Well, if he can do one on pork rinds, here is a re-post of a story I did years ago on 40's:

Works every time The Best of Booze: The News-Letter Guide to 40's
By Joe Grossberg
News-Letter Staff

(Please note: This article is intended as a humorous piece for entertainment purposes only. It should not be taken as an encouragement of irresponsible drinking, but rather a tongue-in-cheek commentary on a vulgar phenomenon. If you must drink alcoholic beverages: please do so responsibly, please be 21 or over and please spend the extra few bucks and buy something that doesn't taste like carbonated urine.)

"Sawed-off shotgun, hand on the pump / Left hand on the 40, puffin' on a blunt." - Cypress Hill, "Hand on the Pump"

Depending upon whom you ask, "40's" (40 oz. bottles of malt liquor) are either an insidious weapon against the bodies, minds and wallets of our nation's poor or simply the lowest form of alcoholic beverage. To the typical college student, however, they represent something entirely different - the cheapest way to get drunk. Very drunk.

Malt liquor is more potent than its more highly esteemed cousin, beer, and comes primarily in one size: 40 ounces. So, unlike that of other malt beverages, the consumption of 40's cannot be broken down into 12 oz. units. If you crack open a 40, that's a lot of drink you've got to finish. And, best of all, the highest price of any brand we surveyed was $1.95. Bottoms up!

Our ratings system

How, one might ask, can one possibly rate the value of a beverage that tastes disgusting? For this task, I called in the 40-drinkin' "dream team" of Nicardo Autobahn and Living Ghetto Fabulous, each of whom I've seen go through three 40's in one sitting.

After an expedition to some of Charm City's finest corner liquor stores, we collected eight brands of malt liquor: Colt 45, King Cobra, Magnum, Mickey's, Olde English, Phat Boy, Private Stock and St. Ides. (Brands that were not available in Charles Village liquor stores were omitted from our research.) For the purposes of our survey, we only included beverages that both came in a 40 oz. glass container and were specifically malt liquor (i.e. not beer or fruit-flavored "Special Brew"). Then, we ranked each brand in seven categories, on a scale of one to five:

• quality of flavor - the drink's (relative) tastiness
• drinkability - how smoothly the beverage goes down
• bottle aesthetics - how attractive the bottle's shape and color schematics look
• bottle engineering - the ease with which one can grip the bottle at its neck
• label design - how well-designed the drink's artwork is
• name - how cool a title the brand has been blessed with
• street credibility - the beverage's reputation with the 40 connoisseurs of America's ghettos, rural areas and college campuses.

Flavor and drinkability were weighed most heavily because, ultimately, one buys a 40 not to look at or talk about, but to consume. Sure, none of the samples tasted particularly fine, but there is bad malt liquor and then there is bad malt liquor. Here, in order of excellence, are the 40's of Charles Village (total scores are out of a possible 50):

Colt 45 (G. Heileman Brewing Co., Detroit, MI)
Flavor: 3, Drinkability: 5, Aesthetics: 1, Engineering: 3, Label: 3, Name: 5, Credibility: 4; Total: 40

This one has it all: a smooth spokesman (Billy Dee Williams), a watery, eminently drinkable texture and, thanks to its omnipresent advertising, a ton of street credibility. Though critics might complain that its flavor and appearance are quite generic, we prefer to think this is because Colt 45 set the standard for the industry. Not to be overlooked is this brand's name. The label and merchandise bear the insignia of a young horse, but we all know what a "Colt 45" really is: a pistol. Though the brand no longer includes an extra five ounces for free (in keeping with its name), you can't beat that combination for 40-ounce imagery: malt liquor and a gun.

Olde English "800" (Pabst Brewing Co., Detroit, MI)
Flavor: 3, Drinkability: 4, Aesthetics: 3, Engineering: 2, Label: 3, Name: 3, Credibility: 4; Total: 36

Much to our surprise, "O.E." beat out the tastier (and trendier) Mickey's for second place. This one is charcoal filtered and features the phrase "40 ounces" not once, not twice, but three times across the top of its classy maroon-and-gold label. We're not quite sure what the "800" refers to, but we do know this: Suburban college kids drink Mickey's, real hardrocks drink O.E.

