Worst commercial beer

[shepp]

It may be because most bottled beers are not live but pasturised and filtered, and you prefer cask/bottle conditioned. There's a recent thread discussing this http://www.thehomebrewforum.co.uk/showthread.php?t=68119

I also wonder how travel effects beer. Does our HB tastes better than pub offerings because it only travels a few yard around our home from FV to glass? Wheras commercial beer can travel hundreds of miles. Does yeast not like to go far?

Yes very good points?
Much like people say pasteurised milk is no comparison in flavour to unpasteurised.
There could also be issues with tinkering to increase profits.
10 min shorter boil here, some sugar added there, thinking nobody will notice. But the small changes add up when put together.

 

[MyQul]

I generally try not to look at the abv of a beer until I'm drinking, but when I last went to the GBBF ~3 years ago it didn't matter which beer I had, they all tasted the same. I think low abv beer is harder to make than high abv beer. It can be really difficult getting good body and flavour with such little malt.

I think your right, that it's hard to make lower gravity beers. I think commercial brewers get a tax break if the beer is a low abv% (perhaps around 3%, I think I read) but you never see any in the pub - probably because it so difficult to brew a beer people will like and buy

 

[marlon]

Anything Shepherds Neame otherwise known as S--t and Scream.

+1. Know where you're coming from. It does vary though, depends on the pub's cellar I think. A good pint of **** & Scream is quite drinkable......finding a good pint is the hard part..!
If you ever get down to Faversham, (close to the brewery), try the 'Sun Inn' or the 'Anchor' you might be pleasantly surprised. It'll definitely taste like a different beer, whatever you choose.

 

[Linalmeemow]

A lot of the Shepherd Neame beers are pretty poor, but I do quite like their Double Stout and IPA in bottles. Spitfire and Bishop's Finger are awful though, really good examples of how bland beer can be.

SN have also managed to take Asahi Super Dry (a very bad Japanese lager) and make it worse which is a feat in itself.

 

[shepp]

+1. Know where you're coming from. It does vary though, depends on the pub's cellar I think. A good pint of **** & Scream is quite drinkable......finding a good pint is the hard part..!
If you ever get down to Faversham, (close to the brewery), try the 'Ship Inn' or the 'Anchor' you might be pleasantly surprised. It'll definitely taste like a different beer, whatever you choose.

I referring more to bottles than pump, I've had a few S&S offerings in pubs and although quite uninspiring, they were drinkable.

I'll look out for those pubs if in the area, thanks.

 

[Gerryjo]

A lot of the Shepherd Neame beers are pretty poor, but I do quite like their Double Stout and IPA in bottles. Spitfire and Bishop's Finger are awful though, really good examples of how bland beer can be.

SN have also managed to take Asahi Super Dry (a very bad Japanese lager) and make it worse which is a feat in itself.

Funny thing you mention Asashi as I had a bottle a few weeks ago and it's my first and last...

Sent from my ALE-L21

 

[serum]

Red stripe is really nasty, especially if it gets warm. I find bottled doom bar hard to drink too, it's really buttery but with very little else.

 

[Bodleigh Head]

Red stripe is really nasty, especially if it gets warm. I find bottled doom bar hard to drink too, it's really buttery but with very little else.

Red Stripe ... definitely pish. Doom Bar ... even on draught it is a total non-event. And the worst craft beer I have drunk recently, I think it was Crispy Pig from the Hunter's Brewery, it was from the Hunter's Brewery, I remember that ... tasted as though it had been conditioned in a cider cask ... lots of tannin and unpleasant.

 

[trueblue]

Worse beers of all time has to be the old Watney stable, starlight bitter, special bitter and Watneys red. All three insipid weak bland p*ss water. If CAMRA achieved one thing in it's time it was to rid the world of that crap.

These days it has to be John Smiths, for description see above. Several years back I went to a family party at a rugby club and it was the only beer available, along with one of the usual crap lagers, so I bought a pint. Could not finish it so moved on to wine.

