Budweiser Select 55

Brewed by Anheuser-Busch InBev
Style: Pale Lager
St. Louis, Missouri USA

Serve in Dimpled mug, English pint, Lager glass, Shaker

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This was about as awful as it could be in every way possible. No smell, taste, ABV, finish. But boy is it light on calories! Glad I was able to share this one among friends....

I think of a Sammy Hagar song whenever Bud Select 55 is mentioned but with a twist- " I can’t drink 55!!!"

Can. Pours a crystal clear, pale yellow color with a white foamy head that disappears within 30 seconds of the pour. Extremely light, corn grain aroma. The flavor is pretty much nonexistent with absolutely no aftertaste. Hard to believe the ABV is even 2.4% as I’ve had non-alcoholic beers with twice the flavor of this one.

Bottle. Pours a clear, pale golden body...like a beer with jaundice. Fizzy, white, quickly dissipating head. I’ve seen worse beers, but this one definitely doesn’t inspire me. Stale, grainy nose. Somewhat husky. Some grass. Flavor is of cheap, old malt, stale hops and dust bunnies. Body is light, thin, aggressively carbonated. Dirty, musty malt up front with an empty bitter finish. Bad beer with nothing to offer.

Pour this beer into a glass... its dark golden in color, and gives a 2 inch head that dissapears before the second sip. The bubbles in the beer are fewer in number. Heavy barley aroma, and some strong molasses, and rolled oat. The taste is of strong barely syrup, with a papery water backend. The texture has a good bite but there are no hops present in the flavor, so the bite must come from the CO2. The approach on this one was clearly to cut budweiser 6 times, then add barley syrup to darken and flavor the beer. It initially does a good job of masking its castration, but quickly gives in, due to the dry, papery, barley malt water taste. Cereals that come to mind are honey comb, and smacks. If you want to know what this tastes like, just try one of those. MGD64, even though more watery and paper tasting is more authentic, and therefore better, because it lacks the adjuct additives, yes i know, and real beer is always better than flavor beer. Remember, beer is made only of 4 ingredients, water, the most important, barley, yeast, and hops. ...and real is always better than fake. This beer is not made for people who know what good beer is.

UPDATED: AUG 29, 2009 Clear glass bottle. Strange that Bloomington was one of the few selected target markets. Very faint grassy nose, a little dusty malt. A flat golden color with little to no head. Watery smooth body, very little flavor, soft, weich malt, a twinge of metallic booze, and a slightly numbing aftertaste somewhere between bread and stale pretzel. Really starting to blur the lines between beer and non-beer; I’m excited about an emergent ’table beer’ segment, great trend for drivers and even dogs, but I’d rather we move on with traditional bitters and sours than this tasteless, though inoffensive swill.

Sample from a test bottle at Natifest 09. I can’t say anything that hasn’t been said already. This was not bad necessarily because that would require aromas and flavors strong enough to register as such.

Test bottle courtesy of The Party Source at Natifest ’09!
What can you really say about a light macro pale lager being watered down even more. If you really need to read my review of this beer then I truly feel sorry for you. I’m glad I only took a small sip. Honestly though, nothing really offensive here. Just the complete lack of anything that usually resembles beer.

Test bottle at Natifest ’09. Poured clear pale color with a large frothy white head that diminished slowly with fair lacing. Light sweet grainy aroma. Light body with a watery texture and soft carbonation. Light sweet flavor with a light sweet finish of short duration. Cold wet low alcohol that I would not recommend to a freind.

Can it get any lower than a 0.5? No, it is not that bad, but it is what I would expect from a Anheuser-Busch. Shared with others at the NATIFEST ’09. Very watered down, but refreshing. Prefer it over MGD 54.