Drinking It All: #12 Milwaukee’s Best Tallboy

Drinking It All is a document of my attempt to try every beer in circulation. It’s a Herculean and tragic attempt at best. But it’s the means, not the end that counts here.

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Over the next few Drinking It All posts, I’m going to take a little detour from the IPAs and other craft beers that are likely to cost six or more dollars a sixpack. I invite you to come with me and wander around the seventh circle of beer world (I won’t call it hell–it is still beer) and try some beers you might not have had since the last frat party you went to in college that wasn’t all that fun and made you feel awkward and ready to go. These are beers that don’t usually get much love. But they are still beers–or what we’ll call beers.

big and beastly

We’ll start with an old favorite and oft maligned beer called Milwaukee’s Best. Hereafter called by it’s more famous nickname: Beast (this one is of the red variety).

Beast is made by Miller Brewing and is basically Miller Lite’s little cost-effective cousin. (I’ve been told that the only real difference in the two is the amount of marketing done for Miller Lite–discuss.) It tastes fairly similar to Miller Lite. Maybe a bit hairier. Which is to say that it tastes about like any of the big domestic lagers: little to no hops, just enough barley/grain/rice to resemble beer, and water. This beer is best when it comes out of an ice chest on a hot day and is cheap or free.

This description can easily be read as a negative one; however, I mean it in the best way. Beast is a beer that I remember drinking in college. It was cheap–I was poor, it tasted like beer and had alcohol–I was a fan of both, and it was generally frowned upon by my friends who drank Bud Light religiously–nobody’d steal it at parties. So maybe it’s nostalgia more than anything that has convinced me that this beer is not that bad, but I remain conviced that it’s just not as bad as people think. It’s good when going to the beach, being on a boat, eating crawfish, damn near anything that happens outside in the sun and is ice chest-friendly.

It would be unfair to hold this beer, or any of the big domestic little cousins, up to the same standard as, say, a Sam Adams seasonal. These are beers that have a specific purpose, and usually consumer, that, I think, makes it a little easier to value them for what they are. The same as you wouldn’t wear dress shoes to play basketball or running shoes to a job interview, you’d not drink Beast in the same situations as you would Sam Adams. Or maybe you would, but the exception doesn’t negate the analogy.

Thumbs up or thumbs down? Up, if the situation demands it.

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