Way back in 2006, I originally published The Beer Hacker: Best of the cheap beers? which has since become one of the most-viewed pages on the site. The premise is this: I examined website ratings data to determine the best of the inexpensive, macro-brewed beers on the market.

The beers I selected are what you’d typically find at your local grocery/convenience store/bodega: Miller (Genuine Draft, Lite and High Life), Budweiser, Bud Light, Coors Light, Pabst Blue Ribbon, Keystone Light, Rolling Rock, and Corona. To get at the best of the bunch I’m tapping the collective resource of the web—namely, the BeerAdvocate and RateBeer websites.

Since that time, both BeerAdvocate and RateBeer have undergone changes and revised their ratings systems, and Untappd has emerged as big force in the beer ratings world. So it’s time to revisit these beers with fresh eyes and data, and offer up The Best Cheap Beers — Reloaded.

I’ve taken the original list of beers and added more, trying to represent a decent cross-section of widely-available, mass-market American macro lagers. There are some possible outliers and maybe others that should be included; for instance, how available is Coors Extra Gold? I’ve include Tecate and Tecate Light in this list, should I also include other commonly-available Mexican style lagers, or are those considered “premium?” (After considering this I also included Sol from Molson Coors.)

And of course there are a number of “Light” and “Ice” variants I did not include. If there’s a demand to see that data here, then I can always update.

Note: Scores are current as of the end of April.

Overall Scores, in Alphabetical Order by Beer

For ease of comparison, I’m only showing the average score (on a scale of 1 to 5), omitting BeerAdvocate’s and RateBeer’s overall ranking levels.

Some things to note. In every case, RateBeer awarded lower scores that the other two sites. Untappd and BeerAdvocate are close in some scores, more variant in others, and while Untappd generally scores highest, BeerAdvocate occasionally surprises (look at Schlitz).

Top Scores (Highest to Lowest), by Site

Untappd:

BeerAdvocate:

RateBeer:

Overall Top Scores, Averaged — i.e., The Best

Finally, while it’s not tremendously scientific (I’m not doing weighted averages with standard variances per site, etc.), here are the top scores by overall average for each beer across all three sites.

There you have it. Data! If you’re looking for the best of the cheap American macro lagers, as determined by the collective users of three beer drinking sites, this is your list.