How’s it going? Steven here! Today we’re getting Busch-whacked! First up, we have Busch. Introduced in 1955 as Bush Bavarian and was changed to Busch in 1979. It’s the second most popular beer in Anheuser-Busch’s lineup behind Budweiser and competes directly with the economy brands Milwaukee’s Best and Keystone for MillerCoors. Made with hops, malt, “cereal grains” which supposedly includes corn and rice, yeast and water.
Alcohol content is 4.3 percent. So, this wasn’t the beer that started at all for Anheuser-Busch, but this was the first beer to come back after Prohibition and for such an important beer in their lineup, being half of the name, there’s not a whole lot of backstory or history to be able to find. Okay, let’s have a look at it. It’s that very, very pale yellow that we’re very familiar with in these beers. It had a pretty nice fluffy head, lots of uniform bubbles but there’s a little bit of rockiness going on in there. Alright, let’s give it a smell. Just mostly rice and a little bit of corn.
There was a whiff of a green apple when I first smelled it but I can’t smell it that well anymore. Alright, let’s give it a taste. Cheers! So that whiff of green apple, it shows up for sure, and it’s much more of like a green apple acidity and not so much a straight up green apple. And there’s a little bit of malt sweetness to it. The carbonation is pretty lively on this so it scrubs off very quick so that’s well done there. I need water too, got to hydrate. I’ll say right now, this one has the same sort of pitfall as Coors Banquet does. This has much more sweetness going on to it, I think. It’s enough to kind of mask that green apple character. Coors Banquet was a lot drier. It’s even a touch watery like Coors Banquet is but it doesn’t linger, it disappears fairly quickly. I don’t even remember how much I bought this for. I know it was cheap, and I know it’s consistently cheap in 30 packs.
So, I think you used to get it for 10 bucks for a 12 pack. It’s not even a dollar a beer. Not a bad beer considering how cheap it is. I read this guy’s as “a solid cheap hot dog beer” and I almost wanted to agree with him and then I realized “cheap hot weekend beer” is what he said. My bad. I keep meaning to wrap this one up and then I keep pouring myself more, it just goes down really quick. I got to calm down. This is the second most popular beer in Anheuser-Busch’s lineup behind Budweiser in the category: it just goes to show that some people really like bush… and some people really like bud! Alright, next up we have Natural Light or Natty Light. Introduced in 1977 as Anheuser-Busch’s first competitor to Miller Lite. Better known by the nickname Natty Light. It was a premium brand, then reformulated and priced down after Bud Light’s introduction. It’s now a “value” brand, which is a really nice way of saying it’s s*****.
In 2011, it was the first beer in space, which is about the most disappointing beer fact I’ve ever heard. Made with water, barley, “cereal grains” supposedly including high fructose corn syrup, hops and yeast. Alcohol content is 4.2 percent. I really wanted to get this one, Ice and Natty Daddy. I tried looking around but I didn’t have any luck. Okay so well after this video was shot, I started to find Natty Daddy in 15 packs and eventually single 25-ounce cans in various places farther away from home but — spoiler alert — after my experience with these two, I can comfortably say I’m glad I didn’t get Natty Daddy.
Okay, back to the video. So this had a very vivacious — is that the right word? Vivacious?
Lively? Whatever it is — head on it. It sounds like I just poured a soda. They’re almost uniform bubbles. The head is dying quite quickly; that’s always a great sign. Let’s have a look at it. Pretty pale yellow but not 100 see-through but there’s nothing floating around in it, no hazy things or anything like that. I didn’t mention this with the Busch, but Busch is the only one in the set that I have had before; everything else is new to me. I’ve never had any of these.
Alright let’s go ahead and have a smell.
So, there’s a green apple note there but there’s… something else that I can’t quite pinpoint.
