5 Beers That Are Better Than Their Reputations

The "National Beer of Texas" is my go-to beer. If I go to a grocery store or gas station and they've got Lone Star, I'm buying it.

And yet, every time I'm around friends or family and they see me drinking Lone Star, I get verbally destroyed for drinking such an "awful" beer, while Uncle Jim or whoever is  on his ninth Bud Heavy.

I'm convinced almost every hater of Lone Star has never had it, but they take pride in chiding those who drink it. Because you'll never convince me that any of the popular domestics has a better taste than Lone Star.

One beer I will not defend, though, is Lone Star Bock, which could easily be crowned as the worst beer known to mankind.

Ahhh, the Yellow Bellies.

The first instinct of Beer Snob or Joe Blow who wants to make fun of you for drinking the Banquet Beer is that since you drink Coors Original, you undoubtedly love Coors Light. And we know what every Bud Light and Miller Lite drinker calls Coors Light: "near beer."

First fact: Coors Original tastes nothing like Coors Light.

Second fact: It's delicious.

Two assumptions about PBR drinkers: 1. You must really have no standards if you're drinking it. 2. You're a hipster from Austin who's only drinking PBR because at one point no one else was drinking it and you decided to be "that guy" who wanted to drink it.

No. 2 is probably correct for a number of beer drinkers, but I'm here to defend PBR in the face of critics who slam it. Like Lone Star and Coors Original, PBR is another beer that is preceded only by its reputation, when in reality it's a superior beer than the usual suspects.

And when you can get a 12-pack in East Texas for less than 10 bucks, score another one for Mr. PBR Drinker (that's me). It's the best cheap date on the market.

Pearl's history is long and in recent years, devastating. After Pabst Brewing Company purchased Pearl and eventually shut the San Antonio-based brewery down, it's hard to find Pearl these days. It's only brewed in one place: Fort Worth on a contract with Miller Brewing Company (like PBR), but man, I love me some Pearl.

Pearl somehow developed a reputation, moreso in recent years, of being a bad beer. That's always been news to me, because folks these days have to look mighty hard to find Pearl and thus be disappointed by it. Because it's actually quite good, if you can find it.

Many old-timers aren't there are going to wonder why someone has to defend Old Milwaukee, because it shouldn't need defending with the likes of Miller Lite, Bud Light Lime and Corona often sharing shelves with this too-often-hated beer.