Bad Beer: Wild Blue Blueberry Lager

You may recall that I previously debated whether or not to blog about bad beer. Debate is over. I'm ready to do it. All questions vacated my mind after I tasted this baddie.

Warning: Contains bad beer.

I had a "Wild Blue" blueberry lager a couple weeks ago, and it was definitively the worst beer I've ever had. Hands down. No joke. I despised it. It tasted like bubbly cough syrup. The only good thing about it was the 8% ABV, but even that didn't matter because I dumped it after I finished about 1/4 of the pint. I was tempted to dump it after only a few sips, but I wanted to give it a fair shake. I thought maybe it just didn't leave a good first impression but would be better after you got to know it. Nope. The first blueberry beer I've ever tried is a bust.

This drain-fodder was brought to us by the ubiquitous (and some would say, evil) Anheuser-Busch (ABInBev). While I don't partake of macro-brewery offerings very often, I do not discriminate and choose beer on that basis. I am always willing to try any beer and judge it based on the at-least-somewhat-objective characteristics of appearance, smell, taste, and mouthfeel. As a matter of fact, I had fairly decent remarks for ABInBev's Shock Top in my May 10, 2011 review.

Via Google+, someone observed that the label appears to show a dog...um, excreting the blueberry and that explains the taste. I think the graphic is supposed to be a depiction of a dog kicking a blueberry, but I prefer the former explanation because it does make sense.

• BeerAdvocate.com users didn't like it. They rated it 52/100, and the Brothers gave it a dismal 42/100.
• RateBeer.com users didn't like it even more. An overall rating of 9/100 is...pretty shabby.
• Untappd.com users rated it 3.5/5.0 bottle caps [1]. I gave it 0.5 because Untappd wouldn't let me give it a 0.

I'm hoping that this is an isolated incidence of bad beer and that it's not because it was blueberry. In fact, I have a follow-up to try in the near future: Blue Point Blueberry Ale. It's in the fridge now, so we'll see!

On one hand, I hope that I am never able to create a series of posts around the topic of bad beer. There are too many great-tasting beers in this world to waste time one the bad beers. On the other hand, I wouldn't mind as much because I would be able to warn you all not to waste your time! We'll see how the cookie crumbles. Prost!


Footnotes:
[1] I think this shows a demographic difference between Untappd users and BA / RB users. Perhaps BA / RB users, on the whole, are more into craft beer than Untappd users.