Brew Review: Tecate

February 8, 2008 - 5:00 pm By John - USMA

Tecate What goes well with food? Beer, of course. But what goes well with spicy and salty food? Tecate, of course…?

First things first: Tecate’s signature red can is alluring in a weird way, like ogling a decent looking girl who seems to have that extra something you can’t quite put your finger on. You can purchase Tecate in glass bottles, but I recommend going for the classic can for the full experience – that smooth, late-night at the local restaurant/lounge experience. Yeah…that’s the stuff.

There are plenty of beer drinkers that despise the taste and smell of Tecate, which admittingly is pretty bland with a slight corn sweetness. While it’s totally fair to pan a beer for tasting less than stellar, Tecate’s light carbonation and taste work to its advantage – when food is involved.

For “quenching your thirst” (your thirst for getting wasted on the cheap, that is) and cleaning your palette, the brew works like a charm; as a stand-alone it’s not up to snuff.

I would bet that Tecate is a great beer for cooking purposes, though…

Tecate stats:

Smells like: sawdust and sweet sweat; blue collar beer

Tastes like: unremarkable but slightly sweet

Alcohol content: 4.50%, with heavy drinkability

badfrog says:

February 10, 2008 at 3:52 pm

Tecate is the only good Mexican beer commonly available in the US. Leon is even better, but you can only get it in the Yucatan. Modelo Negro is similar to but not as good as bass ale. I know it looks like a dark beer, but thats just the caramel color talking.

Mexico makes good tequila, sotol, and baracanora, but even better brandy. Beer, not so excellent.

I was in Sonora over the holidays, and stopped at a roadside stand for a six pack of Tecate. They gave me a plastic bag with Manny, Moe, and Mike on it, filled with ice. “To keep it cold until I got home.”

Not the kind of service you get in the states, anymore.

Zeth says:

February 28, 2008 at 2:59 pm

Well yeah, as mexican, Tecate wouldn’t be my choice for drinking a beer, there are other good things such as Leon or Pacifico.

Mexican beer may not seem good because its mass production. Everything, when mass-produced, has lower quality. The problem is that beer culture here in Mexico is not as strong for people to pay for a better brewed beer. However, there are some brands that are not so commercial but have better taste than those that do are.

An example of it is a beer from Mexicalli called Cucapa. Is sad that you can only find it in international-beers bars, due to it been exported and then reimported. Another one, only sold in Monterrey and Mexico DF, is Kloster. That is one of the most refreshing lagger kinds of beer I’ve tasted, excelent for hot days.

So, in Mexico, it may be hard, but is not a good idea to stick only to those beers sold by big companies. It may be a task of research, but it’s worth doing so.