Are any Yank brews decent?

P

Prince Charles

Ich dien
Came across this in the news.


I don’t drink Budweiser and never have.


I’ve tasted it three times (a total of about 3 ounces), first while at the University of Maryland, once again in Myrtle Beach, SC, in 1984, and then again in Seattle, in 2005, at the urging of their distributor’s rep, who - correctly - observed that tasting a thing 21 years ago wasn’t giving it a fair shake.


It tasted exactly the same: like a wet piece of the cardboard that comes in new dress shirts – and that’s not an original observation. I first read it on the website of the world’s foremost beer critic, Britain’s Michael Jackson. He had almost nothing positive to say about Bud.


I don’t either.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/thepourfool/2011/09/14/why-i-dont-drink-budweiser-and-why-im-not-alone/


BudBowl2.jpg
 
Budweiser has always been far more about marketing than beer.


The founder of Anheuser Busch, Adolphus Busch, refused to drink his own brew, calling it “that slop” (he was German, of course, so it came out “dot schlop”) and stuck to wine.


AB first made its massive incursion into every American beer market not because Americans were clamoring for the fantastic beer but because the uber-financed new St. Louis brewery actually paid the rent for tavern owners who agreed to sell Bud and kick out all their competitors.


http://blog.seattlepi.com/thepourfool/2011/09/14/why-i-dont-drink-budweiser-and-why-im-not-alone/
 
When AB started, there were over 100 small breweries making virtually the same beer as Bud, the mild, aggressively-inoffensive, watery Pilsner, a style that originated in Czechoslavakia as a ladies’ beer; a wimpy alternative for the delicate palates of proper Czech ladies who couldn’t stand the big German Alts and Lagers or the muscular Belgian ales.

In 1960, the number of other regional beer producers peaked out at 175. When Bud dumped mega-millions into the emerging steamroller of television, it was the death knell for all those regional breweries.


By 2005, that number of ”traditional American breweries” was 21.


Today, it’s shrunk further, with over 80% of all tavern sales of those “All American” Pilsners controlled by AB, Coors, and Miller, now merged into Miller/Coors.


TWO companies selling 4/5 of all American Pilsners. Competition?


A doomed effort from the git-go, especially when AB was quite willing to seek out any whiff of copyright infringement and eager to invest millions to swat any new trad brewery that dared to become successful.



http://blog.seattlepi.com/thepourfool/2011/09/14/why-i-dont-drink-budweiser-and-why-im-not-alone/
 
Americans are rejecting mass-produced crap beers in record numbers.


Miller/Coors, at least, is perceived as still being an American company, although that, too, is a smoke screen.


The parent company is SABMiller, based in London, England, an arrangement that was quietly consummated a few years back.


Anheuser Busch was loudly and publicly sold to InBev, a massive Belgian beer conglomerate, about five years ago, which means that the exact percentage of our 80%-dominant “traditional” American pilsners, those tavern staples, still owned by firms in the good ol’ USA is…zero.


That aspect of “American Made” has, frankly, never meant that much to me as a consumer. I drive Volvos and drink Spanish wine and love me a good Belhaven Wee Heavy.


But in terms of my own beliefs, I think American small business is the very beating heart of our society.


In 1980, there were about a half-dozen American craft breweries. That number is now almost 1,500. And this is that small-business paradigm that, I firmly believe, is the eventual antidote to all questions of economic down-turns.


Free enterprise doesn’t work unless everybody can dream and have a reasonable hope their dreams can come true. It was categorically impossible for any American brewery to compete, on anything like a level playing field, with AB and Miller/Coors.

So our country’s aspiring craft brewers simply didn’t try. They embraced their own wildly creative interpretations of virtually every other style of lager or ale produced anywhere else on the planet. They ceded the ground of wimpy, fizzy yellow Pilsner to the mega-brewers and concentrated on…everything else.




http://blog.seattlepi.com/thepourfool/2011/09/14/why-i-dont-drink-budweiser-and-why-im-not-alone/
 
They ceded the ground of wimpy, fizzy yellow Pilsner to the mega-brewers and concentrated on…everything else.