So, there’s like a green apple, there’s a corn thing going on, vague kind of sweetness. It’s really bothering me. I think it’s pear! I was like there’s green apple but there’s another fruity thing going on with it. I wonder if anybody else picked that up. Okay so somebody said a lemony note, I can kind of see that. There’s kind of a metallic character too. There’s a lot going on here that’s not confusing me but it’s– it’s making me second guess myself. Alright, let’s go ahead and have a taste.
Cheers! That pear kind of note that I was picking up that’s– that’s here for sure and so is the green apple. There’s this metallic tang that hits like right in the back half of the sip. Oh! That would normally be a positive that it would be getting dry and it would clean up but, in this sense, it just makes it worse. It makes that metallic note like you just— like you put pennies in your mouth or like maybe– not pennies, it’s not quite coppery.
But it’s– it’s like coins.
It’s like maybe nickels or dimes or something like you put a bunch of those in your mouth. Oh, it’s right there! And then I’m smacking my lips because it’s super– it’s really dry right as that’s happening too. Oh, that’s not good. It’s like astringent. It’s like it coats your mouth and you have to like to go like that, you’re rubbing it off the roof of your mouth. If you want to do an off flavor tasting and you want astringency, this is the beer. It had so much potential. I mean, the pear thing was not good. It’s not something that I really want to be smelling in a beer like this but there were a couple other things going on with it that were nice. And it’s pretty crisp and it has a lot of carbonation, it’s very lively but… And that metallic note was sort of the first sign that, you know, danger ahead but man, that’s rough. Holy crap.
Oh, why did I drink it again? Oh, it’s not good, it isn’t natural.
Alright, next up we have Natural Ice. Introduced in 1995, it quickly became the top selling ice beer after its introduction. In 2012, it made the news after a convenience store worker hurled cans of it at a would-be robber, causing him to flee. Probably because he saw it was Natty Ice. Made with hops, malt, corn, yeast and water. Alcohol content is 5.9 percent. After my experience with Natural Light, I’m not really looking forward to this one. So they call it Natural Ice because it’s an ice beer, which means that it goes through fractional freezing. It’s more commonly called freeze distillation but apparently that’s the wrong terminology, I found out. I didn’t know. Alright, well, the head died basically immediately. It just like that. Great sign so far. Alright, let’s have a look at it.
Pretty much the same color as the Natural Light. Seems like it’s a little less clear. Ehm it’s about the same. Nothing floating around in it. The head that’s left over right now are pretty much uniform bubbles. It had a similar thing going for it when I poured it: it sounded like soda had just been poured so very, very fizzy. Whoa! So it has a lot of the same hallmarks as Natural Light but there’s a much stronger like bready-dough sweetness to it.
It actually doesn’t smell half bad.
I take that back now. There is a little bit of a— kind of like an alcohol kick going on. This one is close to six percent. Yeah, very similar notes to the Natural Light. There is that kind of like pear/apple character. The bread dough sweetness overrides those two, for sure. Alright, let’s have a taste. Cheers! You know, it’s not as bad as I thought it was going to be. I was really bracing for the absolute worst. But let’s be very clear, this is still not good. That high level of bready sweetness really comes through here. There’s not so much that fruit character from apple and pear as I got from Natural Light, but it does have a pretty significant alcohol presence. It’s not quite to the level of something like acetone or nail polish. Ooh, it’s not improving as it gets a little warmer. It’s very sugary too. It’s not even just bread sweetness. It’s like a leftover sugar.
I can’t quite pinpoint how to describe that though.
It unfortunately has that metallic tang that the Natural Light has but at least it’s not as harshly astringent as that is so it has that going for it. There’s almost like a grape thing going on too. It’s somewhere between green grape and the purple grapes, the red grapes. It’s like somewhere in between there and so it makes that sweetness come off kind of like candy. It’s not– it’s not quite that level but it’s almost like a– almost in line with something like a Jolly Rancher: it’s kind of sweet but there’s like a tart/acidic edge to it.
