If they don't have a decent craft beer selection, I usually opt for the healthier solution. I drink liquor and ice. No carbs!
Anyone that really thinks all the "big box" beers like Budweiser, Bud Light, Coors, Miller, Keystone, Busch, and Michelob style beers taste like shit can go sit in the corner. I realize there's different beers with more unique and arguably better flavors out there and I generally drink Summit Extra Pale or Killians myself but to say that those listed above taste like piss or whatever just makes you sound like a stuck up snob. There's a reason these beers got to be huge and popular brands. They don't taste that bad at all and are very easy to drink and I have no problem drinking them if my above two aren't available or if I just feel cheap. If anything, they all taste pretty much the same so trying to say one is good while another sucks is bullshit too.
White Zinfandel - always drank by a chick that is venturing out to try to introduce herself to wine (or even introducing herself to drinking anything containing alcohol for that matter) and doesn't know where to start, clearly has no clue what good wine is and doesn't have anyone to educate her about good wine. White Zinfandel is about as nasty a wine (alcoholic beverage) in which you can imbibe.
This is like saying McDonalds burgers taste fine so anyone who thinks good meat cooked carefully tastes a lot better is a snob. God fucking forbid people have a pallet that that has developed more expensive taste than shit beer produced in giant quantities by huge manufacturers. Including Killian's and Summit - though less so than Bud. You can drink your crap beer, eat your box-made brownies convinced it's just like scratch-made, think your Kia Sorrento handles like its on rails, and believe that frozen vegetables taste just like fresh - and I won't get all bent out of shape about it. But it doesn't make the rest of us who have explored a little further wrong or snobs. Do you have not a single thing in your life that you have become interested in enough to differentiate between mass produced junk and expensive, crafted items?
This is the problem. It's not junk. It's not as good as a handcrafted beer, I'll grant you that, hell pretty much everyone will, but just because it isn't as good doesn't make it junk. So let's run through this: it's not crap beer, you're right about box made brownies and vegetables, I like my Kia Sorrento, and I drink for the effect, so sometimes mass produced booze is the way to go.
If somebody orders a Michelob Ultra I assume that they either a) like crappy beer; b) are easily swayed by mediocre marketing campaigns. Mich Ultra is touted as a low-carb beer or fitness beer or whatever. Miller Lite tastes* better, has the same carbs (about 3), and the same calories (about 95). *I'm not saying Miller Lite is a great beer, I'm just saying if you're choosing a lite beer, choose correctly.
The problem with ordering "fancier" drinks is most bars are stocked with shitty bartenders that wouldn't know how to make them. I love a good Bloody Mary (is that a girly drink? I have no idea) if I'm lounging around and not looking to get drunk, it's the kind of thing I would assume most bars would fuck up. I worked at a restaurant that had a high-class bar—the kind where every ingredient is fresh, every drink takes the bartender 1-2 minutes to make, and comes with a $15 price tag—and my favorite drink there was an orange-infused rye whiskey. But I've never seen it anywhere else and I wouldn't trust most bars to know how to make something like that, even though the recipe itself is pretty simple. Hell, most bars even fuck up a simple martini. As others have said, ordering wine is for fools unless you're planning on eating dinner while you drink.
Guinness is 125 calories for a 16oz can, so pound for pound, it's about the same as many light beers. It's higher on carbs though, with 9.9 per 16oz. It's the secret light beer.
Speaking of Guinness and the thread focus: most people, when I see them drink/order a Guinness, I presume they're doing it for the brand, not necessarily for personal enjoyment. For every 1 person I've met who genuinely likes Guinness, I probably meet 5 who do it because they want to appear refined or sophisticated in some bullshit way. Sort of like those people who are in love with their fucking Apple products. What's that, your Mac costs four times as much to do the same, menial tasks that my shitty Gateway does? Good fer you! But mine has the benefit of not giving me an artificially-inflated sense of poetry skills, so I have that going for me.
I wonder how many "taste in alcohol" discussions we could have in a month? Seriously... let's not get all wrapped up in the shit-fest pissing contest that is the "my beer is better than your beer and your beer is shit beer because it's not real beer and a lite beer" crap. Stick to the focus, and bring the funny. FOCUS: If you see someone order a Shirley Temple, go and introduce yourself, as you've run into Aetius.
You can't compare McDonalds to the big box beers. McDonalds is pretty much the basement of foods where the beers I mentioned are the middle of the road, standard, average beers. If you want to compare Mcdonalds to an alcohol take something like Wildcat or Steel Reserve. I agree that the big box beers aren't always the best tasting, I would rather have something else also. If you don't like the taste that's fine, it's not for you, but you can't sit there and say to yourself that it's genuinely a bad product when it's as popular as it is. Bad products die over time and what works sticks around. Just because something is expensive and brewed in small amounts doesn't mean it always tastes good either. I've bought countless 6 and 12 packs of small brew beers and it's really 50/50 on whether they are good or not.
