REVIEW 2: MILLER HIGH LIFE

COUNTRY OF ORIGIN:  USA

BREWERY:  Miller Brewing Company

STYLE:  Adjunct Lager

ABV:  4.6%

PURCHASE:  Six-pack, $8.00

SERVING:  12-oz. bottle, poured into pint glass. Decent head for a North American adjunct:  Poured a solid half-inch with a slow pour, over an inch with a pour twice as fast. 

APPEARANCE:  Transparent light straw color; brassy. Like a melted-down saxophone poured into a glass. Bright white head.

BOUQUET:  Slightly husky, but a fairly clean scent of generic, cereal-like grains. Not much of a "cooked veggie" aroma so prevalent in many other beers of this style. Run-of-the-mill malt essences meshed with barely detectable hop notes.

PALATE:  Quick-setting carbonation that thankfully doesn't snowball too much as it carries through. Not very flavorful, but agreeable. A notch past neutral in terms of overall taste. The "cooked veggie" factor, absent in the bouquet, prominently introduced itself at the finish here, and lingered through the aftertaste. Corn-like notes were notably thin, and this is a generic style of beer that features that perhaps above all else. Barley-heavy overall mouthfeel, combined with a moderately filling body.

MUSINGS AND METAPHORS:  Keep it cold and you'll be okay. That's the key to enjoying a standard American macrolager. Memories of beer pong in the apartments and frat houses of college rushed through me as I downed six of these tonight. You see, this is what frat boys bought when they had some semblance of taste. Drinkability is relatively effortless, and the taste is not off-putting; for an inexpensive brew, these are major selling points. That said, this is merely an amiable party beer and nothing more. Though inoffensive and far from terrible, it remains ultimately uninspiring. But hey, it can wash down a burger and, maybe, get you laid. That's what's important, right?





GRADE:  C-