2023 SWILL-OFF

Summer Swill-Off, July 2023 – Cheap Beer

Its July and that can only mean one thing. It’s swill off time again! The swill-off is an annual club event where we pick a beer category, buy some commercial examples and then taste and pick the best in the lot. In the past we done things like American macro beer, lite beer, Asian beer, Eurotrash, Mexican beer and 40-ounce bottled beer. This year’s theme was cheap beer, ideally under $6 a six pack. Judging was done using our standard five finger scoring system with 1 being the lowest. Sadly, Pat was not available to provide his usual eloquent, entertaining and informative summary so I’ll do my best to fill his shoes.

President Eli started off the night by putting on some 70s music. Why 70s music you ask? Nobody knows. Rob got us started by declaring “Let’s get this over with” and the tasting began. Without further ado, here’s what we thought, shown in the order they were tasted:

• Josephsbrau Hefeweizen (Trader Joe’s house brand) – banana forward, no clove, not bad for the style, score 2.7 fingers
• Peroni – sulfur, tastes better than it smells. Rob R brought this one as swill since he got it for free and it’s been in the refrigerator for two years, not necessarily because it fit the cheap beer category. That doesn’t matter, it wasn’t a contender, score 1.4 fingers
• Bud Lite Lime – exactly as advertised – lime, refreshing after the Peroni, not too bad, not offensive, bad in principle, won’t be able to say I never had Bud Lite Lime again. Rob R also brought this one as swill since he got it for free from his son’s tacklebox. It got a better score than the Peroni but still not a contender, score 2.1 fingers
• Natural Light – excellent clarity, drinkable beer (for the price point), like going to my grandparents, great for rinsing out my glass, score 2.2 fingers
• Natural Ice – darker and higher ABV than the light, our two cans were very different, one had to have gone bad, except for President Eli, Natty Light is the clear winner of the two (maybe because he brought it?), score 1.5 fingers
• Busch – right up there with Natty Light and…. This was the first beer where nobody said anything bad about it (maybe they’re getting tired?), score 1.9 fingers
• Miller High Life (served a tad warm) – crazy clear, starting to taste like beer, Eli is still pushing the Natural Ice, score 2.9 fingers
• Pabst Blue Ribbon – it’s time for the heavy hitters, sweeter and more body than the others, score 3.0 fingers
• Narragansett – Weird flavor, lots of debate if this is better than PBR (not sure why), Rob talked tough about the beer but didn’t back it up with his vote, score 2.2 fingers
• Sam Adams Boston Lager – terrible, musty, wow that’s oxidized, I don’t taste oxidation. In fairness to Sam Adams, Rob found this beer on the $1 shelf and it was over a year old, score 1.7 fingers

That makes the two highest rated beers PBR and Miller. Given our somewhat haphazard rating system, someone (ok, it was me) decided we should do a run-off between these two to determine the ultimate winner. It must not have been a popular decision as this was when the “we want Pack back” chats began. After a little persuasion and a final vote, Miller High Life came out on by a score of 6 to 4. It’s a bit fascinating that every time Miller gets entered into the swill-off, it wins. That should tell us something.

By now the crowd was starting to get nasty (remember the chants for Pat?) so the swill off was officially declared over. Maybe there is such a thing as too much swill.

But wait, there is more. What about the cost? Were all the beers really cheap? And does cost affect the results? Let’s take a look. First, let’s discount the swill that doesn’t really fit the category (ie, Peroni, Bud Lite Lime and year-old Sam Adams) and see what we have left:

Not surprisingly the most expensive beer was our top pick. And while Brian said the Miller was the cheapest beer he could find in Cambridge at $4/bottle (which isn’t hard to believe), it might not 100% qualify for the cheap beer category, especially when 6 packs run for a whopping $10.99 at Total Wine. If we were to use this reasoning and eliminate the Miller, PBR becomes the best of the cheap beers! And at 7.3¢/ounce for a 4.8% ABV beer, PBR in 16-ounce cans appears to your best buzz for the buck as well. Maybe that run off vote was a waste of time after all.

I know, you can’t wait till we do this again next year, Bill