Please take a vid of yourself trying to pour Galliano into a flask and post it here. That seems like it would be like watching Mohammed Ali play Pick-Up Sticks.
I think the Harvey Wallbanger was created as a means of getting rid of the Galliano inventory the bars had amassed. Not too many drinks call for it, but here's a good one that cheap to make, so if you work in/own a bar, it's got incredibly high profit margin: Western Root Beer: Fill a pint glass with ice. Add 1 shot Galliano, then fill 2/3 up with tap beer, then top off the rest of the glass with Coke. Shake vigorously. Tastes just like root beer. For the guys still in college, make this at parties for the girls who "don't like the taste of alcohol." When I was drinking, what I drank was usually determined by where I was drinking. I liked stout, and Guinness was typically more available, but if they had Murphy's on tap, I'd go with that. But settling in for a long day-into-night of drinking (which was more the norm rather than the exception), Bud Light was fine. If I was drinking mixed drinks, I wouldn't drink rail liquor. That's just begging for pain the next day. I loved bourbon Manhattans and bourbon old-fashioneds, but usually only ordered these at bars or restaurants where I knew the bartender knew what he was doing (Sprite, ginger ale or 7-Up is not a component of an old-fashioned). The corner tavern wasn't one of those places. I never gave a shit what someone else was drinking, as long as it wasn't my drink.
I've never been a party to the "your drink defines you" camp so I'd appreciate it if someone could explain to me what the big fucking deals is. I make no distinction between a drink with alcohol in it or a drink without. I mean, are we making fun of people ordering juice instead of soda at a restaurant? I don't think this is all in jest because everyone I know is trying to measure the size of people's penises by what they drink. If someone doesn't drink Miller lite and thinks everyone who does is a pussy, then doesn't that mean that their "manly" identity is coming from the wrong place? Really, I don't get it.
Really? So at work you sometimes have a beer with your lunch in front of your co-workers and when the boss asks why you say "I make no distinction..."??? For me, drinking is as close to anything spiritual as I'm going to get. You sit around a table with your friends, as you get more and more drunk barriers fall down. The dick heads become greater dick heads and the insecure let you know what they are insecure about. Many friendships have been built, strengthened and destroyed sat around a table in a bar. Alcohol is the corner stone of this, to say there is no distinction between that and having a glass of water with your breakfast is retarded. What a man drinks is an insight into his soul. If he knows which drink is 10p cheaper than the rest and always buys that, even when he has plenty of money, you learn a little about how this man thinks. If he drinks the strongest, cheapest cider, always without exception or interruption as the Perry Cider bottles slowly accumulate in front of him you learn something about him too. You learn he doesn't like drinking. Exploring the hidden tastes on the spirit shelf is to him as unappealing as walking the scenic route to work. He doesn't care for the finer beauties of the action he partakes in. The action becomes a process where quality is irrelevant. With a man like this you must ask, why is he drinking? If he doesn't like the journey then what is it about the destination that is so appealing. And for this man, the destination is stumbling and slurring his love for his female friends. He'll be mortified the next morning at what he did, but do the exact same thing the following Saturday. A man's drink tells you a lot about him just as your ignorance of this says a lot about you.
Sorry, I don't have a boss at work first of all. Second of all, what I said about making no distinction was a poorly worded way of saying "I drink what I'm in the mood for regardless of its alcoholic content." Third, why can't your entire post be attributed to how a man shops for his groceries instead? What activity of a person can't you study to learn more about them? Sorry, I don't think you got my post at all. I'm criticizing the behavior of measuring people by what their taste buds appreciate most not whether drinking is an enjoyable experience.
To the beer guys: 1. Guinness is foul. Taste's like liquid ear wax. 2. The best beer is free beer. All the rest? Is gravy man. Relax, you'll live longer.
Here are drinks and my preconceived notions: 1.If I'm at a bar and a woman sits down and orders a single malt neat -- I know she's just that, a woman. And a woman I want to talk to. (One of my friends is married to a Brazilian woman who drinks Highland Park and she is impossibly charming.) 2. Seven and Seven. If the person is under 30 y/o they order booze ironically. If over 37 y/o they are an alcoholic. (I once knew two alcoholics that would each order two 7 and 7's when we sat down for dinner to avoid the risk of ever being without immediate access to booze.) 3. Less conventional wine varietals. If someone orders a Malbec or the like I assume they know something about wine, but are not going to be obnoxious about it. 4. Grey Goose and Sprite. Asshole.