Beer Review: Country Club Malt Liquor — not as exclusive of a club as I thought

"May I breathe stale beer-breath in your face, sir?"

The next entry in my tongue-pummeling series on malt licka’s, Country Club Malt Liquor is interestingly one of the very few not to go with uber-macho iconography like Steel Reserve or King Cobra. Maybe only Old English, in the world of low-class beverages, even attempts to masquerade as similar heights of culture, but both brews are equally tragic in the futility of trying to fit in as a cheap malt liquor in the grocery store next to all the genuinely classy foodstuff like water crackers or the wines they keep behind glass. Old English at least has thinly veiled menace to keep it from being outright ridiculed by the high-class food — no amount of gothic font will hide that it could call on cousins Colt 45 and Steel Reserve to kick some butt in the fine cheese aisle if need be.  Snoop Dogg probably drinks Old English, after all.  Country Club, on the other hand, leads a pitiable existence, shunned (of course) by the food and beverages you actually would expect to find consumed in a country club, and equally scorned by the other malt liquors for being such a dweeb. Country Club is perhaps the only malt licka whose artwork most definitely cannot kick your ass, whose artwork in fact you could steal lunch money from, give a wedie, then a swirlie. I wonder if it hangs out with other supermarket outcasts, like the sardines, or the little thin cigars with plastic mouthpieces.

The picture I include with this post is intended as testimony that I actually drank the thing. And I did make it all the way through, though just barely. It’s not outright undrinkable, but it certainly wasn’t pleasant.  It’s not the worst thing I’ve ever had (see my post on Schlitz), but if you’re looking for a 2-dollar night of fun, you could do better than this.  It is actually pretty bland for a malt liquor — the flavor is bad, but in just a general way, without any of the surprising and novel petrochemical pungencies you get with Schlitz or Steel Reserve.  Heck, Mickey’s may not be much better, but it’s at least got character.  I may not enjoy drinking Mickey’s, but I can at least imagine myself while drinking to be a South Boston street rat who’s tryin’ to make good on his lousy life by makin’ a new start in the boxin’ ring.  Drinking Country Club, what possible scenario can I envision myself in?  A WASP-y guy named Bennett with a trust fund who incongruously drives a beat-up Pinto?  Nah, the cognitive dissonance between the pretensions of the wrapper and the contents inside are just too much for me.

But it is still better than Schlitz.