Worst Beers in the World — Vol. 3
Lone Star: The National Beer of Gas Station Loneliness
By Delilah McSwain, Contributor-at-Large (Texas Division, Pending Escape)
There are beers you remember because they remind you of better nights — I think of Guinness and Pliny the Elder. And there are beers you remember because you woke up next to one — open, flat, and staring at you like a broken promise. Lone Star is the second kind.
It calls itself “The National Beer of Texas”, as proudly stated on the official Lone Star Beer site, which reads like it was ghostwritten by a denim jacket with commitment issues. There’s pride in the can, but it’s the kind that gets loud at Chili’s and tips in pocket lint. It’s not regional identity — it’s marketing cosplay with an oversized belt buckle.
Brewed in a factory of fading myth, Lone Star tastes like someone tried to bottle Texas Flood and forgot the soul. No flavor, just carbonation with a grudge — like soda water that got fired from its job and started listening to Joe Rogan. It hits the back of your throat with the dull rattle of regret and metal, then disappears into a haze of truck stop air freshener and chewed leather.
They say Stevie Ray Vaughan used to light cigarettes off his guitar strings. This beer couldn’t light a memory. It’s the kind of thing you find in the fridge between the mustard packets and a leftover feeling. Maybe Lone Star meant something once — to oilmen, outlaws, or whoever ran out of Shiner. But somewhere between the hipster revival and the frat boy relapse, it lost the plot.
And really — let’s talk logistics. In Texas, you have to drive 45 minutes just to get to a bar with working air conditioning. A night out isn’t a stroll — it’s a low-speed border crossing with gas receipts and heat rash. Who decided beer was the drink of choice in a state where everything’s a road trip and nothing’s walkable?
You’re not calling a Lyft in Lubbock. You’re drinking Lone Star tallboys in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by pickup trucks and liability. It’s less a beverage and more a dare. Maybe that’s the real Texas spirit — alcohol and asphalt, forever in conflict.
And don’t give me the cowboy code routine. The only thing outlaw about this setup is the legal gray zone that says your passenger can shotgun a tallboy while you white-knuckle your way through two counties of sheriff’s deputies and dead armadillos. It’s like freedom got pulled over and issued a warning. The Lone Star lifestyle feels like a commercial for rugged individualism — filmed in a courtroom holding cell.
At this point, I’d rather live in Utah. At least there, sobriety is part of the brand.
You’ll find Lone Star in every Texas dive bar with a jukebox that only works in lowercase. You’ll drink it because it’s cheap, or because the bartender calls you “hon” and you’re too polite to ask for something better. It’s not a beer so much as a rite of passage — the kind that ends with a Facebook breakup and a wallet full of bar receipts you’ll deny in therapy.
It shows up at bonfires, baby showers, and bar fights — not because it’s welcome, but because it knows you don’t have options. It’s the friend who’ll help you move but steal your lighter on the way out.
And the worst part? It’s not even the worst beer by rating. BeerAdvocate gives it a merciful 2.46 out of 5, ranking it among the Worst Beers in the World, alongside such stalwarts as Milwaukee’s Best and whatever Natty Ice keeps pretending is beer. Lone Star isn’t the most offensive — just the most tired. A beer of compromise, dressed in red, white, and stale ambition.
Lone Star doesn’t get you drunk. It just gets you numb. And maybe that’s the point.
Final Score:
⭐️⭐️☆☆☆ (2 out of 5)
Mouthfeel: Regret
Aftertaste: Dusty jukebox
Best Paired With: A broken AC unit and a voicemail from your ex
Would I Drink It Again? Only if SRV came back and asked me personally.
This is Volume 3 of our ongoing series, Worst Beers in the World, following deep investigations into Medalla and the war crime that is Kid Rock’s Bud Light tantrum.
Filed from the patio of a bar in Kyle, Texas, next to a table full of bachelorette cowgirls and a jukebox stuck on repeat. You can watch Stevie Ray Vaughan tear the place apart here — just don’t confuse him with the beer that shows up in his shadow and leaves behind nothing but carbonation and shame.
And that’s a cold shot, baby.
Yeah, that’s a drag.
We let our love go bad.
