This Bud’s for….

“Please for the love of God don’t consume this filth.”
“After taking a sip, my wife refused to kiss me.”
“I needed Jager to cleanse my palate.”
“Smells of tomato, pepper and asshole.”
“There is absolutely no reason to drink this harsh, vile concoction of your own free will.”

In the same category as paying to watch Plan 9 From Outer Space, or going to every American Samoan football match, we also have drinking a Bud Chelada. Pariah of the beer world, this joke of a beverage is routinely slated on review sites such as Beer Advocate (from which those five different comments are taken), and RateBeer – where it has a rating of 0 for style, and 0 overall. A blend of Budweiser, tomato juice, clam juice, salt and lime served in a monstrous 710ml can – what’s not to like?

It’s been a long time since I’ve come across a beer quite that colour – it pours an opaque pinkish-red, like a rhubarb smoothie. The ratio of ingredients aren’t apparent – but tomato must be one of the leaders – it dominates the aroma (which thankfully contains little asshole). More than a few RateBeerians have described the smell of Bud Chelada as being like vomit – to which I say they must be throwing up after eating plenty of tomatoes. It’s not horrible; it just smells like cheap pasta sauce. No beer aroma, clearly.

This is the crux of the matter – why it scores so badly and why people generally hate it. Snobbery. AB InBev hoover up drinks brands as if their corporate life depends on it (which of course, it does). They produce some completely insipid and unrewarding beer – of which Budweiser is front and centre. I don’t necessarily think Bud is revolting – it just tastes of fizzy rice. If that’s your bag, go for it. If you prefer barrel-aged imperial loganberry saisons – good for you. Horses for courses, and all that.

One particularly unusual course is Clamato Juice – something very few Brits have experience of. Our Mountie-hugging chums from the frozen Arctic can’t get enough, however. Although it was ‘invented’ in New York, Canada is Clamato Country. A mixture of tomato and clam juices, along with several spices, it’s a popular ingredient in the Caesar cocktail – essentially a bivalve Bloody Mary. Having never tasted Clamato before, it was a struggle to pick it out of the overall Chelada experience – other than a hit of Worcester sauce spikiness at the end.

Is Chelada really that awful? There are two schools of thought. As a beer – it probably is. There’s no discernable flavour in there to make you classify it as such – not even any real alcohol presence. But as a drink – I quite liked it. I do love tomato juice – which is a key consideration when sampling it, without doubt. So for me, it was like a virgin Bloody Mary, with a salty, brothy, spicy finish from the clams/spices. Beer snobs are totally free to hate it for what it represents, but don’t hate it for what it is.