Brits of the escapist, what say you on American specialty beers?

[Ryotknife]

People need to keep in mind that Budwieser, Coors, and the like are suppose to be cheap beers. If we are comparing apples to apples, then Sam Adams, Yuengling, and the like are comparable to European stuff...at least from what ive had (Heineken, Guinness, Hoegarden, Becks, Stella Artios). Same price, same quality.

There are also a few beers that are kinda in no mans land. Killian Red (which is my favorite) is....kinda Irish? Kinda American? It started in Ireland, but the brewery closed in the 50's and was bought by another company. It was also given awards for American-styled lager, so that muddies the waters.

Canadian stuff is good though. Living in Buffalo, NY we drink a lot of Labatt Blue since they have a major distribution center here.

I have noticed lately a lot of people I know basically have to drink the cheap beers like Coors because their body can not handle the hops as they get older.

Guiness is great for cooking though. We made beer battered trout with it. I need to try to cook more items with Guinness. Never tried a british beer though.

Can us Canucks also chime in? If so then American beer tends to, in general, have a poorer taste then ours and European beer. This isn't much of a surprise though, a lot of things like Chocolate, Wine, Cheese, Milk and to many other things to list also have that statement apply to them. I honestly don't even know why either, given that the US is the largest single country I listed, you'd think it would be easier to surpass the quality of the rest.

You lost me on wines. US is usually one of the highest ranked countries in the world in wines (specifically California). US, France, and Italy are on the short list for wines.

http://www.winemag.com/PDFs/2012%20Enth%20100.pdf

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/viator/top-10-wine-destinations_b_3876855.html

http://sfwinecomp.com/pdf/W13-TopAwards.pdf

Although it looks like New Zealand and Australia makes a strong showing as well.

 

[Longsight]

Now this is a thread I can post in without getting angry.

The best beers in the world right now are coming out of the USA. I say this as a Brit and a beer-lover: the US is the place to be for beer at this moment. I know this might be confusing and terrifying to hear, but it's true.

Okay, okay, everything's subjective, so it might only be true for me. But what's definitely, objectively true is that there is a massive craft beer explosion happening in the US right now, more than just your Sam Adams and Yuenglings which have been around for a good while already. You have a few veritable beer capitals producing some of the very hoppiest, tastiest, most complex brews to be found, primarily southern California and north-central Colorado. Four of my favourite breweries of the moment are based in CO. Two of those are based in the same small town.

Without further ado, a brief selection of breweries whose wares you really ought to try:

Colorado:
- Left Hand
- Ska
- Oskar Blues
- Great Divide

California:
- Stone
- Russian River
- Port

The rest:
- Flying Dog, MD
- Dogfish Head, DE
- Plenty more that I really can't think of just now

There are hundreds of others just waiting to be tried, but those should get you going. There are lovely things coming out of Canada too - I'm a big fan of Dieu du Ciel! from Quebec and their frankly ridiculous range of experimental, boundary-pushing taste sensations.

 

[Hagi]

Never really tried any to be honest.

I mean I'm Dutch. Surrounded by Belgium, Germany and the UK. I don't really know how much specialty beer is made in the rest of the world but I do know that in these four countries enough is made to never for a moment have to look elsewhere unless you really want.

Plus, from what I hear our local version of piss water, Heineken, is considered a luxury beer overseas... So that wouldn't be the first place I'd look anyway. Then again, I suppose all that piss water everywhere might serve as a prime motivator for your brewers to prove people wrong about American beer. So if I ever come across any of the beers you mentioned I might give them a try.