The Skunk List: 2. City LaCrosse Light

Brewery: City Brewery, LaCrosse, Wisconsin

Style: Pale Lager

ABV: 4.7%

Rating: .5 stars

Very hard to find even a picture of this beer. So bad I'm not sure where to begin.

First, I'll start by saying that if this was a list based purely on taste (you could argue that it should be), this would be numbers 10 thru 1. Looking back on the 275+ beers I had this year, nothing jumps into my mind faster than Lax Lite when I think of crap in a can. In fact, after those sentences, I need to take a quick mental break before typing any more.

Let's start here: I had just consumed twelve, count them, twelve, cans of Blatz Lite. Now, this sets the bar quite low, seeing that only Wisconsinites and desperate poor Minnesotans participating in a case race drink Blatz. After the binge, I poured myself a glass of LaCrosse Light. Keep in mind how drunk I was at this point. I COULD NOT FINISH THE LACROSSE. Not only could I not finish it, I could barely choke down a sip. At the time: "Honestly could only gulp down one sip. Have to count it, though, because I'll probably never go for it again."

For a man who's had every skunky beer Minnesota and Wisconsin have to offer, those are big words. Think of every negative adjective in the books and this one had it: flat, face-clenching, spit-out-able--this beer created new horrible beer adjectives. I almost want to have another one right now just to remember how horrible it is. After all, how can you tell the good ones if you have no reference for awful?

The Skunk List: 9. Minnesota's Brew

Brewery: City Brewery, LaCrosse, Wisconsin

Style: Pale Lager

ABV: 5%

Rating: 1 Star

This was one of those once-a-summer, back corner of the cooler kind of finds. Had to buy it simply because of the can (the one on the left in the picture). From the journal: "Probably deserves half a star, but I was feeling the skunk at the time." The can alone probably propelled it to the one-star level, and I seem to remember a couple friends and I struggling to finish off a six pack.

There isn't much description possible here--it was a gross, unflavorful beer that you'd need to have far too many of to get to a point where it would pass as drinkable. Maybe that's the test; how many beers needed for drinkability. There weren't enough in this six pack. The last rating on ratebeer.com, my site for beer research, says this: "Have 2 of these saved for when the Vikings reach the Super Bowl someday." Enough said. I guess tha's what happens when a beer called Minnesota's Brew is actually brewed in Wisconsin