. I have no problem with cheap beers - I'll drink Coors Light or Miller, and I'm known to bring a 30pack of Milwaukee's Best Light with me to cookouts. But PBR and Heineken taste like they were either aged on zinc-coated framing nails, or they ran out of aluminum cans and used rusty old tin soup cans.

On the other hand, I've only tried maybe a half-dozen non-alcoholic beers in my lifetime, and Heineken 0.0 was by far the best one.
Hah! Youngsters.....

Back in the day, BEFORE them new fangled fancy 'aluminum' cans, real men drank from STEEL cans. When you "crushed one" it actually meant something. Now you young whipper snappers try to display yur manhood and impress the lady folk by squeezing some pre-dimpled 'luminum that my grandson (who's not even "due" till next week) could smash while he's a'nursin'.

If it didn't taste like rusty nails, there'd have been no reason for them effeminate "she-males" to invent bottled beer. It's called "Iron City" for a reason!
 
On a related note, who remembers the infamous Coors “push button” cans?

Edit: A little background on beer can developmemt
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Where I'm from in Canada there's a kind of beer that only teenagers drink to get drunk called Wildcat. I tried it a few times when I was a teenager when it used to be 8% ABV. Now I think it's 6% or something. Me and my friends all thought it tasted horrible, but had good times the few times we drank it.
 
Pumpkin spice Beers. I haven't had one I liked, and most of my friends feel the same. A couple years ago I had a big fridge full of beers left over from a beer tasting event. Everything went fast except the pumpkin stuff - it was there till the end.
 
Pumpkin spice Beers. I haven't had one I liked, and most of my friends feel the same. A couple years ago I had a big fridge full of beers left over from a beer tasting event. Everything went fast except the pumpkin stuff - it was there till the end.
I've had some that were drinkable, but I've never actually had a pumpkin beer I really liked. On the other hand I've had some really delicious pumpkin ciders that I seek out every year.
 
Keystone Ice for me. (I might have read that they quit making it anyway.) Don't know why, but that beer always gave me an instant headache.
 
Agreed on the green glass, I’m to the point where I don’t even consider it any more. Cans are great, I’m really liking the 500ml / 16.9 oz cans being used by Euro brewers and others. Also there are variations in brown glass, some are lighter color than others and I’ve detected skunk in lighter brown glass beers. I do appreciate that Pilsner Urquell abandoned the green glass. I wish Grolsh would take their lead and return to their brown glass bottles. The 500 ml Weihenstephaner bottles are superb, as are any bottles used by Ayinger, these are plenty dark enough. I save these bottles for my own bottled batches, they are great quality.

The worse part of all this are those store beer coolers that still use beer-skunking UV fluorescent light. Some have thankfully been converted to LED’s, but many still use old fluorescent technology. How many of you would drink a six pack of green-bottled beer stored 6 inches from a 40-watt fluorescent light? !!!

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I, too, have a general rule to not drink anything that comes in green bottles. My exception is Jameson Irish Whiskey. No beer in clear bottles except Modelo Especial.
 
1. Any of the "retro" brands of mass-produced lager. Schlitz, Old Style, PBR, Grain Belt, Hamm's, etc. And especially Stroh's, which I hate with the fiery passion of a thousand suns.
2. Any of the mass-produced budget beers. Keystone, Busch Light, Milwaukee's Best, et al.
3. Any beer described as "dank," "funky," "horse blanket," etc. The flavor of a month-old basket of dirty laundry does not belong in anything made for human consumption.
 
Agreed on the green glass, I’m to the point where I don’t even consider it any more. Cans are great, I’m really liking the 500ml / 16.9 oz cans being used by Euro brewers and others. Also there are variations in brown glass, some are lighter color than others and I’ve detected skunk in lighter brown glass beers. I do appreciate that Pilsner Urquell abandoned the green glass. I wish Grolsh would take their lead and return to their brown glass bottles. The 500 ml Weihenstephaner bottles are superb, as are any bottles used by Ayinger, these are plenty dark enough. I save these bottles for my own bottled batches, they are great quality.

The worse part of all this are those store beer coolers that still use beer-skunking UV fluorescent light. Some have thankfully been converted to LED’s, but many still use old fluorescent technology. How many of you would drink a six pack of green-bottled beer stored 6 inches from a 40-watt fluorescent light? !!!

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I had no idea that beer could degrade so much after a liqour store has bought it due to improper storeage. Now that I think of it though I have tasted skunk in a beer that normally tastes great to me, so this explains that!
 
The trouble with a lot of the beers in clear or green bottles, is that those bottles are often trademark/trade dress. Corona and Newcastle will never change their clear bottles, nor will Heineken, Grolsch, etc. change their green ones. A few, like Miller High Life, use a modified hop extract, so the skunk precursors are not present. But for die-hard Corona drinkers, that skunky flavor is a feature, not a bug.

The first time I had Heineken from a can in Europe, I couldn't believe I was drinking the same beer.

If I walk into a liquor store with bright fluorescent lighting (especially if it's lighting the coolers), I'll try to buy canned beers, or bottled beers in enclosed cartons. Even amber bottles let in some UV, and over time, those can get skunked. And if you are unfortunate enough to choose the sixer that's been sitting on the shelves a while, you'll be enjoying some Pepe Le Pew brew.
 
I'm gonna come out and say I don't think a bit of lightstruck flavour is necessarily all bad. I know it is usually denoted an off-flavour, but that doesn't really say much: phenols are an off-flavour in a pilsner, but not in a Hefeweizen. It's only with regard to a specific intent that you can say if something is "off".

Of course the breweries know how they could avoid that marijuana-like dankness, and I don't think it's only a matter of maintaining the appearance that they chose not to, but because it provides a sort of trademark flavour that sets them apart from others. You take the skunk, you change the product entirely and lose the signature flavour.
 

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