Your local hipster beer aficionado will hate this one because it is a gentle American Adjunct Beer that fits somewhere between 1980s Coors and present day Modelo Especial. Expect a thin and sweet but not too sweet brew that washes down like Corona, perfect for hot days, with minimal alcohol.
10 CommentsTags: american adjunct beer, beer, famosa
Hamm’s is one of those sorts of beers your dad used to drink back in the day especially if your dad was from Minnesota. My dad wasn’t; I just bought a thirty rack as it was cheap and fresher than the High Life, Coors, and Pabst Blue Ribbon as I am a dirty metalhead. If you are going to headbang, you might as well get a buzz. You’ll be caring more about the music, so what you are drinking needs to be cost-effective while tasting only decent. I banged out Obsessed by Cruelty and Persecution Mania while drinking Hamm’s for this review. The original CD version of sloppy, raw speed metal as drunk band for a beer review; Chris Witchhunter died of alcoholism. I drank six cans for this review to get full Hamm’s experience.
3 CommentsTags: american adjunct beer, beer, hamm's, lager, molsoncoors
Summer weather of almost a hundred degrees Fahrenheit soaking your shirt through with sweat just walking to your car calls for a different drink than something for sipping by the fireplace. Coors Light pours the color of a well-hydrated man’s pee. It smells like pale malt, corn, with a very slight hint of rotten banana. The tastes isn’t half bad though if you don’t consider it a beer. Coors Light tastes like carbonated water and sourdough bread and finishes with a slightly metallic, aspirin-like hint of hops. It’s better than Bud Light and isn’t horrible but is clearly just a mediocre beer diluted with seltzer. All of Coors’ macho mountain climber advertising is just to convince men that Coors Light is more masculine than a vodka soda. Nobody should ever buy this over Coors Banquet despite the discounts if you buy two tallboys at 7-11.
Quality: 2/5
Purchase: 2/5
Tags: american adjunct beer, beer, coors brewing company, coors light, lager
The original Coors that is usually advertised with “Banquet” in the title is the least dumbed down for carbonated corn syrup soda chugging couch potatoes of the big three American adjunct lager brews. Budweiser and Miller High Life both taste strongly of green apple while Coors is still clean tasting. The beer smells of bready pale malts, adjunct grains, and somewhat fruity yeast esters. Gulping it down, carbonation slams the tongue, followed by a chewy combination of pale malt and adjunct sweetness that in combination with the yeast flavors, resembles liquefied banana bread. Coors probably slightly stresses the yeast of their flagship Banquet beer to obtain that banana fruit ester while most American brewers, including the so-called craft ones, have terrible control over yeast flavors and generally opt for a neutral yeast profile in comparison to the ancient British and continental breweries. Coors Banquet finishes with a bitter hop finish, noticeable but balanced to not overpower the other ingredients. At well under twenty dollars for a rack of twenty-four cans across the country, Coors Banquet puts hipster and yuppie swill to shame for a balance of flavor and price.
Quality: *****/*****
Purchase: *****/*****
Tags: american adjunct beer, beer, coors, coors banquet, coors brewing company, lager, molsoncoors
Miller High Life, the apple juice of beer. The cheapest of the big three of Bud, Miller, and Coors, High Life is your typical heavily cost-reduced in both ingredients and production process mass market lager. The beer starts with beer flavor, then corn grits continuing into green apple-scented acetaldehyde, and finishing with a chemically bitter off-flavor resembling Bitter Apple brand dog deterrent rather than a proper dry or bitter hop finish. High Life might as well be carbonated apple juice with corn starch and detergent dumped in due to the cut-short lagering to stock urban liquor store shelves full. While the cheapest of the cheap outside of Game Day Ice, High Life is a beverage only suitable for sharing a swig with unwashed bipolar bums in bus shelters. Pabst Blue Ribbon, the watery favorite of Dennis Hopper and hipsters everywhere, is much more suited to the task of rehydration while sitting outside in ninety degree heat. High Life will only bring irritable bowels and unlike those bums, you won’t be comfortable squatting in the corner of a glass-enclosed bus stop. With food? High Life will make you hate yourself into not wanting to be like them: the homeless hammering you with their fists over refusing them change for crack, the larded alcoholics homebrewing IPAs, and the sweatshirted sports hooligans watching the NFL every Sunday while downing eight tallboys; High Life motivates teetotalling and fasting.
Quality: */*****
Purchase: ***/*****
Tags: american adjunct beer, beer, lager, miller, miller high life, sabmiller
Occasionally an artist’s work and the chemical inspiration thereof are inseparable and must be experienced together. Occult Burial’s recent ersatz, Hideous Obscure, was inspired by the sloppy, mid-Eighties Teutonic speed metal recordings of Sodom, Kreator, and Destruction which were all written and performed under the influence of a copious deluge of the cheapest Euro pilsner poured down their throats by the liter. This proto-underground beer metal was composed so as to be musically comprehensible to even the drunkest bar patrons still standing in the audience. Lacking even the melodic narratives of Motorhead standards, rocking rhythms, groovy powerchord progressions, and catchy choruses repeated ad nauseam over speed metal gallops and pick-up drum beats, hammering the basic riffs and leads into the heads of all the long-haired drunks tackling one another protected only by jean and leather jackets. To get into the garage practice space, inebriated mindset of these Canadian imitators of the imported speed metal of their fathers, I decided to pick up the Genesee-brewed as mandated by the Obama administration modern recreation of what those in my generation considered a northern, imported treat alongside the likes of St. Pauli Girl, Beck’s, and Guinness Extra: Labatt Blue.
3 CommentsTags: 2016, american adjunct beer, anhueser-busch inbev, beer, beer metal, canada, florida ice and farm company, German Speed Metal, hideous obscure, labatt blue, lager, Occult Burial, proto-underground, review, Speed Metal
My first thought when drinking this beer was: someone finally fixed Coors regular. This is what is called an adjunct beer, meaning that they use overstock of cheap grains like corn to brew the stuff, and keep other ingredients low, resulting in a sweet light beer with a warm fermented but not malty taste.
Personally, I like these, because they are all-day beers: simple but not simplified flavor, gentle and yet enough alcohol to keep interest, and thin / mild so that you can drink 38 of them before you decide to sing along with “Wonderwall.” Corona Familiar is no different, joining other “beach beers” like Caguama and Landshark Lager in my stable of tools for casual alcoholism.
Unlike its watery/uriney cousin Corona Especial, Corona Familiar is somewhat hearty but can still be a relatively hydrating and yet refreshingly intoxicating — at 6% ABV — beach beer. It has more of an squash-like fermented flavor, probably from the corn and rice used, but burns clean and leaves a pleasant mild intoxicating effect about appropriate for lawn chairs, sunny days, blue skies and ill-advised relations with women named Candi.
Unlike most beach beers, this one can be found in its 32oz size for under $3. That makes this wino beer for people who do not want to end up under bridges or in vans down by the river. While I admit violent bigotry against all Corona products for the name alone, this one is worth buying again.
****/*****
5 CommentsTags: american adjunct beer, beach beer, beeer, candi, corona, corona familiar
