The Great Beer And Pickle Experiment: Can A Good Pickle Improve A Bad Beer?

In the nearly four years since the beginning of the Covid pandemic, many people have come to have a greater appreciation for things they may have previously taken for granted.

You know, the truly important things in life: the love of family, and friends, good health, having a job and a home, and golf, and beer and pickles.

Can A Good Pickle Improve The Taste of a Bad Beer?

This was the subject of an experiment I did in the summer of 2020. I was inspired to do so by an article I read on golf.com. The idea was that while you're out on the golf course on a hot summer day, you may have to drink less than quality beer. If so, you could salvage the brew and your thirst by plopping a good old pickle in the beer.

Now, this didn't make sense to me, although I could forgive someone for trying something like this under trying circumstances. But, while beer may make a bad round of golf more palatable, a bad beer can't be helped by anything.

Start With a Great Pickle and be Bold Enough to Choose a Bad Beer

I used a very common mass-production light beer. The brand, by the way, has since seen its market share plunge after making questionable marketing decisions.

As a craft beer lover, it's the sort of beer I couldn't choke down even if it was 100 degrees and I was missing every putt. However, I'm also a lover of good pickles and I used one of the best Yakima area pickle brands BIG PAPA'S.

Brian Stephenson

A Bad Beer Can't Keep a Good Pickle Down

The good news, even though the delicious Big Papa's pickle couldn't redeem the bad-tasting mass production swill, the beer didn't hurt the pickle. It was still crisp, spicy, and delicious.

Brian Stephenson

Use a Washington State Craft Beer For Maximum Enjoyment

So, my recommendation is to eat a good pickle, perhaps part of a charcuterie board, and then select a delicious craft beer of your choice. I'm going to leave the science to others and simply enjoy consuming good food and beverages as they were intended to be enjoyed.

Brian Stephenson

LOOK: Best Beers From Every State

To find the best beer in each state and Washington D.C., Stacker analyzed January 2020 data from BeerAdvocate, a website that gathers user scores for beer in real-time. BeerAdvocate makes its determinations by compiling consumer ratings for all 50 states and Washington D.C. and applying a weighted rank to each. The weighted rank pulls the beer toward the list's average based on the number of ratings it has and aims to allow lesser-known beers to increase in rank. Only beers with at least 10 rankings to be considered; we took it a step further to only include beers with at least 100 user rankings in our gallery. Keep reading to find out what the best beer is in each of the 50 states and Washington D.C.

Gallery Credit: Angela Underwood

What Are the Signature Drinks From Every State?

LOOK: Food history from the year you were born

From product innovations to major recalls, Stacker researched what happened in food history every year since 1921, according to news and government sources.

Gallery Credit: Joni Sweet