The third round of the Retro Beer Challenge featured beers from the upper Great Lakes region: Schlitz, Miller High Life, and Stroh's. (Damn you, plethora of Wisconsin brews screwing up our brackets!) There was very little difference in these three as they were poured -- the tasting produced the following notes:
Beer #1 smelled "like a hair salon", burnt and plasticky, and tasted slightly malty with not much of a hop bite.
There "wasn't much going on" with Beer #2; it smelled slightly sulfury, "like someone threw an egg into the brewkettle". An "agreeable" beer, Jim noted that he finished his sample -- a rarity on this day.
Beer #3 smelled "like someone has dogs in their house", and tasted "like cat poo". Flat and vinegary, this one was panned.
We were split on the rankings for this beer; we all picked Schlitz to move on to the second round, and Miller High Life and Stroh's tied for second place. Fitting, since adorning our table was a vintage Schlitz pitcher that Gina got from her parents.
Speaking of Schlitz, a look at their website shows that they're still using the marketing slogan "Go for the Gusto". Any of our dear readers want to explain just what the hell that means?
Gina did a little research, and apparently going for the gusto means spending time with the grandkids, not spending money on the grandkids.
ReplyDeleteI found it odd that they were marketing to a dwindling target market - and I suspect they're just waiting for their customers to die so they can eliminate another beer from that overdeveloped family.
I'm a little bit surprised. I really thought that Miller High Life would have take this bracket.
ReplyDeleteI thought that Miller High Life was one of the worst beers of the twelve. Awful.
ReplyDelete(Honestly, I'm not sure I even care about the answer to this question but...)
ReplyDeleteWhile it seems most likely that beer #2 is Schlitz, you didn't actually identify each of the beers.
Since you guys moved them on, maybe I wasn't so wrong to think that Schlitz tasted better than other cheepo beer as a poor-ass grad student. At least it tasting like something even if it wasn't very good.
ooh, you're right, CorrND. Sorry about that. I'll tweak the post to identify which beer was which.
ReplyDelete