Beer

I SHOULD have said:
"same as I would a goth-punk High School girl saying she looks that way because ahe is expressing her individuality."

Look... I'm tight as Scrooge McDuck right now except I dont have the money... but even when I did have the money, I didnt plonk down my own cash to try something just because a friend or the guy sitting next to me said it was great stuff.
If he was buying then I'm all for trying new and different.

Which brings us to PBR. When I was visiting my kids in LA and we went out to their favorite dive bar in Hollywood, they did convince me to try PBR.. and bought of course.
Normally I would have turned up my nose at it, remembering it from the old days. But it really was pretty good considering. They said it was a top seller in neaighborhood bars in the area and I saw why.
Cheap and at least as good as Bud Lite, so you knew what you were getting.

And dont forget I'm of the age.. so is Don of course.. where I remember when Heineken was considered a great beer.
I ALWAYS hated it.
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PS: Shiner Bock IS good. Just thought I'd throw that in. But why bother if they have Sam Adams? The Sam's will move faster, most places.

 

This thread made me thirsty, too. So I took a Yuengling out of the fridge and thought I'd join in.

There are a lot of good points here- I'm too lazy to source them, but I thought I'd expand upon them anyway.

With all due respect, I think beer can be to explore something new, feel a sense of belonging and/or comfort and something in between. Most often for me, it's a little bit of both. I've only been drinking beer for 7 years- but I'm the exceptionally rare case that didn't start drinking until after I was 21, so I always had my choice of what to buy and drink. A month after I started drinking I studied abroad in London- so while other folks got drunk for the first time off the likes of Natural Light or Keystone Light , I was having my first drunk experiences off the likes of Fuller's, Young's and when I started running low on cash: Carlsberg. House parties were a rude awakening when I got back to Missouri.

I think if we're talking a combination of quality and financial value Yuengling hits the sweet spot and has no equal. Shiner Bock and Berghoff (which is really only available in Illinois and Wisconsin) are the only other contenders. You can get 12 bottles of Yuengling for less than $10 most places and it still tastes pretty damn good.

I don't get PBR. It's really no better than Miller Lite- yet hipsters who cringe at Miller Lite love it, because it's trendy. In fact, it's trendiness has made it laughably expensive at most bars in Chicago ($3 or $4 for a can- more for a bottle or draft- I figure I might as well drop a few extra bucks on something better).

Anyhow, I'm rambling- so I'll get to the point- I figured I'd include a list of my top 5 favorite brewers and the top 5 beers that basically blew my mind the first time I tried them- not necessarily my favorites, but they knocked me back.

Top 5 beers that blew my mind the first time I tried them

-Weihenstephaner Weiss (monks started making this beer in the 11th Century- still the best hefeweizen I've ever had, it's got almost an ashy finish to it... but in a good way).

- Abita Restoration Ale- The smoothest pale ale I've ever had, the hops are subtle, but still there. Also, true to the beer's name, Abita (based in Louisiana) gave back a lot of profits to the local community as part of post-Katrina cleanup.

- Boulevard Wheat- this is based out of Kansas City and pretty much only distributed in Missouri, Kansas and Iowa. Still, most bars I've been to in Columbia and St. Louis have it either on tap or in bottles. Still arguably the best American wheat beer I've had.

- Lazy Magnolia Southern Pecan- from Mississippi's one and only package brewery- it stands alone as the best nut brown ale I've had (even over Sam Smith's) made with fresh pecans and goes down well as a great "session" beer.

- Lindeman's Framboise- People are pretty opinionated one way or the other on this beer, but for me- it was the first beer that tasted like fruit juice, but still didn't strike me as "too girly."

Top 5 breweries

1. Sam Adams- Now the biggest American-owned brewery and still finding a way to produce quality and creative beer.

2. Dogfish Head- Did you see "Brewmasters" on Discovery Channel? Or the documentary "Beer wars"? If not, go see them. Sam Caligione is definitely both the craziest and most creative brewer out there. Also, their pumpkin beer is "the truth" as the kids say...

3. Two Brothers- This is brewed in DuPage County, IL and pretty much only available in the Chicagoland area. So there's some hometown bias; still, they make a good IPA and a wheat beer (Ebelweiss) that gives Blvd. Wheat a run for its money.

