Daniel Davies likes Budweiser. So does Matt Yglesias.

I've never really cared for Bud, but perhaps it may be time for a critical reapprasal of the King of Beers.

Davies provides an extensive defense of Budweiser's authenticity and points out that Budweiser does indeed have a different chemicial composition than urine. And both take their swings at microbrews. But one topic remains unaddressed - what Budweiser actually tastes like, and I don't meant the crude metaphors about piss.

It had been a while since I had drank Budweiser, so I stopped on the way home from work to pick up a 6-pack (cans) of it to refresh my memory and see if Bud has been unjustly maligned.

Observations and underinformed opinions:

-Works well with cans. Most beers I'd rather drink out of a bottle, including many in the same price range as Bud (ex Labatts, the various Miller beers), but Bud tastes better out of a can.

-Finely filtered. This isn't unique to Bud or either good or bad in and of itself; it affects the mouth-feel, contributing to the crispness of the beer.

-Mildly hopped, but you knew that.

-Tastes somewhat bland, although it's crisp when cold, but also kind of sweet, which I don't like, and the sweetness persists in the aftertaste. I though it would taste better if it were more acidic, so I added a bit of lemon juice to it, which improved the flavor by offsetting the sweetness. Groundless speculation: This may be related to why the aluminum can works well, since aluminum is a Lewis acid.

Conclusion:

Bud isn't horrible, but it is bland and the sweet aftertaste isn't very appealling. It's certainly drinkable, but beyond its alcohol content, there really isn't much of a reason to drink it. The combination of mild flavor and light body makes the beer unobjectionable, but minimizes the taste. The scorning of Bud may have taken on a social significance beyond what the flaws of the beer itself merit, but it simply isn't very good beer.

Early in 1930, American newspapers in the south and midwest began to report on a strange new paralytic illness that eventually had affected some 20,000 people. This first major epidemic was soon linked to the consumption of Jamaica ginger commonly referred to as "jake" by those using the fluid extract as an alcohol substitute during the prohibition years.

A tale of toxic prohbition, adulterated cooking oil, the blues, organophosphates, and America united in a willingness to drink just about anything as long as it gets you wasted. More at MOTD.

MOTD points out a less-than accurate description of the preservative TBHQ in Michael Pollan's The Omnivore's Dilemma (as posted at Jims Empire).

While MOTD deftly points out (contrary Pollan)that a butane group does not lighter fluid make, his calculations on the TBHQ content of the typical nugget miss the mark. Unfortunately, as commenter rehana points out, MOTD's estimate of 312.5 nuggets to reach the 1 gram level at which TBHQ causes "nausea, vomiting, ringing in the ears, delirium, a sense of suffocation, and collapse." (as Pollan quotes from A Consumer's Dictionary of Food Additives), is based on 0.02% of the total nugget weight, while the FDA regulation applies to the oil in the nugget, and thus somewhat low.

Fortunately, McDonald's provides us with the total fat content of an order of nuggets (49 g in a 20 piece), which serves us well as a more precise upper bound for the oil content of a nugget. If all the fat in the nugget were to be oil (obviously not true, since there actually is some chicken in there), the FDA maximum content of TBHQ per nugget would be 0.0049 g per nugget, necessitating the consumption of 2040.82 nuggets to reach the threshold Pollan describes.

Of course, at 15.3% fat by weight, there are reasons other than preservatives that make it wise to consume these chunks of over-processed tastiness in moderation.