 

[Pfeffer]

Distelhäuser pilsner is simply apalling. The same goes for Jupiler in my eyes, however they have a great marketing team these days. It used to be a cheap B brand for the working folk (like Crystal which actually is drinkable), but about 10 years ago they went from almost dead to one of the best selling beer by agressive manly man commercial campaigns, sponsoring football leagues etc. And somehow people now love to drink it here.

 

[ollieollie]

I don't mind a shepherds neame master brew. I would rather drink macerated **** than drink carling which is the drink of choice in the crap pubs in the hole i live in

:-(

 

[beechwood]

skol....truly terrible stuff. only tried it once because someone said it was nice. :-? yellow fizzy water

 

[MyQul]

Red stripe is really nasty, especially if it gets warm. I find bottled doom bar hard to drink too, it's really buttery but with very little else.

I think that may be bacause (I read on another forum) Doombar is fermented really warm like 23C/24C or something like that

 

[MyQul]

I quite like shepard neames yeast. I cultured it up from a bottle of something or other and used it a few times before I accidently stressed it out by massively overpitching

 

[Lesinge]

I agree on Carling, Carlsberg (4%)' John Smiths and Boddingtons (ugh), Fosters () and the rest of those cheap rubbish no taste non beers. I used to drink lots of the export lagers like kronenbourg which were ok but only because they were alcohol! My pet hate is those tens of beer brands that pretend to come from exotic places but are all made the same over here under licence by the now big three factories. Beers like Sol are rubbish and you have to have a Lime in them to make them taste of anything. As I get acid from commercial largers the s@@t taste means that they are not worth the effort of even drinking them. I would rather drink nothing than those pathetic excuses for "beer". As for american Bud the so called King of Beer..what a joke that rubbish is and no wonder the is a massive craft movement in the States after they have had to suffer with that pish for so long. They even make light versions of it....I suppose that people buy bottled water so I shoulnt be surprised at people shelling money out for something that tastes better out of a tap prior to being molested by the Bud factory.

 

[Gunge]

As for american Bud the so called King of Beer..what a joke that rubbish is and no wonder the is a massive craft movement in the States after they have had to suffer with that pish for so long. They even make light versions of it....I suppose that people buy bottled water so I shoulnt be surprised at people shelling money out for something that tastes better out of a tap prior to being molested by the Bud factory.

My missus remarked this morning whilst the radio was on, how often 'Bud' was mentioned in redneck songs ("gonna grab me an ice cold buud" etc), to which I mused the reason is that it's easier to fit into a song's lyric than,eg 'Sierra Nevada Pale Ale'...

 

[Lesinge]

My missus remarked this morning whilst the radio was on, how often 'Bud' was mentioned in redneck songs ("gonna grab me an ice cold buud" etc), to which I mused the reason is that it's easier to fit into a song's lyric than,eg 'Sierra Nevada Pale Ale'...

Its as American as chocolate that tastes like vomit or as Bill Bryson said something like "there are 400 different types of cheese in the US and they all taste the same". You are right about the easy name in add into a song...I suspect it might have been harder if Brew Dog had been the biggest "brewer" there!

 

[braziliain]

My vote goes to Becks Blue.
Not only is it non alcoholic, but it actually smells like urine.

 

[MyQul]

6 pages in a little over 24hrs. A testament to how much $hite beer there is in the world :lol:

 

[Ale]

I think this thread was started after I nominated a couple of beers for the worst beer on the best commercial beer thread. The ones I nominated are both Sainburys Taste the difference range. Well I certainly did and pipped them both down the drain. They were the Westmorland Ale and IPA.

And I want to comment on some other posts on here.

Lagers - some people said they get really bad hangovers, stomach acid, etc from them. i have a sweetcorn intolerance and get these as well. Its one of the hardest food intolerances to diagnose and can cause some nasty problems. A food elimination diet (google it) is the best way to be sure if you think it could be as food intolerance. Brewing sugar, dextrose and many other ingredients found in about 90% of processed foods can be made from corn as well, so if you have any unexplained health issues give it a go, it could help diagnose it and if not you've only lost a few days of varied food.

Guiness - someone said they dont see what the fuss is about. Since they changed the recipe, its not a shadow of its former self, but has gone right up the list of the mist popular beers. Just goes to show the low taste the British public have.

John Smiths, etc - Again, poor taste of the public.