I try to avoid taking a lot of things too seriously in life, and I'll include beer on that list. I absolutely love beer and I've had an absolute blast over the past year and a half chronicling the beers I've been fortunate enough to try. But if I let something like my quest to try the Top 100 Beers become the sole purpose of my life, I feel like it would lose the "fun" element. As a resolution of sorts for the new year, I'm going to try to make this blog a bit more fun. The quest for the Top 100 Beers will carry on as normal, but I've also decided to try and find the worst beer possible. After all, it's tough to appreciate great beer unless you've had truly bad beer.
As I stated in my Best/Worst Beers of 2011 post, Kennebunkport IPA was the worst beer I had ever had. A lot of people who had tried the beer agreed that it was abominable, but few I talked to would go as far as to say it was the worst out there. My interest was piqued. Is it possible that a beer could be worse than Kennebunkport IPA? Could I possibly wrap my mind around that concept?
So I set about to see what people were saying was actually the worst beer out there. In the past few months, there have been multiple threads on the beeradvocate.com forum in which people have asked the beeradvocate community what the worst beer out there is. If we go purely by reviews on beeradvocate.com, the two worst beers in the world are Corona Light and Michelob Ultra. But these weren't even mentioned in the forum. The two beers that I noticed pop up a ton were Anheuser Busch's Wild Blue and a beer called Original C Cave Creek Chili Beer. I was able to pick both of them up and decided to try Wild Blue first.
When I poured Wild Blue, I could only think one thing: "Uh oh." The beer pours a dense purple color with a thin but incredibly creamy light purple head (think sour cream with lavender colored food coloring mixed in). The color of the beer reminded more of Grape Crush than of any other beer I'd ever seen. I had a feeling before I even took a whiff of this one that it was going to be a truly memorable experience.
How can I possibly describe the smell of Wild Blue? Imagine, if you will, taking blueberry flavored cotton candy, grape cough syrup and dog vomit and then mixing all of that into a pitcher of Welch's Grape Juice, then pouring a frosty glass of that and taking a whiff. That's pretty much what Wild Blue smells like. It's the most sickeningly sweet concoction I think I've ever smelled. Whatever "blueberry" smell is in it is so overwhelmingly artificial that it literally makes my stomach churn to remember it. Let's move on.
I was pretty sure that Wild Blue was going to be worse than Kennebunkport IPA before I took a sip. In fact, the smell scared me so badly that I was afraid to take a sip. I finally mustered up all the courage I could, closed my eyes and took a small mouthful. Holy God. The taste is eerily similar to grape cough syrup with an identical consistency. Tucked not so subtly behind the cough syrup flavor are big artificial blueberry notes along with some hints of grain, stale bread and A.B.C. (already been chewed) blueberry scones. There's a strange sourness that lingers in your mouth long after the beer has been swallowed; a reminder of what an idiot you are for drinking Wild Blue. I downed a few sips of this cold, let my friend try a sip (the look on his face was priceless), tried to get my girlfriend to try it (she refused), and then sat pondering the hideous goop in my glass for about an hour before trying it one last time, nearly vomiting, and then dumping it down the drain.
Wild Blue is unquestionably worse than Kennebunkport IPA. I thought KBC IPA would be tough to beat, but it turns out it wasn't even close. My hunt for the worst beer is off to a good start. I can't imagine anything topping Wild Blue, but we'll just have to see. Brace yourselves.
Final Grade: F
Top 100 Beers Tasted: 35
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