I grabbed this drink at a 7-11 in Beijing for about 7 RMB (about $1 USD). It's sour and tastes like sour apple even thought it's supposed to be plum flavor. I guess it's supposed to be some sort of plum wine, but with 4% alcohol it's more like a bad wine cooler. It's carbonated, weak, and overall not very tasty.

I came across this weird drink in Park City Utah, while on a snowboarding trip. Among all the other regular beer choices, there was this bizarre combination of clamato and Bud (plus a Bud Light version). For anyone who doesn't know, clamato=clam+tomato, clamato is a pretty weird drink in and of itself: tomato juice mixed with clam broth and spices.

See what it looks like after the jump!

I expected this clamato beer to be red, like a bloody mary, but it's actually pink and fizzy. It smells like a strange combination of beer, pizza, and fruit punch - not exaclty the most appetizing scent. How can I describe the flavor? The first thing it made me think of was Doritos, or some kind of chips & salsa. It doesn't seem like it should be a drink. It's thick and a little salty. This is definitely one of the weirdest beer mixes I have ever tried, I was really surprised to see it in the store in the first place, and the taste lived up to my every expectation. I honestly can't say I enjoy it, but I've heard from other people that it is good in the morning, and great for hangovers. I'm not sure how much of it I can actually drink, let alone finish off a 24 oz. can of the stuff.

I didn't know it at the time, but Chelada turns out to be a modern rendition of Michelada, a popular Mexican drink made with beer, tomato juice, lime juice, and spices. I recommend trying it in a nice Mexican restaurant rather than going with Chelada.

Dong Dong Ju is one of the greatest traditional alcoholic drinks of Korea. It's served in a bowl with a ladle, and drunk out of a bowl. It's thick like a soup, almost the texture of yogurt, and served cold. The first sip was extremely sour, with a slight flavor of rice wine. But it's actually pretty smooth. It goes down much easier than soju or makgeolli. It is a little sour, even after you get used to it, but there is no aftertaste.  It is alcohol, but even after drinking the whole bowl among two people, I can't feel any effects. It's definitely not as strong as the other Korean rice wines.

Ozeki Nigori unfiltered sake was introduced to me by my Dad at his favorite sushi restaurant, Johnny's Peking Tokyo. This unfiltered sake is white, and they serve it with cucumber shreds in the glass. It is very smooth, milky, and a little sweet. It does taste similar to clear filtered sake, if you've ever had a good (cold) sake. I even think there's a slight hint of banana flavor. If your only experience with Japanese rice wine is sake bombs, this is not at all the same drink. Forget your preconceived notions of sake, try Ozeki Nigori and I think you will like it.

Makgeolli is definitely one of the weirdest Korean drinks I tried. It's fizzy. It looks like it has milk in it, and this makes a weird foam at the top. It smells like vinegar. You can taste the alcohol in it, but it's weak -  like 10%, around the same level as soju or sake. It tastes a white russian gone wrong, plus soda. Even with the small amount of alcohol, after a few sips I can already feel it in my head, a slight soju-like headache. My Chinese friend tells me it's a type of rice wine called mi jiu (米酒）in Chinese, and now that she mentions it, it does taste pretty similar to that, and has the same warming effect on my face. It's surprising how 10% alcohol can hit you quickly if it's something you're not used to.

Sorry about the out-of-focus picture -  It's the best one I could take at the time.

Maybe this drink is not so weird, but it is interesting and should be tried if you get a chance. It tastes like rice wine and is pretty smooth going down. It's a Korean classic. Pictured is one of the most popular brands.

Another rare find at the Chinese Grocery store - Pabst Blue Ribbon! But this isn't your normal PBR, this is Pabst Blue Ribbon Black Beer. Claiming to be "The Original Pabst Blue Ribbon Beer," it's in a black can with gold lettering and barely stands out from the other bright beer cans on the shelf.

I was excited to try out the newest (or oldest?) variety of PBR, but I had to put it in the fridge to chill first. It is indeed black, with a tan foam. Not very heavily carbonated, and not heavy at all. It's got a little bit of a darker flavor than regular PBR, but a little sour and nothing like a stout. It's not great as far as beers go, but it is drinkable if you're accustomed to drinking Chinese beers (a.k.a. you have lowered standards). It's got around 4.5% alcohol according to the label.

