Saturday, March 31, 2007

Americans Know Nothing about Beer...

... a thought that came to me while scanning this site with its Top Ten Beer Myths. A waiter in a John Harvard's Brew House in, I seem to remember, Atlanta, once asked me, a look of genuine wonder on his face, why 'you guys' - Brits - ever drank US beer; a beer connoisseur, he could make no sense of our transatlantically depraved taste. Exhibit A is American Budweiser, a thin sharp concoction that must rate as the nastiest drink ever sold. Unless you know better...

16 comments:

  1. Goat's urine mixed with concentrated apple juice and a dash of Budweiser. This is of course the improved formula Budweiser came up with in the late 1970s, though this was refined to the present drink when in 1983, they decided to drop the apple juice following the famous 'Salt Lake City Shakeup', as the boisterous shareholders' conference of said time and place became known.

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  2. As an American, I must sadly concur with your judgment. The mass market American beers like Miller and Budweiser are swill. Coors is even worse. If anyone can distinguish Coors from Perrier, I'd like to meet him.

    However, smaller breweries have experienced a Renaissance since the early 1980s, when mass market brands fell into disfavor with Baby Boomers. The same happened with coffee, hence the rise of Starbucks and Caribou. Smaller brands like Sam Adams are much better, and there are countless other regional brewers and micro-brewers.

    I've taken up home brewing myself, so if I can't find a satisfactory brew at the store I can make it myself. I don't understand why they aren't teaching this in high school.

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  3. I suppose the only thing worse than Bud is Bud Light. When I see an Englishman buying the stuff it seems almost treasonous.

    In Boston I drank a beer called Sam Adams, which was pleasant enough.

    English ale is tops, especially pre-Sunday lunch, but for lager the Germans and Czechs have it sussed. However, the most fun place for beer consumption is Bruges. There's a little bar down a side alley where they have a waiter and menu system and literally hundreds of beers, and each beer has its own unique glass. I recommend one called Kwak, which comes in this kind of test tube attached to a wooden stand.

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  4. You need a Campaign for Real Ale, Duck, It saved us from the horrors of Bad Beer.

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  5. If anything could make me an activist, it is beer. I'm planning a fact-finding mission to England sometime in the near future. I expect Brit can give me a crash course in proper British ale tasting (on my dime, of course!)

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  6. Young's Special, Duck. More than a dime though.

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  7. Keep the second week of August free, Duck. And probably the third, too - just to be on the safe side.

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  8. Beer thing bit America good. Budweisers good European different not better. Liberalism all things equal.

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  9. Hurry up and ask Amanda out Brian

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  10. Again I am deeply impressed by both the intellectual depth and intellectual severerity of honesty of your contributors, Mr Appleyard, even if you are a Rupert Murdoch bitch. That Liberalism is the surrender of the intellect to the slave mentality vacuity of all things being equal is a point of the profoundest profundity.

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  11. American mass-market beer is swill. There are many small breweries that produce excellent beer. Back in the 80's it was almost impossible to find decent beer in America so I started home brewing. The problem is that this spoils you. After drinking home-brewed beer you realize that beer is meant to be yeast-carbonated in the bottle and is meant to be drunk close to where it is brewed.

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  12. Sam Adams' cherry wheat beer is the bomb. Makes a kick-ass shandy, too.

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  13. Goodness Bryan,

    What a mixture both vapid & explosive.

    Harmless enough question I would have thought. For me duck has it right Coors.... Just what is the point of this, this, taste free but uninteresting slightly acid denatured coke?

    But please don't tar all US beer with the same brush. If you include Hawaii in the USA - a big ask ( British flag on state arms ) I spent a very pleasant few weeks sampling beers from micro breweries there all based on English cask conditioned tradition. and since I was from there mostly free.

    Best all time? Must be Harveys

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