4. Abita- Doing the entire South proud with their variety of beers and commitment to using fresh ingredients in their beer. Also, they've managed to get pretty good nationwide distribution.

5. Stone- Stone IPA is the hoppiest IPA I've ever had, you can seriously smell the hops in that thing. And Arrogant Bastard is the only beer I've ever had with a label that insults people's crappy taste in beer.

As for beers you can find everywhere- I'm down with the aforementioned Sam Adams, Guinness (I've had better stouts, but it's been pretty unfairly trashed on this thread), most German beers, Stella (usually overpriced for what you get, but still solid), Dos Equis (most Mexican beers fit into that solid B-/C+ category, not the greatest, but always gets the job done) and Newcastle (my English friends would kill me for this one and I've had many better brown ales, but I'm nostalgic for one of the first brown ales I ever had). As for the cheap American domestics- MGD, High Life, Miller Lite and Budweiser are OK, Coors Light is a step below that and I'll only drink Bud Light, Keystone or Natty if someone gives it to me for free (and unless I'm already drunk I might gag a couple times). PBR and Old Style are way overrated- but on the level of the Miller products I mentioned and regular Budweiser.

Oh yeah and Mo, as for Cleveland not having anything good- check out Cleveland's very own Great Lakes Brewery- their Burning River Pale Ale (yep, they named their beer after one of Cleveland's biggest disasters/embarrassed) is ridiculously tasty.

Sorry, it's been a while since I talked about beer.

~ Steve

 

Wow Steve, well done. Very impressed.

I'm getting back in to my american beers and love the fact that Brooklyn Lager is breaking into London very slowly but one beer, Goose Island IPA, is now on sale in Tescos as part of their 'World of Beers' which for me is crazy. I'm not that big of a fan at all.

Sierra Nevada has a much larger presence being in Waitrose now as well. Yum.

What do you guys think of Magic Hat?

 

Steve some good, dare I say great, things come FROM Cleveland, like the Great Lakes Brewery. But when you're talking about good things coming to Cleveland, I dont get my hopes up. However, I was 45 min south of Cleveland and did spot a 12 pack of Yuengling Lager so I nabbed it. It's cooling in the fridge as I write and it will definitely be on the menu for this weekend. Perhaps tonight with a spicy chicken stir fry. I'm hoping it's the great value that I remember. Shiner Bock used to be cheap here but not anymore.

The Great Lakes Brewery has a restaurant too where you can get most of their brews on tap. My favorite is Dortmunder Gold

 

Thanks for the compliments on my list, Mike. I've been lucky enough to live in London, mid-Missouri, the Chicagoland area, Northern Florida and Miami since I hit drinking age, which has exposed me to a lot of beers I never might've had the opportunity to try otherwise.

It's good to hear that American craft brewing is starting to make its presence felt across the pond. When I studied over there (granted, this was 2004- and I haven't been back to England since 2007- so I'm sure a lot has changed in that time), Budweiser was pretty much the only American beer available. I think Sierra Nevada is a pretty good brewery that represents American brewing well (it would've made my Top 5, but their fellow Californians at Stone just edged it in my opinion). Brooklyn Brewery makes some good beer, but as you can tell from my list, I tend to be biased towards Midwestern and Southern breweries. I also kind of slept on Colorado beers- New Belgium, Boulder Brewing and Great Divide all are consistently good and they're the tip of the iceberg for that state.

I'm bittersweet about Goose Island making it to England- since they only made it there by being taken over by A-B- which moved the production of 312 way out of the 312 area code and into New York. Still, I think around Chicagoland at least, it'll give other Chicago area microbrews and Midwestern microbrews a niche to fill with discontented Goose Island drinkers who either swore it off entirely or just will drink it less- Chicago's got plenty of brewpubs and beer bars to dish them out.

Speaking of which- Three Floyds out of Indiana and Bell's and Founder's out of Michigan make some great beers. Founder's breakfast stout is probably my favorite Stout and I used to get either a Three Floyds Gumball head (hop city) or a Fuller's London Pride whenever I'd go to the Globe to watch a Fulham match.

Man, I love beer and posting this makes me miss all the beers I used to drink in Chicago, but have a hard time finding around MIA.

~ Steve