Olde English 800

 Olde English "800"

40 Ounces

Alcohol: 7.7%

Even though I drink a lot of great drinks, I'm not above drinking some less than desirable or downright nasty, bottom shelf stuff (Bud Light Lime and Monte Alban Mezcal for example).  Typically this only happens when A) it's the only drink available or B) I'm already mostly drunk and start making poor decisions.

For my review of Olde English "800" the 40 ounce beast (also passionately called OE40 or OE800, if you're into that sort of thing), I didn't even bother pouring it into a glass.  Instead I put on a white tank top and jean shorts, laid on a park bench, and drank it straight from the bottle which was still in the brown bag.  Okay, not really.  

But I wanted to.  

Olde English "800" is a 40 ounce bottle of malt liquor that I guess is trying to imitate beer.  What that means is this liquid is ridiculously disgusting.  It smells of stale dank malts with hints of lemon floor cleaner.  You take a sip and are greeted by a flat, minerally rice flavor, an oddly lingering moldy sweetness and musk, with a very forward grain alcohol bite.  The first couple of sips make you try not to gag.  Then the rest of the bottle makes you question why you're drinking this vile stuff when you have a liquor cabinet full of quality beverages, but magically you get weird cravings to put your car on cinder blocks and watch monster trucks which suddenly doesn't seem all that unpleasant.  You finally finish the bottle and go into a full-blown existential crisis, questioning your life and the meaning of it all.  Why am I here? What's my purpose? Why did I just drink that?  Fortunately, this is short-lived as your stomach is soon trying to force this liquid back out your dirty pie hole.

Once upon a time, my younger brother told me about a drinking game his college buddies did called "Edward 40 Hands," referencing of course, the wonderful Tim Burton movie.  This is where several people duct tape a 40 of Olde English to each of their hands, making them unable to do anything but drink down two bottles of this gloriously disgusting malt liquor.  The rules are you cannot go the bathroom until both bottles are finished and if you puke, you lose.  Simple enough.  

After hearing about this drinking game, since I'm a smart, educated, college-graduate, I said, "Hell yes, bro, let's do this!"  Or something equally stupid and overly-enthusiastic.  The thing you have to realize is, I'm always up for a challenge, to the point of stupidity.  Fortunately... he declined.  Instead, after some negotiation, we decided to just see who could chug a 40 of Olde English the quickest.  I figured since he was still in the peak of his college drinking prime and I was a guy with a wife and kids, I had no chance, but damn if I wasn't going to try. 

We started drinking and things were neck and neck for the first half of our bottles, both of us chugging it down.  Then I started to get ahead, but was stopped when I had to take a breather.  I'm pretty much an old man compared to him, after all.  My brother took this opportunity to try to pass me and chugged even faster.  Then... he stopped.  He paces around my living room, Olde English in hand, looking a bit worried... when all of sudden, he runs to the back door, opens it, and pukes yellow grossness on my back steps.  I don't know what the hell he ate, but seriously, that's not cool.  So, I stop drinking, declaring myself the victor!  After all, he spewed chowder.  He, of course, says that he drank more than me so he won, which is lame since he puked.  Instant disqualification in my mind.  That was the end of my drinking that night, but in true college drinking spirit, my brother was drinking Keystone (or some other pale yellow, watery beer) within a half hour.  What a trooper... or something.

Drink This: if you want a cheap buzz and have a hardcore, strong stomach.
Don't Drink This: if you have any sense in your head or if you access to any other form of alcohol.  Or perhaps you should stick to drinking water instead.  That's probably a smarter decision.  But can somebody tell me why they put an "e" in the word Olde?  Are they trying to trick you into thinking this stuff is fancy and British?  Because it's not.  It's gross.