I usually assume when Europeans complain about American beers, they just are complaining about our “domestic” beers like Bud Light, Coors, PBR, etc. which makes sense, they are our bottom shelf beers.
I recently chatted with someone at a party who said “no, all American beers are bad” including microbrewery beers.
I’ve never been to Europe so I wouldn’t know, but I do like my Left Handed Milk Stout, NWPAs, and hell even the hipstered out IPAs.
Are these what y’all are referencing?
Not as bad as American “chocolate” .
I’ve had plenty of really good craft beer but anything mass produced is fine at best and gutter water at worst.
Exactly. Imagine if we judged European beer based on nothing but Heineken.
Short answer: yes
Long answer: yeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeees
It is only wee bit worse than a piss.
Beer-drinking European living in 'Murica here. For certain styles, the US has fantastic beers available. In particular IPAs (which don’t always have to be mega hoppy!), pale ales, pilsners, amber ales, and stouts. Plenty of great choices to be found here, if you discover the right breweries. That’s key, because there are a lot breweries with imo questionable taste.
What’s harder to find are good beers of other styles, such as Belgian or German beers. US breweries try, sometimes, but they aren’t succeeding.
The Belgian and German styles are largely ignored by the national breweries, but a lot of more local or regional microbreweries are crushing it when it comes to them.
This is the correct answer. Pacific Northwest microbrew is awesome for many styles. But not German/Belgian style beers - you guys haven’t figured them out yet. The big nationally distributed beers like coors and bud are basically horse urine.
I’ll say that you’re generally right that American breweries don’t do Belgian beers perfectly always, but there are a handful that are great. The thing about craft brewing is you have to go around and try new things. There’s so many options, and most are mediocre at best. However, with there being so many options, a small few nail certain things, whatever that may be.
That’s kinda the difference - local specialties mostly can’t be beaten on their own turf. Also, in America you’ve got to actually seek out the good stuff and go local, the InBev stuff is meticulously targeted at swine with no taste.
I’m particularly fond of Belgian beers and my partner is fond of German beers. They’re of course not as good in America as the real thing, but there are definitely some solid options. In fact that’s what I will say is nice about American beers: you can find something decent of any style of beer you can imagine, and some truly excellent ones in a handful of styles as you mentioned already.
American beer that is sold in Europe? All the ones I tried, yeah, absolutly.
And most of that microbrew shit doesn’t even count as beer under the Reinheitsgebot.
As a German beer drinker I can say: fuck the Reinheitsgebot. It’s just an old law to patronize the citizen. It’s not about protection against chemicals, just take look at Radler (Beer mixed with lemon soda) for example, plenty of artificial sweeteners and E additives are allowed.
Belgium has a wonderful selection of beers of different flavors. If somebody doesn’t want to taste a nice cherry beer, don’t do it. I don’t need an authority to watch over the beer I drink.
That why it’s called Alsterwasser (or Radler if you really must) and not beer. I actually like the law as it prevents the market from getting flooded with all kinds of shit that calls itself beer. We can still buy Lambic and whatnot here in Germany. It’s just not called beer, and rightly so.
To be fair the Bavarian Purity law is a shockingly awful standard to apply to what should be considered beer. Using that silly standard would eliminate a tremendous amount of great beer simply because it didn’t meet one aristocrat’s measure of what should be in beer.
Yes but have you been to Europe? It’s a giant ball of idiosyncrasies created by some old dudes four or five hundred years ago. And that’s why we love it 😁.
Do not question the sanity of this.
Your reluctance to purge monarchy from your ranks made it obvious that the European Way is letting old rich people dictate social norms.
Monarchs nowadays can’t do shit though. They’re just rich and represent the country somehow. Old rich people is very true for America though.
They’re a legally mandated, inherited upper class with distinct privileges and guaranteed wealth. Doesn’t matter what else is going on, that’s indefensible in the modern world.
Heresy! Burn the heathen!
Some are okay-ish. But there is nothing compared to european beer. German especially.
Germans make great lagers. But that’s it. There’s a lot more beer styles out there and the American microbreweries excel at a lot of them.
The best beers in the usa (said microbreweries) are mediocre at best compared to the low standard European ones. Sorry to say this, but there are very, very few acceptable beers in usa. Mexicans and Canadian are better.
No hate, but they all lack a flavourful taste.
German, belgium and czech beers are great, Irish stouts are wonderful, and so on. You can grab a random (best: local) beer and it will be a good one.
You have to really look out for an acceptable one in usa. If you are lucky, a microbrewery in your area will produce a good one, but you have to have a good portion of luck here. Most of those good ones are brewed by an „imported“ german brewer who got a formal education on this. You can actually study this in the city nearby me and some students think of opening a brewery in the usa. So naturally i got in touch with some of them. One factor is the hops you can get in the us. The quality and taste is very different to the one we produce. You almost cannot reproduce the conditions you have here in the holledau. Even if you get very good hops the malting and the grain is different (mexicans use corn, which actually tastes very good). Barley doesn’t equal barley, so you have the differences here.
Long story short: the ingrediens are different due to locally available products, the methods are slightly different, so you have a different product. Unfortunately the circumstances in the us are what they are, so you need very experienced personell to produce a good beer.
There’s over 400 distinct breweries in Washington State alone, you can’t possibly have enough personal experience to justify sweeping claims of trenda and quality. And we export most of the hops that we grow to countries like Germany, Belgium, and the UK so they’re using the same stuff. I don’t even like beer and it’s obvious you’re talking out of your ass to support preconceived anti-American notions.
Not a European, but a well traveled person who has drunk beers in Kenya, Ethiopia, South Africa, Botswana, Senegal, UK, Poland, China, and the UK, as well as drunk beers from Belgium, Germany, Czech Republic etc, I stopped drinking beer when I drunk American beer. Sure, there are some good microbrews, but holy moly, there are some questionable things that pass for beer in America.
