This list of SB Nation’s favorite college beers is like our writers; cheap and boozy

College, for most of us, is where beer tastes are made. Our palates are forged in a cauldron of spring water and fermented barley, tinged with a hint of aluminum and the plastic embrace of a Solo cup. Specifics like IBUs and hop selection are outweighed by alcohol content and per-can pricing. Games like flip cup and beer pong are boot camp for the soul, a training course designed to deceive your brain into craving the low grade poison that attracts you to shiny objects and forces you into snap decisions about Wendy’s hours later.

There’s a wide array of cheap, wonderful beer flooding our institutions of higher learning. Along the Illinois-Wisconsin corridor, you’ll fill your kings cup up with standbys like Old Style, Hamm’s, Blatz, or even the elusive Beer 30. In Pennsylvania, you’ll be greeted by American, Lionshead, or even Straub. On the west coast, institutions like Rainier and Olympia herald the old guard of utilitarian drinking to a region with three hours of catching up to do to match the east’s boozy evenings.

But everyone’s experiences are different, whether their crushing tall boys of Pabst Blue Ribbon or cautiously sipping slimfit cans of Keystone Ice while side-eyeing available trash cans. So what’s your story? What was your cheap-ass college beer?

Christian D’Andrea — Carnegie Mellon University (Pittsburgh, PA) and Vanderbilt University (Nashville, TN)

In my 18 months of fraternity membership (I was on probation, they were on probation, it was a hectic time for all of us), I learned several things about Delta Upsilon. One was a song from 1910 I can mostly remember. Another is that if you fold two slices of provolone cheese over and bite the middle, you can create your own makeshift edible peek-a-boo bra, as our chef Jimmy pointed out to me. The final, and most important one, is that Heinz Field will sell you its surplus beer after the Steelers crash out of the playoffs earlier than expected for a bargain price.

That’s how we ended up with a truckload of Augustiner beer — no, not the Munich brewery, but a b-run supply of what tasted like knockoff Yuengling. It came in plastic 16 ounce bottles designed to be un-hurlable at Antwaan Randle El. It cost $5 for 30 of them. We kept them in a “cold room” in the basement which was really just a storage closest with five window air conditioning units jammed into the walls. I have no idea where the fumes from those machines went, but I have a sneaking suspicion they’re what made our parties so good.

Unfortunately, Nashville didn’t really offer a regional brain cell genocide machine like Augustiner. Local microbrews like Yazoo were too upscale to be more than a “buy-one-get-one” happy hour purchase at a period where I was earning $550 a month teaching children math. Instead, my drinking habits — at this point predicated on country music power hours and making my Saturdays hazy enough to tolerate Vandy football — fell back on an old standby: High Life. While it’s touted as “the champagne of beers,” it should just have a giant “ADEQUATE” on the label. High Life; every bit as committed to getting drunk as you are.

Louis Bien — University of Wisconsin, Madison, WI

I don’t know if it was my place or time or if it is a universal experience that Natural Light just creeps into your college life. Nobody likes it, but you can’t avoid it, and then you start to develop a relationship with it, appreciate it, and even begin to call it beer.

I can’t tell you one college story about Natty because it was involved in almost every story I can think of. It is the most present beer I have ever drank, hanging around like an ugly uncle. That’s the only nice thing I can say about it, but know that I say it with all the love in my heart.

Morgan Moriarty — University of Florida, Gainesville, FL

Salty Dog Saloon during Friday happy hour in midtown is a magical place, folks. The beer is cold and cheap, and the music from the jukebox makes for an atmosphere you can’t really describe. Anyway, at this magical place, you can get a pitcher of Yuengling or Bud Light and two slices of pizza for $9.99. $9.99 people! Look, when you’ve been there since 4 p.m. (yes, Happy Hour starts early in Gainesville) and you’re starving and a few beers deep, this is an exceptional deal. Other than that, their domestic specials were always super cheap, and I dream of paying that much for beer every time I get charged $8 for a cold one here in Atlanta

(P.S., if you’re ever in Salty Dog, order zipperheads. They’re delicious and deadly.)

