I drank exactly 12 Steam Whistle beer earlier tonight then promptly fell over. Steam Whistle, a Canadian Premium Pilsner. Dropping people in their tracks since brewing first began.

A question. I do notice that most people are listing dark beers. Sorry if this was already addressed, but are they generally considered to be of higher quality?

Have only skimmed the thread, but I'll go with my two favorites as:
1) Xingu Black Beer
1A) Sam Adams Octoberfest

I could just sit and drink either of those forever...

I believe most of the imports we drink in North America are brewed in local brewerys, beer doesn't travel well.


I have been drinking Flying Monkey's Almost Pale Ale this week and it's a very enjoyable drink!

Tried DFH Theobroma last night (someone mentioned it on the last page). It tasted sort of like 90 minute but smoother. Very good but relatively expensive.

while it's still very much summer, I think its also a product of it getting closer to it being colder and wanting stouts or porters. There are tons of high quality belgian style ales, german style ales, american IPAs+PAs, etc.

No. I think you could make the argument that many darker beers, ales specifically, have more room for complexity and also to hide flaws. Light (colored) lagers are more about precision and subtlety of taste. So if you wanted to kind of back door it and say darker beers are generally of lower quality, I wouldn't necessarily agree but I could follow along.

Craft beer right now is trending bigger and more complex, what with all the imperial versions of standard styles and barrel aging and bugs and whatnot, so a lot of the beers people like to talk about are big, dark, complex ales.

Personally, I'm finding a lot of satisfaction right now in trying to discover really spot on, lower alcohol lagers, and trying to make them myself. I think there's room out there for breweries that focus on making an awesome Munich helles, a wonderful British mild, a beautiful Czech pils, and then do big, imperial-type stuff as one-off batches, but that just doesn't seem to be what anyone is doing right now.

The pendulum always swings back, though.

Sierra Nevada Torpedo smells exactly like a bunch of chicken **** after a rain, which is one of the more unpleasant scents from my youth. It tastes good but I can't get over the smell. Was really looking forward to it too

I mean if I took video of me trying bud light, coors light, and miller light and got them right, uploaded the video to youtube, and linked it here would you even believe it? I guess you can keep on telling me that I can't tell the difference and I can keep telling you that I can but that won't really get us anywhere will it?

I'm also definitely not saying they are tasty or anything, I'm just saying that it is possible to tell the differences between them.

Anyways, I'll give it a try this weekend and report back with what I find.

For something of substance, I'm drinking the Longshot beers from Sam Adams and the Honey B's Lavender is pretty sweet and medicine-y tasting but the Black Hops beer is pretty tasty.

Just a guess here, but I think I could tell bud light apart, but not coors and miller lite

I would agree with this. I simply cannot drink Bud Light, I've tried. There is something different enough about it to be noticeable.

Yeah I'm almost positive I can tell the difference between Bud Light and Miller Lite, mostly b/c BL used to be my piss-beer drink of choice and now it's Miller Lite I guess. So during the switch I kinda noticed a difference and now if I have a Bud Light it tastes horrible.

Kinda like how I switched from Coke to Coke Zero and now if I have a Coke it tastes utterly disgusting to me.

Anyway no idea about Coors Light as I don't really drink it but I'm pretty positive I can tell a difference between Bud and Miller. But I don't want Grue to come in here and yell at me and call me a constructor-of-strawmen again.

Picked up the giant bottle of this tonight for the first time. Am in the middle of my first glass and I like it!

Starts out with a fairly potent champagne-like sweet explosion, which transfers into a kind of black licorice oaky aftertaste.

And you'd never know it's 10% abv from the taste. The alcohol is disguised very well imo.

I've been enjoying some of the more subtle style myself lately, like Czech pils and Kolsch (an ale but lager like).

It seems like quite a few craft brewers are messing around with lagers now when 15 years ago there were not too many. The one thing I have never found though is a craft brewed Munich helles - can you recommend any that have a somewhat wide distribution?

Great film, second the recommendation.

Embarrassed to say I thought Shock Top was a microbrew until I saw it was on tap at Target Field, googled it, and discovered it's made by Anheuser-Busch.

Good packaging, I guess.


Drank enough of this stuff in my early college days to last a lifetime. No complaints back then of course, but it's somehow easily distinguishable now, i.e. both repulsive and flavorless.

my 3 fav...

I dunno if I'd be able to tell myself, but beechwood allergy is somewhat common, and people who have it are sensitive to bud and bud light, and they would definitely be able to tell.

I know many people who get an unpleasant aftertaste from bud, it's likely a mild allergy.

Not a big Kenzinger fan but Yards is pretty much the nuts. Troegs from Harrisburg is also excellent.
+1 to Bells 2heart as well.

Had this last summer off a waitress' recommendation and loved it. It almost matched the 20 oz poterhouse I ate with it .

i was thinking about this when i went shopping for hurricane supplies.

i am not a big drinker at all, mostly because i don't like the taste of anything i've tried (very little). wine is pretty meh to me, and beer, well, i haven't really tried anything other than standard crappy light beers.

i would like to enjoy beer, or even become a beer snob! my question, i guess, is, how do i find a beer that tastes less like swill and more like something i'd enjoy? (fwiw, i drink a lot of iced tea, apple juice, soda, water, just standard nothingness.) this probably makes no sense to most of you, but... any help would be appreciated

Start with "girly" drinks and work your way up to more extreme beers.

Try different styles of beer in general. I'd say try a white ale, fruit beer, pale ale, and a low abv stout (Guinness) for starters. From there branch out into the styles you like.

If you go to try a pale ale I would not try Sierra Nevada's at first just because it will be so unlike something else in that style.

You can also go to a local craft beer store and ask the people there for help, tell them what you like and they should be able to recommend you some beers.

What would you say for a starter IPA then? I always recommend sierra nevada just because its so cheap and mild. Surly furious might be a good choice too.

the furious is probably too strong to be a starter ipa... pretty sure I wouldnt have liked it right away. agreed with sierra nevada, that might be the first hoppy beer I ever liked. maybe harpoon ipa, but I dont think its too different from other ipas.

thoughts on woodchuck hard cider?

I would say the SN Pale Ale is actually a good IPA starter (not pale ale starter though). To me it has the same level bitterness as most IPA's if not more. I'd also try Harpoon, or 90min from Dogfish Head. The 60minute has less bittering but I think the 90minute is better balanced out in terms of bitterness versus malty taste. Jaipur IPA is also an okay candidate even though I didn't really care for it. It's a bit more mellow in taste and seems like it would be a fine starter IPA.

I'm an east coast guy so don't have near as much access to west coast ipas as I'd like.