The Absolute Worst Booze For Your Money

There are many reasons to drink but, in these emotionally repressed times, chief among them is the hope of getting drunk. While there are many affordable and enjoyable options to help shut out a bit of reality on a Friday night, you should take care because, as you will see, among the affordable social lubricants are some truly awful ways to waste your money—and your sanity.

Diva vodka is appropriately named, because its value is largely all about the presentation. Diva vodka is filtered in several important ways during its production, and there's no doubt that serious effort goes into the contents of every bottle. But when the last filter medium is crushed diamonds, you know you've stepped into another universe. The bottle also contains a bunch of cut diamonds and other expensive gems for some reason, none of which have anything to do with flavor or alcohol content, but could probably be used as barter material after the apocalypse. However at just over $1 million a bottle, there are probably more cost effective ways to plan ahead.

Hardly anyone drinks straight vodka anymore it seems, and why would you when there are so many more "exciting" alternatives? One of which is Cupcake Frosting vanilla-flavored vodka. Flavored vodkas are easily the fast food of the cocktail industry, trying to capture all in one bottle what professional barman charge $20 and a hefty tip to do on a night out. And while being charged $20 for a single drink is enough to stop you from ordering a second, the first swig of this will achieve the same result, and still leave you with change from a $20—and the rest of the bottle.

Like Diva vodka, La Lay del Diamante is another bottle of booze that tries to distract you by covering the bottle in shiny rocks. The bottle also contains the work of a bunch of Mexican craftsmen, not to mention pure platinum and sterling silver, that pushes the bottle price above $1.5 million. And although the description of the contents sounds pretty convincing, the exterior is so lavish that any effort put into the liquid contents inevitably ends up sounding like an exercise in justifying making the bottle. This might actually be good tequila, but it's also the beverage equivalent of getting beautiful women to stand around a new car: an appeal to an irrelevant impulse that does nothing but distract you from what is actually being sold. At least shiny stones appeals to both sexes.

There is a myth believed by certain people that decent tequila has a worm floating in the bottle, but they are wrong. The worm is only found in bottles of mezcal, tequila's cheaper friend. It is also possible to buy booze with snakes, dead mice, and even lizards floating around in them, and that's all terrible. There is a long tradition of putting dead things in alcohol, but the only good excuse is for scientific inquiry, not misplaced drunken displays of masculinity. In most parts of the world, finding something dead floating in something you just bought is grounds for a lawsuit, except in the world of juvenile drinkers, where it's a marketing ploy. So remember, if you bring a bottle to a party with a dead thing floating in it, there's a good chance you might end up eating it. Don't be that guy.

It's made by Sam Adams, comes in a brass "bottle," and costs up to $900. And if that isn't enough, it has an alcohol-by-volume content of 28%, so you know this is no session ale. Utopias is a special-edition, limited-release beer, so you might be unlikely to come across it. And that might also go some way to explain that price, which wasn't set by the brewery or a liquor store, but by a guy on eBay (and it sold). So you might be able to find it a bit cheaper somewhere else, if that is something you want. But considering that the bottle alone is going for $100 on eBay, without anything in it, don't expect much. But if you do get your hands on a bottle, what do you have? A sipping beer! This isn't really a beer for drinkers, it's for connoisseurs and collectors. And, like any market that depends on the opinion of a group of connoisseurs, it is apt to be full of hot air and large bubbles that are prone to burst all over your spending money.

There was a time when, if you wanted a beer, you had to choose between bad beer and bad light beer. But not any more, because these days the number of decent craft beers is growing every year—and the number of excuses for not drinking them is shrinking. So unless you spend your days digging holes or punching cows on horseback, and all you really want when you're pouring with sweat is something cold, fizzy, and refreshing, then you might be interested to know that beer now comes with something called "flavor." And while each serving of craft beer might cost more that a single can of "Suds Lite," when you take into account all the extra taste it comes with, not to mention the higher alcohol content, then craft beer is clearly better value for money. Unless you're going to a frat party, in which case save your money and pick up a case of Bud Lite Lime.

A good Scottish single malt is something to be savored, but it doesn't need to cost an arm and a leg. Because, while there are plenty of blended whiskys kicking around for $20 a bottle, for another $15 you can get a bottle of single malt worth taking your time over. A connoisseur might even be willing to spend several hundred dollars for an extra special example, and you know they keep that for special occasions. But how special would the occasion have to be to deserve a bottle that cost $6,000,000? The Isabella's Islay is described by the website as a "very old single malt whisky" but, without an actual age, that instantly waves a red flag. It also comes in a bottle encrusted with over 8000 diamonds and rubies, which is fine if you're in the market for jewelry or people who like jewelry, but not for anyone who is actually interested in the bottle's contents.

Despite the fact that it isn't actually booze, ArKay non-alcoholic whisky is nevertheless a booze abomination. If you love whisky but can't drink alcohol for whatever reason, you ain't gonna like this, and it's hard to think of any other reason that you would want to try. Even if you're the designated driver, you should probably avoid drinks that even just make you smell like booze. Strictly speaking, this is not actually whisky, but a "whisky flavored drink," so who knows what it's actually made of? If the mysterious nature and lack of any real purpose for existing isn't enough to put you off this crime against real whisky, then how about the fact that it also comes in cans? At least you won't have to search as hard for empties to trade in when you're pretending to be a homeless alcoholic.