It was Sunday night, and I had yet to review any beers. Even worse, I had absolutely no clue what to write about for this article.
My usual drinking companion had forsaken me for the first time this year. As an excuse, he mumbled something incoherent about having a multiday hangover and how he would never drink again. I understood, but obviously I could never forgive him.
I considered ignoring my editor's pleas for an article, but in the end, duty called, [Editor's note: Nick Daniels, not duty, called asking for the article] and I grabbed a newly-legal friend eager to go on his first post-21st birthday beer run.
We decided to head over to Bootleggers where the beer coolers, always brightly lit and full of promise, could perhaps offer up inspiration and a subject for this installment.
Bootleggers was, in the end, only the first of a series of mistakes that would plague the remainder of the night.
We soon found that 9 p.m. on a Sunday is a not a very convenient time to purchase beer in Brunswick, Maine.
As we approached Bootleggers, the dim storefront revealed our error. It was closed, and we promptly reversed course back to Maine Street and Hannaford.
As we cruised into the deserted parking lot, the store manager eyed my dirty Subaru and locked his door just as we were exiting the car.
We looked at each other and decided that our quest could not end in disappointment, that we had no choice but to continue on to the most familiar purveyor of beer, Shaw's.
Of course, it wasn't until we pulled into Shaw's equally deserted parking lot that we realized 7-Eleven was much closer and virtually guaranteed to be open.
When we arrived back on Maine Street, we kissed the ground like marathon runners entering the Olympic stadium before striding confidently into 7-Eleven and straight to the beer.
The selection was abysmal, to say the least. The Belgians and IPAs that we had planned to purchase at Bootleggers were forgotten as we looked at the 30-racks and malt liquor.
Then the absurd words of a friend's girlfriend rang through my mind—"Hey, Bud Light Platinum is actually pretty good."—and my decision was made.
It was to be a Budweiser taste-off featuring Bud Light (4.2 percent ABV), Bud Light Platinum (6.0 percent ABV), and regular Bud, or "Bud Heavy" (5.0 percent ABV).
We made our way over to the counters, common beer in hand, and were promptly informed that beer purchases made in this fine establishment after 9:30 p.m. require either a Maine state ID or a passport.
Unfazed at this point in our journey, we left the beers at the counter, dashed back to our rooms for our passports, and returned to claim the spoils of victory.
The beauty of Budweiser is that it defies a traditional beer tasting. Words like "hoppy," "malty" and "flavor" don't apply to a beer that has been brewed, as far as I can tell, to resemble water as closely as possible.
Instead of a standard tasting, we recruited an incredibly helpful roommate to arrange a blind taste-test with our three Buds.
She poured them into marked cups, and we each attempted to determine both which beer was which and which beer we liked the most.
At first taste, all three were laughably similar, so much so that we took turns proclaiming each one Bud Light, only to be confounded further by the next, even more flavorless sip.
Though neither of us had tasted Bud Platinum before, none of the beers tasted any more alcoholic than the rest, usually a dead give-away with higher alcohol content beers like Natty Ice.
For that alone, we can commend the engineers at Anheuser-Busch for producing a slightly more efficient way to drink, though that is really their only accomplishment with their new concoction.
In the end, we all correctly identified the three beers, and we all agreed that Bud Heavy was the best tasting of the three.
Opinions on Bud Light and Platinum were varied, but it was easily my least favorite as it had been imbued with a cloying artificial sweetness.
While you may initially be tempted by the slightly higher alcohol content and the sleek blue bottles which, admittedly, do look pretty cool, the chief concern when buying bad beer should always be price, and you would be far better served by sticking to the Bud sold in cans over their showier counterparts.