It was, after 80+ years of AB’s ruthless suppression of every brewer who threatened to grown beyond local appeal, the one strategy for which AB and Miller/Coors had no answer.


AB/InBev has tried, God Knows, whelping a bizzarre and increasingly-desperate roster of faux-craft beers, investing in minority ownership in both Red Hook and Widmer, and securing primary distribution for Kona, Goose Island, Fordham, and Old Dominion breweries.


They produced their first ale, a few years back, after focus groups told them Americans were abandoning lagers in record numbers. It’s an okay ale but nothing that would even crack the Top Fifty lists of anybody’s Pale Ales faves.







http://blog.seattlepi.com/thepourfool/2011/09/14/why-i-dont-drink-budweiser-and-why-im-not-alone/
 
Their most successful attempt to compete in our new, craft-centric beer world competes, oddly enough, not with the nation’s craft brewers but with their biggest mass-producer rival.


Shock Top Belgian-Style White is a direct challange to MillerCoors’ long-time favorite, Blue Moon, the first of many faux-Belgian spiced ales to gain a toe-hold in the US. Shock Top, predictably, takes the idea behind Blue Moon and goes it one worse.


I’m certain that some marketing exec at AB-InBev reasoned that, if people like Blue Moon’s spice character, they’d like it, uh, more if it was…more spicy! We’re Americans, after all: Less is NOT more – More is More. In this case, however, that thinking misses the point. Blue Moon is subtly and appropriately spicy. Shock Top is like drinking a Christmas fruit cake – one that’s been regifted a few times.



http://blog.seattlepi.com/thepourfool/2011/09/14/why-i-dont-drink-budweiser-and-why-im-not-alone/
 
Go with American microbreweries. In the Seattle area we have Redhook, Elysian, Deschutes, and Mac n' Jack's. Sam Adams outside of Boston is probably the most popular in the US, and I have a case of their delicious Octoberfest seasonal right now. My personal favorite is the Alaskan Brewing Company. I tried a local Everett, WA, brew a while back called Scuttlebutt, and that was really good.
 
Elias Koteas said:
Go with American microbreweries. In the Seattle area we have Redhook, Elysian, Deschutes, and Mac n' Jack's. Sam Adams outside of Boston is probably the most popular in the US, and I have a case of their delicious Octoberfest seasonal right now. My personal favorite is the Alaskan Brewing Company. I tried a local Everett, WA, brew a while back called Scuttlebutt, and that was really good.
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Its Legion dude.
 
I know, but its an excuse to brag about American microbreweries. Only a moron would judge European beers by Heiniken, Becks, etc., so I think all of the Brits on the board understand that American light lagers aren't a very good measure of the quality of our beers.
 
the vast majority of our mainstream beers suck, but we have awesome microbrews. I constantly vouch for magic hat and dogfishhead myself . .
 
John Bull said:
Came across this in the news.


I don’t drink Budweiser and never have.


I’ve tasted it three times (a total of about 3 ounces), first while at the University of Maryland, once again in Myrtle Beach, SC, in 1984, and then again in Seattle, in 2005, at the urging of their distributor’s rep, who - correctly - observed that tasting a thing 21 years ago wasn’t giving it a fair shake.


It tasted exactly the same: like a wet piece of the cardboard that comes in new dress shirts – and that’s not an original observation. I first read it on the website of the world’s foremost beer critic, Britain’s Michael Jackson. He had almost nothing positive to say about Bud.


I don’t either.

http://blog.seattlepi.com/thepourfool/2011/09/14/why-i-dont-drink-budweiser-and-why-im-not-alone/


BudBowl2.jpg
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There are a ton of micro-brews made locally around the nation that are top notch. If I were to suggest a commercially produced beer it would be Sam Adams Lager.
 
No. None of them are decent. Our stupid laws even make Guinness barely palatable. I was so pissed when I got back from the UK and ordered a Guinness... Weak rubbish. It takes a while to get used to it. We've regulated beer into barely passable... don't bother with US brews unless you are here, then if you are stick to micro-brews and imports.
 