Long time American beer drinker here. The craft breweries here brew some strange stuff these days. There are soon many breweries now it’s hard to stand out brewing something as simple as a porter. Now it has to be chocolate pecan graham cracker infused porter.
I’m curious what they have available over there. Most of our microbreweries don’t reach outside of their own state, let alone internationally.
I’m confident that we have some brews that could go head to head with their best, and I bet they have some that could compete with our worst.
There should be a beer equivalent to the movie “Bottle Shock”
I’ve not tasted many American beers so I could not tell if they all taste like crap, and I also do not drink at all anymore. But being French, I can say that our Belgian neighbors have some exceptionally good beers, as well as Germans do. I loved a few of those, back then. But then they may also be a tad too… tasty for an uninitiated palate ;)
I’m pretty confident there must some local breweries in a few US places that can make quality beer too, the issue would then mostly be to find enough customers willing to drink it because it’s no use to make the best beer ever if most your customers prefer Budweiser or stuff like that.
Idk who you talked to, but I think most European beer enthusiasts would agree that a lot of American beers are awesome. Especially what you mentioned: various IPAs and Stouts, you guys started the modern interpretation of those styles.
Maybe someone who thinks only lagers are legit beer and everything else is “hipster crap”. I’ve met some people with those opinions.
American. I visit Germany once every few years. Each time, I see American beer get better and better. I think, this time when I visit Germany I’ll finally be able to say “Yes, you do beer incredibly well, but American beer has gotten much better, come visit me, I can’t wait to show you.”
I have one sip of German beer and all my hopes and dreams are shattered. We cannot make a beer as good as Kölsch, it seems. Tbf there’s cheap German beers that taste like swill, but it isn’t hard to find just amazing Kölsch in Köln.
Really? I’ve had lots of excellent Kolsch in USA . Try Rosenstadt in Portland for example.
I think this brings up another good point- some states do MUCH better than others. From what I’ve seen, the best beers come from the West Coast (especially the Northwest), the Mountain West, Midwest, and Northeast.
Someone here said they hated the beers in Texas and yea, like don’t expect a great authentic taco scene in North Dakota. The worst beer I’ve ever had was from Florida.
Part of that probably has to do with agriculture. A substantial share of the world hop supply is grown in the Willamette Valley.
75% in fact!
Full disclosure, I’m a Seattle born beer enjoyed so I mainly drink microbrews, or what some folks have told me is “fancy beer”.
My parents moved to the PNW from California in the 80s, and they were amazed at the sheer amount of options. Back then it really was just Bud, Coors, and PBR, but even back then the microbrew scene was budding in Portland and Seattle. My dad would tell me how when they would go back to visit old friends in California, it was either amazing wine of shit beer. People’s minds were blown when they would bring some stuff down from up north to the party.
Originally from the PNW as well! I have chosen “fancy beer” most of my life. When I was younger and looking to get trashed, the higher ABV and better flavor made due a good bargain. Now that I don’t really tend to get trashed, I like to drink “fancy beer” because I enjoy the flavor still.
A little tip, if you still live in the area:
If you homebrew and have soda kegs, February is about the optimal time for “no-chill” brewing. Just rack the hot wort into a corney keg, seal, and flip it to ensure pasteurization. After letting it sit for a few mins to become sterile, flip back upright and put outside in the cold (ideally in a bit of snow if available) and you get a bit of a cold crash while still not needing to use a chiller.
Ooooh I want to get into home brewing! I joined the Lemmy community a few weeks ago.
I moved the Chicago for the entertainment industry, and I was pleasantly surprised by the beer here. I would say the difference between PNW and Midwest beers are that PNW likes to go big and bold- high ABV and IBUs. The Midwest likes to make beers that you can drink a lot of (Alagash White is a good one)
Personally, I’ve had plenty of good American Kolsches
Yes. There are exceptions, but most American beer usually fall into two categories:
- Water.
- Infused with a bunch of stuff that shouldn’t be anywhere near beer, in an effort to have it nit taste like water.
At least these are the common denominators for most well known beers.
Exceptions, off the top of my head:
Blue Moon
Shiner Boch
Some weird local brew I stumbled across in Galveston
While it doesn’t hold a lot of flavor, I do enjoy Miller now and then.You don’t even have to go as far as Europe. Canadians and Mexicans also think of American beer as water+.
There’s almost no good beer in Mexico
This may objectively be true, but I’ll take Mexican commercial beers over American ones any day.
Corporate wants you to find the differences between these two pictures
Yeah what the heck is this take? Lol Mexico has no good beers, decent sure. It is not a beer destination
I wouldn’t know, I’ve never had Mexican beer. I just know my Mexican friends here in Canada love our beer and agree that American beer is just water with extra steps.
Then I would suggest actually trying American beer. Judging American beer by only trying BudMillerCoors would be like judging Canadian beer only trying Labatt’s or judging Canadian donuts by only trying Timbits AFTER the Burger King takeover.
Who says I haven’t tried American craft beer. I’m half American, dawg.
The opinion you previously gave is proof that it is an uninformed opinion.
I mean sure, you can disagree with my opinion. But me saying that I have had craft beer in the (specifically in Colorado and in the northeastern states) and didn’t find it better than the stuff I have in Canada isn’t really an uninformed opinion, unless you want me to do a full American brewery tour or something. I’m just some random person on Lemmy.
Kind of weird how personally people are taking it lol.
You called it “water with extra steps” which is how others know you aren’t being honest.
I recently chatted with someone at a party who said “no, all American beers are bad” including microbrewery beers.
That person has not tried “all” American beers. So their view can be safely disregarded IMO.