The can says 蓝带黑啤 (lan2 dai4 hei1 pi2), which means Blue Ribbon Black Beer. It also has at the bottom an official-looking long company name at the bottom of the can, and it does even say 蓝带啤酒 （lan2 dai4 pi2 jiu3) in the small print, but that's weird to have two different company names. I can't find it on the Pabst China website either, so it looks like we're dealing with a fake here.

It even has the Pabst seal on the can

Can any readers confirm or deny whether this is actually sold/endorsed by Pabst Blue Ribbon?

This stuff smells just like lychee candy.  Since it came in a can I wanted to see what it looked like. Poured out in a glass, this lychee flavored beer is whitish-clear similar to the lychee fruit itself and very bubbly. Judging from the color alone, I would probably be more likely to call this a wine cooler than a beer. It does say 荔枝啤 "lychee beer" on the bottle, but it could just be a translation issue.

Actually, I can't find anywhere on the label that would indicate how much alcohol it has. This leads me to question whether it's a beer or even alcoholic at all, despite being labeled as such and put in the beer section of the grocery store.

It tastes just like it smells. If you've tried any kind of lychee candy or lychee jelly it pretty much tastes like that. There's not a hint of beer flavor, and it's very very sweet. It's a little artificial-tasting, but not nearly as bad as the 1 yuan blackcurrant soda.

This particular brand of lychee beer is called Lan Bei Lychee Taste. I got it in a grocery store in Beijing, china.

Since drinks in bars are expensive in Hong Kong, my friend recommended we go to 7-11 to get drinks first so that we don't have to buy them in the bar. She recommended that I try this drink called "8.4" which is a cider, supposedly.

It was 2 bottles for HKD22, coming out to be about USD$1.40 per bottle. Not bad for a drink with 8.4% alcohol, and considering I knew beers in the bars we were going to are at least twice that, maybe triple.

It turns out that this cider has practically no flavor whatsoever. I've had hard ciders before that I liked before, but this was not it. There was really nothing to be liked or disliked about it. It tasted just like really weak cider or a hint of wine cooler. I think it's safe to say that this is only for getting drunk, people don't buy it for the flavor.

It's not just alcoholic cider, it's cider for alcoholics - if you can even call it cider.

This opaque white beer stood out clearly as the weirdest beer among the other normal beers at the cafe in my hotel in Beijing.  The label in Chinese says  奶啤酒 (nai pi jiu), literally translated as "milk beer." It smells like sweet cream, and tastes a lot like the frosting I had on my last birthday cake. It tastes a bit like cream soda, but not quite as sweet. The best way I can hunk to describe it is whipped cream mixed with flat sprite. It's not bitter at all and if I didn't know, I probably wouldn't guess that it was beer at all. On that note though, it isn't a very strong beer, weighing in at only 3.5% when most flavored beers are more like 4.5%. According to the bottle it comes from Inner Mongolia, a part of china that also I home to an interesting style of milk tea. Thankfully, they taste nothing alike.

This is the first time I've seen or heard of milk beer, but it seems like a version called Bilk was developed in Japan two years ago to use up the excess milk supply in a small town. I decided to do more research about the milkbeer that I found:

This milk beer is made by a company called Health (汉奥斯), which says that this is the "First milk beer in China." It claims to be rich in nutrients like amino acids, calcium, vitamins, and trace elements.  It has no preservatives,  and seems to be healthy. I know beer and milk are both healthy, so why not combine them? I've heard of a lot of people mixing beer and milk, but it didn't seem like it turned out well.

According to Health's website, there is a long history of milk alcohol and milk wine in China, especially with the northern minorities. In the Western Han and Yuan Dynasties, supposedly it was pretty common for the people to mix milk and alcohol and have that as their main drink. Also according to the website, the company won an award for "Outstanding innovative Chinese beer." They produce 6 varieties of milk beer and milk alcohol.

ps.

Windows XP users: Can't see the Chinese characters? It's easy, just follow up to step 4 here: How to Install East Asian Languages

Anyone else seeing boxes instead of characters? Contact me in the comments. and I will help you out.