Damocles said:
No. None of them are decent. Our stupid laws even make Guinness barely palatable. I was so pissed when I got back from the UK and ordered a Guinness... Weak rubbish. It takes a while to get used to it. We've regulated beer into barely passable... don't bother with US brews unless you are here, then if you are stick to micro-brews and imports.
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I would debate that. Sam Adams, Yuengling and Leinenkugel are small macro-breweries but they do make some top notch products. I would also recommend Schlitz. They have returned to the original formulation that they used prior to the 1970's and from drinking it myself I can see why it was once one of the most popular lagers in the country. It also demonstrates the pathetic decline in domestic American brews in the 1970's who prior to that were as good as any brews made in Europe but ultimately had to answer to the short term Gods of Wall Street and their demands for profits. Most macro-breweries attenuated the quality of their beers to lower costs and increase profits and produced low quality products and many top notch brewers went out of business doing this. Pabst Blue Ribbon, Stroh's, Blatz, Schlitz, Carlings Black Label, Old Style, Hamms, Scheiffer's were all good quality lagers who changed their formulas to use cheaper ingredients. So "the laws" in the US aren't the culprits in the decline of American Breweries. They were the victim of short term corporate thinking to maximize profits to meet expectations from the Street.

So I'd try the 1960's formula of Schlitz currently on the market and, if you can get it in CO, try a Yuengling (Yuengling is the oldest brewery in the country and uses the same formula as when they were originally founded) and that will give you an idea of what the quality of your typical American made macro brew was like in the US prior to the 70's and how badly they declined in the 70's due to bad business decisions that had absolutely nothing to do with the regulatory conditions.
 
Mott the Hoople said:
I would debate that. Sam Adams, Yuengling and Leinenkugel are small macro-breweries but they do make some top notch products. I would also recommend Schlitz. They have returned to the original formulation that they used prior to the 1970's and from drinking it myself I can see why it was once one of the most popular lagers in the country. It also demonstrates the pathetic decline in domestic American brews in the 1970's who prior to that were as good as any brews made in Europe but ultimately had to answer to the short term Gods of Wall Street and their demands for profits. Most macro-breweries attenuated the quality of their beers to lower costs and increase profits and produced low quality products and many top notch brewers went out of business doing this. Pabst Blue Ribbon, Stroh's, Blatz, Schlitz, Carlings Black Label, Old Style, Hamms, Scheiffer's were all good quality lagers who changed their formulas to use cheaper ingredients. So "the laws" in the US aren't the culprits in the decline of American Breweries. They were the victim of short term corporate thinking to maximize profits to meet expectations from the Street.

So I'd try the 1960's formula of Schlitz currently on the market and, if you can get it in CO, try a Yuengling (Yuengling is the oldest brewery in the country and uses the same formula as when they were originally founded) and that will give you an idea of what the quality of your typical American made macro brew was like in the US prior to the 70's and how badly they declined in the 70's due to bad business decisions that had absolutely nothing to do with the regulatory conditions.
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It sounds to me that you are going through the same thing that we had in the UK in the 1970s before CAMRA came along. Unfortunately the main threat now comes from the supermarkets selling ultra cheap booze coupled with the total smoking ban and high excise duties. Village pubs are going out of business at an alarming rate.

Carling Black Label used to be very popular in the UK but you don't see it so much these days, it has been supplanted by Stella Artois, Fosters, Grolsch and Carlsberg

http://www.camra.org.uk/page.aspx?o=gbg09pressrelease2
 
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Aoxomoxoa said:
It sounds to me that you are going through the same thing that we had in the UK in the 1970s before CAMRA came along. Unfortunately the main threat now comes from the supermarkets selling ultra cheap booze coupled with the total smoking ban and high excise duties. Village pubs are going out of business at an alarming rate.

Carling Black Label used to be very popular in the UK but you don't see it so much these days, it has been supplanted by Stella Artois, Fosters, Grolsch and Carlsberg

http://www.camra.org.uk/page.aspx?o=gbg09pressrelease2
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The difference is our brew pubs are exploding and slowly controlling more of the market.
 
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