The Beer Buddha's 40oz Face Off

Sometimes you gotta shake things up a bit. If you take yourself to seriously then shit gets boring. Not that I ever take things too seriously but there are a lot of beer bloggers out there that take themselves WAY too seriously and never seem to have any fun. Granted this is a small number of beer bloggers but they are out there.

Recently the wife and I had decided to invite some friends over for a potluck style dinner and game night. I thought this was the perfect opportunity to do a blind tasting of some beers. And the sick and twisted mind of The Beer Buddha picked 40oz beers.

I figured that living in New Orleans we could help the beer drinking public by having a blind tasting of 40oz beers in order to find which one tastes the best. Call it public service. And when I say 40oz I mean the malt liquor kind. Not just any 40oz.

If you haven't been to New Orleans we will describe it as overly urban. So finding a store with a wide selection of 40oz shouldn't be a problem. I'll just walk into a store in a not so great neighborhood and pick what I need. I was wrong. I went to 4 different stores(one being in the Lower 9th Ward)and my selection was HORRIBLE. I found Old English 800, King Cobra and Steel Reserve. I couldn't find Colt 45 or Micky's. My buddy Riki was able to find Micky's in cans but that was it. I guess the gangsta rap days of the 90s are truly over.

So we went into the tasting with 4 beers: Old English 800, King Cobra, Mickey's(in cans)and Steel Reserve. The beers were mostly what we expected. Not much flavor or aroma. One did stink pretty bad which turned out to be the OE 800. I think "ass" was the descriptor used for that aroma. Although it totally could have been one of my dogs Elvira or Falstaff farting. Not sure.

At the end of the night however the voting turned out to be pretty damn close with 3 votes going to King Cobra and 2 votes going to Steel Reserve. The funny thing about the whole tasting is the misconception that malt liquor has this extremely high alcohol content when in fact to us craft beer drinkers it's pretty tame. Not one of the beers had an ABV over 7%(Our Steel Reserve was only 6% for some reason). That's pretty average actually.

I do like the 40oz bottle as a receptacle and would love to see craft breweries put beers into 40oz bottles. I know that Dogfish Head did it with their Liquor De Malt and it was pretty successful. I doubt we'll ever see it though. There is an unfortunate stigma attached to the 40oz bottle. But then again there was a stigma to cans and look what is happening with that.

Overall I thought this was a lot of fun and we'll be doing it again! Be on the lookout for the next blind tasting! Maybe light beers? Or a 40oz Part II if we find more selection!

Cheers!

The Beer Buddha