Mickey's (G. Heileman Brewing Co., Detroit, MI)
Flavor: 5, Drinkability: 3, Aesthetics: 2, Engineering: 3, Label: 2, Name: 2, Credibility: 2; Total: 35

G. Heileman has scored again with this gem. Mickey's, despite being the most delicious of the bunch, has the same two-dollar price tag as the competition. Also, it has the coolest web site (http://www.mickeys.com) of any malt liquor. Though the brand recently shed its "old-school" tapered design for the more common "wide mouth" bottle shape and replaced the toughguy Irish coat of arms of castle, shamrocks and bludgeon with a stupid bee, when one sees the green and gold bottle, one can say, "Well, I may have sunk to drinking 40's, but..."

King Cobra (Anheiser-Busch, Inc., St. Louis, MO)
Flavor: 3, Drinkability: 3, Aesthetics: 3, Engineering: 1, Label: 3, Name: 4, Credibility: 2; Total: 31

With King Cobra, one of the alcoholic beverage industry's heavyweights tries their hands at brewing something even shittier than Busch beer. Though we gots to give them props for keeping the old school design, this bottle isn't easily gripped by its neck. And that means holding it by the body, which means a warm 40, which means King Cobra loses points.

St. Ides (St. Ides Brewing Co., Lehigh Valley, PA)
Flavor: 2, Drinkability: 3, Aesthetics: 2, Engineering: 2, Label: 4, Name: 2, Credibility: 5; Total: 30

St. Ides may not be as "premium" as it claims, but this brand has convinced some of hip-hop's finest, including Ice Cube and Method Man, to endorse it. It tastes bad, but the smooth bouquet makes it go down a little more easily. Added bonus: Imprinted on the back of the label is another "crooked I" insignia.

Haffenreffer Private Stock (Narragansett Brewing Co., Detroit, MI)
Flavor: 2, Drinkability: 2, Aesthetics: 1, Engineering: 2, Label: 1, Name: 2, Credibility: 2; Total: 20

Private Stock (the "Haffenreffer," thankfully, is silent) is "Malt Liquor with the imported taste." Imported from where, you ask? Obviously somewhere they don't drink a lot of malt liquor, because this tastes like shit. Oh yeah, the label looks ridiculous too-like it belongs on a bottle of Worcestershire sauce or something.

Magnum (Miller Brewing Co., Milwaukee, WI)
Flavor: 1, Drinkability: 1, Aesthetics: 4, Engineering: 1, Label: 2, Name: 5, Credibility: 1; Total: 19

Not only is Magnum the most vomitous malt liquor out there, nothing else even comes close. Now that's a fucking accomplishment. The booze experts at Miller represent with an old-school bottle (see King Cobra) and the name can't get much more macho, but that's about all this garbage has going for it.

Phat Boy (Memphis Brewing Co., Memphis, TN)
Flavor: 2, Drinkability: 1, Aesthetics: 1, Engineering: 5, Label: 1, Name: 1, Credibility: 1; Total: 18

Though it isn't the worst-tasting 40 out there (Magnum wins that title hands-down) and the neck is well-contoured to the shape of a drinker's hand, this brand absolutely fails in all other respects. The funky lettering, brown bottle and black/red/yellow/white color scheme make it look like some kind of Generation X-marketed, root beer. The name is ridiculous; people drink 40's to feel manly, not boyish, and when consuming such a massive amount of calories (about 500 per drink), the last thing on wants to think of is phat. And as far as reputation goes, we had never ever heard of Phat Boy before this taste test and now we know why - it sucks.

No more comments! Either someone has violated Godwin's Law, I'm tired of the discussion or, most likely, the ten-week window has closed. You can, however, contact me through email.