Quote:
Originally Posted by CDSmith
(Post 12976708)
Microbrews, yes.
Somebody needs to tell the good people at Coors to get with the times though.
And bud,
and miller
and papst
and ranier or whatever the hell they're passing off as beer these days.
Honestly, if it takes 12 Canadian or European-made beers to get you buzzing it will take you nearly twice as many Coors to get you that same buzz. In light of that it's really no surprise why people say US beer is piss.
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Well, remember alcohol is only one end-ingredient of beer.... and I'd dare say not even the most important.
There are plenty of low-ABV great beers. Some of my favorite beers are Milds (a style that has a low ABV by spec) are low in alchohol... hell, not many realize that even Guinness - as stout as it may be - has less ABV than Budweiser.
There's actually a history as to why most American Macrobeers taste so light-bodied... in WW2, just a few years after Prohibition was lifted and several breweries were struggling to grab their share of the market, a lot of the big boys came to the dunderhead (imho) assumption that women - who were their main market at the time (with all the men overseas) - would prefer their beer lighter-bodied, and so recipe adjustments were made. When the men came back after the war and wanted a beer, what was available to drink were older versions of Bud, Miller, and Coors that we have today... and viola... the American Pale Lager, since it was all there was, became all the rage.
Not all of it's bad, though... it's all what I call "lawnmower beer".. a beer that tastes alright so long as it's nice and cold and taken as a break from mowing the lawn. :)
I do hear what you're saying, though... but I think it might have applied more effectively in the 1980's/1990's... keep in mind that beer has resurfaced in the States to the degree that some of our old "microbrews" are now, literally, macrobrews....
Samuel Adams... Sierra Nevada... even Anchor brewing... could all be classified as "macrobrews," are certainly American staples, and can easily be classified as "good beer"... being bought by more and more Americans every year.
But, yeah... ask Jim Koch, Ken Grossman, or Fritz Maytag (the founders/brewmasters of the aforementioned labels), and they'll probably still refer to themselves as microbrews, since we've given "macrobrew" such a bad connotation .. but my point is that good American beer is widely available...
Americans aren't held to the same traditions as a lot of European communities have been in regards to beer manufacture (such as adherance to the Reinheitsgebot in Germany - the purity laws that state they're only allowed to use 4 ingredients in beer: hops, water, malt, and yeast), so what we can do with beer is a lot more liberal.... seeing what works, and what doesn't... I think giving the whole thing a bit mroe excitement. Personally, I've made hemp and wormwood-infused beers.... beers with candy sugar, beers with molasses, beers with brown sugar... beers with anise.. .I've used every spice in your mom's spice cabinet - and then some... from malt, from cake (no pies, though :) ), from bread... with coriander, with orange peel, with watermelon, with pumpkin.. and people have drank it up, and awards have been given... by Americans.
I guess I'm just saying that whether it be a a 6-pack of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale at your supermarket, a bottle of something experimental from your local beverage market, a growler of oak-conditioned Belgian-style tripel from a brewery on the outskirts of wine country, or just a pint at your local brewpub... American beer is certainly going on, and people that say it's nothing but piss are giving way too much credit to companies that have less and less a share of the market every year.