The Brew SiteBudweiser Millenium Edition
My boss at work found this little gem at a garage sale over the weekend:
That’s a Budweiser Millennium Edition collector’s pack: a champagne-style corked bottle of Budweiser along with four nice Pilsner glasses. Still in box, basically untouched.
Apparently this was released in 1999, so this is an 11-year-old bottle of Bud, and who knows what sort of conditions it was stored in. However, we’re planning on opening and tasting this beer later this week, just to see. I’ll blog about it, of course.
We looked on eBay, and while there are people trying to sell these off for $50 and higher, the only two actual completed auctions only went for $19.99 and $29.99. So it’s an interesting piece of (recent) beer memorabilia but not worth much on the open market.
What would you do? Would you open it?
Jon – We opened one of these a year ago (a friend’s estate sale find, w/0 the glasses). Badly oxidized. I’d open it if you want a reminder most beer is best consumed as fresh as possible. As memorabilia it is probably more interesting unopened.
There’s no way in the world that beer is any good. Don’t open it – not to drink it, anyway. If you are going to drink it, get some poor shlub who lost a bet to do it. That might be funny if you film it.
I told ya, I think it sounds like what all our “older” bottles of homemade wine/beer tasted like….gross!
Agreed with all points, I don’t imagine it’s going to be very drinkable—but I’m also thinking it’d be good as an opportunity for a bit of beer education too. I wouldn’t be the only one sampling it, so maybe there’s something to a YouTube video idea… 🙂
Open it so i know if mine are any good.
This isn’t a vintage bottle of some delicious craft beer you tucked away years ago for a special occasion…in the end its still Budweiser. Probably won’t be anything special for drinking but could make a cool novelty or gift to a beer lover/collector.
Update! We did open the bottle up last night, and to my great surprise it wasn’t oxidized at all! It had lost some of Budweiser’s usual rough edge (not that there’s much there to begin with, but normally Bud has a sulfury character I don’t care for) and was slightly sweet with a hint of bitterness.
Yes, in the end it was still Budweiser 🙂 , but it was still an interesting experience.