Budweiser and Bud Light Chelada: One Sip was More than Enough for Me

My first instinct when I hear the word "clamato" is to run. For those uninformed, clamato is a combination of clam juice and tomato juice, and is fairly popular in many areas. As someone who doesn't often eat seafood, and has no real love of tomato juice, the combination just never seemed to work for me. I have tried it in the past, and found that it was fairly salty and a little spicy in a fairly unpleasant way. Imagine my surprise when I discovered that Budweiser was taking this mixture, and combining it with its award-winning beer. The result is Chelada, Budweiser and Bud Light with clamato.

I first heard about this when it was released in Canada, and a few test markets across the United States. Then the Budweiser Chleada seemed to disappear, and I didn't think about it again. When stopping by my local gas station recently, I found the cans of Chelada staring back at me from the beer case. Since I like to try new things, I decided to give it a try and see what it was like.

I tend to love Budweiser and Bud Light a little more than I should probably admit, but mixing it with tomato and clam juices sounded like a combination for disaster. As soon as you pour it into a glass, you'll notice that it doesn't look like tomato juice, or beer. It's actually kind of an odd orange color, and the head of the beer was a weird light orange color. It also has an overwhelming scent of salt from the clam, with an undercurrent of tomato. I kept waiting for the beer scent to kick in, but it never did.

As for the taste, I really couldn't handle either the Budweiser or Bud Light version of Chelada. One sip was more than enough for me. There's a strong taste of the tomato juice, followed by a salty taste from the clam juice. As a real kicker, there's a slight beer aftertaste. I honestly don't know if I would realize this was beer unless someone had told me. You can tell there is alcohol in this, but it's hard to figure out exactly what kind of alcohol.

On a personal note, I'd have to say that the Bud Light version is slightly better than the Budweiser version, but that isn't saying much. It has a slightly more mellow flavor, but the clam/tomato flavor is still the dominant taste.