Coors Banquet
By John & Dad on October 9, 2008 @ 7 AM (3 Comments)
For our recently fallen beer comrade Jerry Reed, who passed away on August 31, 2008, Father and Son Beer Love decided to devote a Thursday night review to the beer that Snowman and the Bandit worked so hard to deliver to the fine folks in Atlanta. This one’s for you, Snowman.
Coors Banquet, which also goes by Coors Original or just Coors, has been produced since 1873 in Golden, Colorado. It’s now owned and operated by the MillerCoors company. Surprisingly, Coors Banquet only has about 1.5% of the domestic beer market (Coors Light is around 15.5% of the market and Bud Light is by far the most popular domestic beer with about 34.9% of the market). You probably already know the story of Adolph Coors and probably wonder a little bit as you read this sentence why a strong, solid name Adolph isn’t that common any more. By this sentence you’ve probably realized why the name Adolph isn’t so common any more. We’ll leave it at that.
For our review we procured 24 oz (1 pint 8 oz) cans from the convenience store (Son Beer Love’s was even served up in a brown bag!) for $1.69 each. These are “cold activated” cans with a frost brew liner in them. The mountains on the can turn blue when the taste is completely obscured by cold. Only then is it safe to drink. Just kidding of course!
Coors Banquet weighs in with a 5% ABV and our beer temperature was 34.2 F, which was cold enough to activate the mountains on the can, which oddly, even when the can was empty, remained blue. We used a tall weizen glass for the pour which gave us an average 2″ fizzy white head that dissipated quickly and left a fair amount of head lacing in the glass. There was a lively amount of carbonation and the body was a clear sparkling yellow color.
There are just a few aromas we could note – grain and corn primarily. The corn smell is a little off-putting at first, but we think it just caught us a little of guard. As it warms we got some lemon and some light alcohol in the smell as well. On the taste side we got a mild lemon in the initial taste and the corn came in with the aftertaste. The initial flavor notes were a light sweet and the finish flavor was a very light sweet and a light bitter. The finish length was quite short and the mouthfeel was watery. The tongue hit was on the front of the tongue and there was virtually no body lacing in the glass. On the patented malt to hop scale it came in just about balanced. Not too malty, not too hoppy, not too much of anything.
For our bottom line notes we got a yes to drinkable and a yes to repeatable. We got a no to harmony, no to memorable, no to wow factor and no to buy again. We were on the fence with balance and can only say it had some – it’s super thin malts, but equally thin hops – so we guess that balances?
It doesn’t rub you the wrong way – it’s like a big glass of cold. We can say this – it smells like beer. Like it really smells like beer in the most common sense of the word – like the people on television who drink beer out of a can that has the word “beer” on the outside of it. It smells like that.
On a hunch, we took a swig out of the can and you know what – we think it tastes better out of the can than in the glass. Out of the can you get a nice little metallic profile that “works” with it. Plus, it just feels so right drinking this out of the can, the way you just know it was meant to be consumed. The way all those thirsty people in Atlanta no doubt drank it when it was delivered to them by Snowman and the Bandit.
It was a little bit of a surprising review for us. We felt pretty sure this would be one of our lowest ratings, but overall it wasn’t bad enough to pour out. The taste is somewhat like a slightly bitter flavored water. There’s more bitter in the finish of the beer than in a glass of water but not much. We actually did a blind taste test against the glass of water we normally have when we rate beers and the results, though not inconclusive, were quite closer than you would think.
It’s odd, we know, to rate something that doesn’t have much of anything to it with something higher than a zero, but would you rate a glass of water a zero? Something almost has to be overdone in the wrong direction to rate a zero. This isn’t enjoyable, per se, but it’s also not not enjoyable, if you catch our drift. Maybe the water from the Rocky Mountains makes a difference. Our final advice if you have to drink it – drink it cold, drink it quick and drink it out of the can.
And let’s remember, this one was for Jerry Reed, who’s up in heaven running his eighteen wheeler over motorcycles and feeding Fred all the hamburgers he wants. East Bound and Down, good buddy.
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You have to give it some points just for the 5%..
I agree wholeheartedly that Coors Banquet was made to be drunk out of the can itself- bottles and glasses just will not suffice. While it certainly may not be the “best” beer in the world, it is nonetheless my beer of choice; and I will continue to purchase this legendary beer that everyone else seemingly ignores as the black sheep of beer, until the production of Coors Banquet is stifled altogether.
This became my beer of choice, not too long after I began drinking. I like its taste. A beer I stay away from is Natural Ice, which tastes really nasty.