I was going to wait to have this one, but sometimes an opportunity presents itself. In this case, my traveling partner got me upgraded to first class on our flight. With first class, comes free drinks, but my choices were Bud, Bud Light, Corona, and Heineken (all canned). Having grown up in St. Louis, I went for the hometown beer (St. Louis, although, after the InBev buyout, it’s not really the hometown beer anymore).
I’ve had this beer a hundred times before, but I’m not sure I ever really took the time to study or analyze it like I have been doing. When I poured it, it was crystal clear and light yellow. It had a good head that had almost a soapy bubble type consistency.
I guess you can only compare things you smell or taste to other things you’re familiar with, and since I’m so familiar with this beer, it just smelled like Bud to me. I guess it had a faint bready smell with a bit of hop bitterness.
The body was very thin and the taste was crisp. It had a lot of carbonation (I’m not sure if the altitude or cabin pressure had anything to do with this), but it made it fairly sharp on my tongue.
Now that I’ve gotten more into craft beers, I had to laugh at how much “flavor” I thought Bud had (compared to Bud Light). There really isn’t much flavor to it. It does have a somewhat bready/yeasty character that I’m wondering if it comes from the beechwood aging (I’m not sure what beechwood tastes like). I do have to admit though, that almost anything will taste better when you’re sitting in first class on a long flight.
Like other big brewery pilsners like this one, they’ll pretty much go with just about any type of food. It has a bad reputation because it’s one of the original big brewery pilsners and doesn’t have much taste. While I wouldn’t categorize it in my own catalog as the “King of Beers,” for me, having grown up in St. Louis, there’s still a lot of nostalgia around a classic Bud can.
My Rating: 
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