Quote:
I tried to be cool for awhile and drink connoisseur beer, but it's not cool to fake yourself out. Bottom line is I don't really like ale - I don't care for any bitterness.
I like Budweiser. I admit it. I also like Molson, Heineken, Grolsch, Moosehead, Labbat's, etc. Any other recommendations along those lines welcome. I guess I like lager or pilsner, not exactly sure what the difference is.
My first comment would be to drink what you like, and take small steps outside of those boundaries to explore areas new to your palate. Beer is, without question, an acquired taste; be active in acquiring it. Outside of drinking what you know, also try to appreciate the differences. Get a Czech Pils and then a German Helles, and try to find the differences in taste. In general, Euro Lagers run really close in taste; they're very delicate and thus have subtle differences. There's a chance that what you're looking for is a crisp, clean flavor that's often missing in American micro ales. You want something that washes the palate, not hits it with a sledgehammer, gives you a feeling of slight mixed sweetness and bitterness, and then goes away. American micros have always tended towards ales, and have lately trended to hop-bombs. Try getting some Brooklyn lager or Great Lakes Dortmunder Gold. Both are exemplary beers in the Euro lager style. Once you move on to loving ales, but still don't appreciate a pound of hops in your bottle, look for rye beers. Rye gives the beer a very dry finish; Terrapin's Rye PA, which is great and won a huge award in 2005, was specifically designed because prospective costumers said they didn't want to taste their beer after they finished it. Rye lagers are sort of rare, especially in the US, but its something to keep in mind once you expand your palate.
Most of the time, what throws people off craft beers is the hop flavor. Malt sweetness and hop bitterness are the backbones of beer flavor, and just about no one says that something has too much malt sweetness. To get your feet wet with craft ales, maybe try some brown ales or even hefeweizens. The flavors of these two beers are really different. Brown ales have a big dose of malt sweetness, a sort of bready, earthy, sugary taste, with low hop bitterness. If you drank a Brown right now, I doubt you'd ever utter the word, "bitter." Hefes are light with a big dose of fruity flavors, from banana to orange to clove, and also have low hop bitterness. If you had a hefe right now, I doubt you'd utter the word, "malty." However, both are lighter on the palate than an APA or Porter or typical American Micro, both are low in hop bitterness, and the two can give you an idea of the range of flavors available in US micros. If you're really looking to find out the range of flavors beer can provide, and you don't want to quaff something you don't find appealing, there are still a ton of styles out there for you. Its a matter of identifying what you like about the beer you currently drink, what you don't like, and then which styles provide most of the positives with the least of the negatives.
Identifying those factors may be daunting, but an almost universal truth about beer nerds is that they love to talk about beer. Call your local micro - better yet, stop in - and ask for a rec. If you've got a regular liquor store with great wine guys, ask them about beer. They should be pretty straight with you about whether they know beer or not, or know anyone who does. There are tons of ways to find beer geeks, and once you do, look out: they may make an overly long post telling you what to do.