Ugh...you can't do much worse. If you think Beast is bad, or shun the Natty Light, watch out for this one. For that matter, if you derive a strange comforting feeling from Natty Ice, you should still avoid this dreck. This is probably no better than drinking the alumnium can itself.

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Sometimes you have to do right by a beer, and often that includes drinking it at warmer than freezing temps in the proper glass, but at other times it involves drinking it cold right from the bottle. As such, Old Mil isn't exactly horrible. In fact it sure brings back some memories. Tastewise, its mainly empty with a peppery, near grassy hop + carbonic bite, with a lingering bitter aftertaste. Now putting it into my special Dortmunder glass brings this beers strengths and weaknesses right into focus. Color is alright, a pale golden not yet fading into straw, a quick bubbly head. Aroma of nice hops, some grassy spicy notes, above a grainy background. Flavor is initially balanced with clean very light malts and spicy hops, large bubbled effervescence, all not entirely different from Ayinger's Jahrhundert helles. However, their use of adjuncts (unspecified cereal grains, surely a fair amount of corn, lesser amounts of rice) causes the malt to become heavier and sweeter as the beer loses its cold edge = unbalanced. I swear, it would take little to turn this into a great helles: eliminate or even slightly reduce the adjuncts, bump up the hops a tad, and there you go. Across the range of American-brewed macro pale lagers, this is easily one of the top. For the trucker-chic hipsters, skip the PBR and hit the Old Mil. For the geeks, don't be startled when you see this bring home gold medals at GABF. Addendum: the unfortunate "morning-after" gastric consequences after drinking a quart of this beer at midnight make me wary of ever drinking it again, however.