The 10 best tallboys $2 can buy

It's hot.

This has been true lately pretty much wherever you are, except maybe Antarctica. Blame climate change if you want. Blame the gods. Whatever. It's too hot to think about it.

You deserve a tallboy.

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Why a tallboy specifically? Because a 24 oz. can is more than a 12 oz. By drinking a tallboy you're saying, essentially, "I'd like to do more than have one beer but for whatever reason I can't. But I'm going to have the biggest one possible without being one of those irresponsible people who would chug a 40." In other words, it's a sound adult decision.

Here are the 10 best choices for your next tallboy excursion:

10. Icehouse

Because I am not a purveyor of fake news, I am not going to pretend that Natty Ice is some kind of amazing beverage experience. Ditto basically every beer with "ice" in the name. The etymology there should be a dead giveaway. These beers are basically ice water with the tiniest little bit of nail polish remover thrown in there along with chemical rice or corn flavor. They get the job done, if the job is getting you buzzed quickly in an alley or a parking lot, but that's about all that can be said in their favor. The exception to the rule is Icehouse. I couldn't tell you why, but for some reason this one is way more pleasant than any of its competitors. If Miller High Life is the "champagne of beers," Icehouse is the Hendricks of beers you can get more than 20 fluid ounces of for less than two bucks.

9. Old Milwaukee

Old Milwaukee just barely edges out Icehouse because the cans look so cool. It's basically the platonic ideal of what a beer can should look like, if by "platonic ideal" we mean "the thing it's easiest to imagine somebody's grandpa drinking after mowing the lawn."

8. Budweiser

Budweiser is fine on draft, great in bottles, and awful in cans. Unless, that is, they are 24 oz. ones. I don't know why this is true but the rule has held up consistently for me over the years.

7. Colt 45

I know it's almost heresy to admit this, but for me Colt 45 is better as a tallboy can than in the iconic 40 oz. bottle. When I was in college I was, very briefly, the editor of a publication called The Fortynightly Review. If I recall correctly we never published anything but the first editorial meeting was great thanks to Colt 45. It's Lando freaking Calrissian's beer.

"Works every time," says the guy who did that little maneuver at the battle of Taanab. What else could you possibly say?

6. Kirin Ichiban

As the geniuses at the old "Stuff White People Like" blog once pointed out, many white people like Japan solely because it allows them to make tedious comments along the lines of, "Well, when I was in Japan, x." Here "x" is almost certainly something about food or drink — e.g., "When I was in Japan, the Kirin tasted way better than it does here." As a fellow white person I can say — without, I hope, anybody calling for my firing — that white people are as usual full of it. Kirin tastes great no matter where you are, especially when it's hot outside. Also: That dragon on the can is just awesome.

5. Coors Light

One time I was editing something by a writer who described someone as "sipping" a Coors Light. I'm not saying this guy was Stephen Glass or whatever, but in the absence of clear video evidence and sworn affidavits affirming that what I'm seeing is not staged, I have to say I find it hard to believe that anybody has ever "sipped" a Silver Bullet. These beers are meant to go down smooth and fast. That's why they have the amazing cold-activated blue mountain logo thing — if the color changes all the way back, you're doing something wrong.

4. Miller High Life

In bottles I tend to think of High Life, with its sparkly amber color and goofy tagline, as more of a novelty than anything else. But when you're in the tallboy mindset it's actually one of the best beers you can drink. Instead of the purely smooth taste you might think is always ideal in these circumstances, High Life is peppery and bright in these big cans.

3. Pabst Blue Ribbon

I get so tired of the dialectic about whether liking Pabst is fine or only for "hipsters," a group of people who stopped existing around the time that Barack Obama asked Mitt Romney to give the '80s back their foreign policy. I don't really care if there was a brief period in the early 2010s when lumbersexual Bon Iver fans drank this because they thought it was funny. My great-grandmother used to drink these every day, and as she reminded me many times when I was a teenager, "Music died with Perry Como!"

2. Narragansett

Narragansett, the preferred beverage of New England fratboys and Quint in Jaws, is brewed in Lincoln Chafee's and H.P. Lovecraft's glorious home state. One of the worst things about living in the Midwest is that it is virtually impossible to get it out here. Somebody should fix that.

1. Coors

Here are some facts about Coors:

• It's brewed from a mountain stream.

• It'll set your head on fire and make your kidneys scream.

• It sure is fine.

• Johnny Paycheck wrote a song about it, which is the source of some of these facts.

• It has been around for a century and a half.

• If you tour the brewery in Golden, Colorado, which is the largest in the world, you get two free beers.

• The best beer in the history of the world is still the best beer in the world if you drink it from a tallboy can instead of the classic "yellow-belly" bottles.