This Is My Blood: Coors Banquet

It's Day 338 and I'm drinking a Coors Banquet, a beer that is somehow neither a cheap shitty college beer nor a well-loved premium beverage. This begs the question—who exactly is Coors Banquet for, anyway (besides desperate bloggers, I guess)? Is there a niche Coors Banquet cult somewhere in the country? Probably! It wasn't that bad of a beer! A little on the sweet side, which is to be expected from any beer that costs a buck (the special ingredient is... corn syrup... so take that as you will). Not bad! But I'm not seeing 30-birds for $14 like I would Hamm's, and I'm definitely not seeing Coors Banquet on tap at like Standard Tap or anything, so I ask again—who exactly is drinking this stuff?

I can think of at least two people in the history of beer drinking who would've drank this—my parents. Not that I ever saw a Coors Banquet specifically in their fridge growing up. I do, however, specifically remember a bunch of Coors Extra Golds in there at one point in time. [Sound of fabric ripping, indicating that at this point the blog splits into three different posts.]

A) The whole Coors brand confuses the hell out of me, because I've never had a Coors beer that tastes different than any other Coors beer, and there are at least four different names. There's Coors Light, obviously. There's Coors Banquet, which PoYB is currently familiarizing you with right this second. There's Coors Extra Gold, which is... something...? And there's Coors Original, which I'm almost certain is actually the same as Coors Banquet. The internet is insisting that Banquet changed its name to "Coors Original" in like 2013, but then explain to me how I drank a Banquet today (and don't try to tell me that this particular can of beer sat on a shelf for seven years, get real). I guess the ingredients are slightly different? I mean, it's like the difference between Coke and Coke Zero—maybe you can tell the difference because the can is telling you there is a difference, but can you really tell the difference?

B) Coors Extra Gold is a beer I haven't seen in years, maybe over a decade at this point. I know for sure that my parents went through a phase way back in the day (this was before their Michelob Ultra phase, so that should date it a little bit). I do, however, know exactly the last time I drank / got drunk on Coors Extra Gold. It was November 30, 2009, and it was the final beer I ever drank while underage. Dave, Nick, and Andrew—a collection of my then-21+-year-old friends at the time—gathered my backyard, and drank with me as we awaited midnight. At 11:50, we walked down to Rockledge Pub, but this was after we were feeling nice and toasty on some Coors Extra Gold. Why was that the case of beer that I bought eleven months into my 20th year (illegally, at Oxford Beer)? I have no fucking clue. Maybe it was some weird attempt at holding onto some distant memory from my childhood (seeing the beer in my parents' fridge) as I slipped through one of the final pivotal moments of adulthood (drinking beer without committing a crime).

C) So if some random fucking weekends that occurred when I was aged in single digits were enough to be an impetus for being a defender of some random fucking beer that might not even be sold anymore, then I wonder/fear what I'm imprinting on my own kids through my drinking habits. Already, Willow is prone to say "daddy's beer!" whenever I drink something besides water at dinner (which, as you know, has been often this year). I even let her smell it sometimes, even though she plays it pretty coy as to whether she likes what she is sniffing. And it's not even like these are negative memories being imprinted. It's not like my parents beat me after drinking Coors Extra Gold, and it's not like I'm ignoring my kids by staying out late and drinking Coors Banquets with my pals. It's just... I dunno, ya wonder in what subtle ways you are affecting your kids in everything you do, and you don't want beer, of all fucking things, to be one of those things that affects them, even a little bit.

Thanks for reading what I have to say about Coors Banquet.

NOTES

BEER: Coors Banquet

STYLE: Adjunct Lager

ABV: 5.0%

BREWED BY: Coors Brewing Company

LOCATION: Golden, Colorado

PURCHASED AT: Chase's Hop Shop

PAIRED WITH: pizza (from Philly's Finest, which I would rank right behind Rising Sun Pizza at this point, but Pam disagrees)

GRADE: 3 pukes out of 5

 

BEER COUNT: 507.5