That’s kind of what this is. I still think it’s probably — even with all of its flaws — probably better than Natural Light, which I’m shocked even myself saying that. It’s very bold of them to put brewed for smooth taste on this and it’s… (disgust) Alright, last up, we have Rolling Rock, which is actually the one I was most looking forward to trying. Introduced in 1939 by Latrobe Brewing Company, making it the oldest in our lineup by far. It was owned and brewed by Latrobe until 1985, when it was sold and bounced between different ownership. By the 1990s, Latrobe had become the eighth largest brewing company in the United States. In 2006, it found its current home when it was purchased by Anheuser-Busch InBev.
Most known for the use of glass-lined tanks, which were state-of-the-art when it was introduced. Made with hops, malt, rice, corn, yeast and water. Alcohol content is 4.4 percent. So, let’s go ahead and have a look at it. Well, this one’s probably the clearest one out of the bunch and probably the palest. It’s like I don’t know — one shade lighter. Nothing floating around in there. It’s a very creamy head, pretty good mix of bubbles and it’s stayed around a little bit. I poured it right before I started, you know, hit record.
Well, let’s go ahead and have a smell.
Hmmm… There’s kind of an interesting grassy quality to it and there’s a kind of a— it’s not skunked but… (DMS) There’s a good sliced white bread character and it’s kind of crockery, crockery/grainy — like very, very light. Yeah, there’s kind of like this grassy, like straw kind of character going on with it. That’s kind of– I didn’t expect this. There was something else I just picked up there I didn’t smell before. It’s rice so it has a little bit of sweetness, but it also has this kind of like herbaceous quality to it, so that’s going on too. That’s very interesting. There’s some corn there too. It’s very faint I kind of had to hunt for it a little bit.
Alright let’s have a taste.
Cheers! It’s really good for the rest of the beers that we’ve had in this lineup. There is a nice, pleasant sweetness right at the sort of beginning, at the front portion, but it doesn’t stay around long. And it’s mostly the bread, and then there’s– right after that, there’s like this flash of rice and corn and then it finishes super clean. It’s very crisp. There’s a lively but not overwhelming carbonation; it’s not like a soda level. Yeah, there’s a little of a bread dough character too. That corn is starting to come up a lot more as this gets a little bit warmer. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, it’s just interesting how this is developing over time.
So, I would recommend if you’re going to get this beer, do not get it in a bottle because that– I’m pretty sure that they do not use the hop extract technology that I think Miller High Life has where it’s in a clear bottle but it doesn’t skunked and they package in green bottles. So, you’re going to get a skunked beer, so buy it in a can. And then point number two is that the glass-lined tank thing that they always advertise for this beer: it only applies to the canned version, not the bottle version. They’re very different beers — I don’t know how true that is, it could be anecdotal, that’s what I’ve heard online. But I would recommend just get it in a can anyway.
You don’t have to worry about at least it being light struck. That’s important. This one probably has the most complexity out of any of the ones that I’ve had (in this tasting*). There seems to be something more that I’m picking up here every time that I visit the glass. They have a very interesting and storied history and that’s part of the reason why I was excited to try the beer. I’m just really glad that the beer actually was pretty good. As far as what the standings are, I think Natural Light is in last place. Pretty sure that’s clear. Natural Ice: slightly better, not that much better. Busch: probably takes the second spot.
Far and ahead, it’s the Rolling Rock. It’s the closest thing to what I think of when I think of an American style lager. It’s not perfect. It’s not amazing. I’m not going to give it a five out of five, but as far as this lineup is concerned, it kind of embarrassed the rest of them.
That concludes this particular one. Hope you enjoyed it, I had a good time.
If you’ve been having a beer along with me, why not check out this video over here? Let me know in the comments which one of these is your favorite. Cheers and thanks for watching!
Magnetify
https://warriorplus.com/o2/a/vltp0br/0
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=30kk8w20opQ
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