Jim Lohmar — University of Georgia, Athens, GA

The Manhattan up in the northeast part of downtown (Hi, 40 Watt Club!) sold Schlitz tall boys for two bucks. Nice, dark ambience, old-style jukebox with CDs and everything. In graduate school at the University of Florida, we’d constantly end up at the Salty Dog like Morgan said, or the back patio at Boca Fiesta. Two-dollar tall boys of PBR, and a connecting pool hall with a great ping pong table. Four packs of Old Milwaukee tall boys typically went four around six dollars anywhere in the city. What I’m saying is cheap beer is good, especially in 16 oz. delivery format.

James Dator — University of North Carolina Greensboro, Greensboro, NC

There is only one beer appropriate enough for the degenerate I was in college — Milwaukee’s Best Ice. Here’s my elevator pitch for Beast Ice:

“It’s dirt cheap and 5.9% alcohol.”

That’s it. I need to give you no other information. The alcohol content is such a selling point of this beer that it’s displayed prominently on the can like a subheading. When you buy Beast Ice everyone knows not only what your plans are, but who you are as a person.

Also I made ramen with it one time when our water was out. It was horrific.

Ryan Van Bibber — University of Wyoming

Until I turned 21, my go-to was Schlitz — it made Milwaukee famous! — which was easily available for next to nothing. This was a long, long time ago, when New Belgium and O’Dell’s breweries, just over the state line, were getting big. (Our hippie friends called those beers “Phatty Beer,” I guess because putting a “ph-” on the front of made it some kind of hippie signifier of status, that and patchouli). So those were a nice break from the cheap stuff.

Once I turned 21, life changed significantly. The Buckhorn Bar had cans of Miller High Life, Hamm’s and PBR for a mere dollar. One. damn. dollar. And you could get a Jager shot for $2, so a $20 bill, which is about the most I could scrape together from my work study gig in a typical week, could get you nice and toasty. Now, this was a long time ago, so I think my friends and I can take also claim credit, albeit sorta speciously, for making PBR hip again.

Grant Brisbee — Southern Oregon University

Back before I knew anything about beer, other than it didn’t taste nearly as good as Boone’s Strawberry Wine, the different descriptions confused me. When I wanted something that wasn’t so bitter, I’d guess that a “pale” ale would be my best bet because it was lighter. Says it in the name, right? Dark coffee was more bitter than light coffee, so a pale ale should be light and refreshing.

So thank goodness for Henry Weinhard’s and their colored labels, bottles, and boxes. I was too stupid to know how to distinguish between different styles of beer, but I could sure tell the difference between that green case of Hank’s and that blue one. Gimme a blue Hank’s, I’d say, right before getting five bees for a quarter. It wasn’t ... good beer. But it was cheap, always on sale, and everywhere. Would I have graduated from SOU without Hanks? Maybe.

The only place I see the brand now is in, like, Whole Foods in their fancy root beer section. That’s not right.

When I graduated college 10 years later, though, I was old enough to be able to afford St. Maligix’s Triple-Cream Whale Blubber Porter Stout Reserve, and I’ve never looked back.

Jeanna Thomas, The Wright State University

I went to Wright State, but after two quarters crammed in a tiny dorm room with three other young women I made the call to move to an off-campus house near the University of Dayton campus with some friends from high school who went to UD. As sort of a Dayton Flyer by proxy, there was really only one beer choice, and that was Milwaukee’s Best Light.

Here are some fun facts about Milwaukee’s Best Light, which we affectionately called Beast Light:

I can’t drink beer anymore (thanks, gluten) and I really miss it … but I don’t particularly miss Milwaukee’s Best Light.

What’s your favorite college go-to beer? Let us know in the comments.