Those commercials are even more absurd when you consider the fact that they contract out a large portion of their brewing to "the big boys" in the market.

Forgive my American keyboard, but I'm in the middle of a bottle of Krusovice. I was expecting (and obviously not reading the label) a crisp pilsner. As it turns out, Krusovice is a schwarzbier. It's fairly crisp for being black as night, but definitely not the flavor I was expecting. It screams for a good piece of dark bread (with a nice gob of butter on it) to go with it. I don't know that I'd buy it again unless it were on tap, though.

Wow finally a thread that is not above my head on elitistjerks...
In response to Boston Beer company not being a microbrewery; true they are big if not HUGE but they produce an incredible array of really magnificent beers and some styles that are on the fringe of the microbrew movement (see Utopias; there recent hallertaur imperial pilsener; triple bock when they made it). Koch was one of the leaders of the microbrew movement and his ability to produce consistent beers that please both beer-geeks and average joes is quite frankly unequalled.

Anyone else here homebrew? Been at it for about 4 years now and I find that it has really made me cognizant of what is good in a beer--also what is BAD in a beer. This saturday is actually mead day for the homebrew society and down here in Florida we have some badass honey; don't look forward to the mead hangover though.

I met a guy last week that's a beekeeper. I talked to him about buying some bulk honey for mead making, but I haven't gotten back to him yet. I've never tried to make mead before and I haven't looked into what hardware I need to do it.

Mead making is surprisingly simple. Much easier than beer. You don't even need to boil; actually most mead-heads think that boiling casts off a lot of the good honey aromas and flavor, and prefer the non boil method. Pretty much to make a mead must into a mead all you need is the honey, decent water, a receptacle to ferment it in, and some yeast and yeast nutrient. About a gallon of honey to four gallons of water is a good ratio.

Well not so much a beer but an ale -Liefmans Goudenband


Gorgeously fruity, bitter-sweet and some sourness, smells of apples and cherries and some dark fruit .Its makes my mouth water to be honest.

Have that with a bowl of mussels and you're in happy land!

Excellent post in response to a Salon article on "the next great American beer" now that AB is gone:

Brookston Beer Bulletin Blog Archive The Next Great American Beer

In regards to Mead, (a brewing venture i have just embarked upon) here are some links and a great reference book.

The book:
Amazon.com: The Compleat Meadmaker : Home Production of Honey Wine From Your First Batch to Award-winning Fruit and Herb Variations: Ken Schramm: Books

I purchased this after seeing many recommendations from various mead brewing sites. I was not disappointed.

Useful Links:

Got Mead - Mead (honeywine) making, mead drinking, mead recipes

What is really nice on this site is some of the recipes. I currently have 4 jugs that will ferment for a year or more and on this site i found some quick-meads that only need to ferment for a month...yes they will be quite sweet but it'll give me something to do so i don't break into my year-long brews. This is my first mead brewing venture so i have to wait a year to see if i borked my batch. Also i have several farms locally that i can buy honey from in bulk. Plus i can get fruit and maple syrup for my other blends locally from the farms in my area allowing me to truly make a true homegrown vintage.

Here another good link for brewing references.

Reference

If anyone else has some good references or tips please let me know.

--------------------------------------------------------------------

Also has anyone tried Unibroue's dark Belgium styled ale 'Terrible'. It's been around since 2002 but was not carried locally for me till now. Wow...this was damn good. It is quite strong 10.5% alcohol so has a slight bitterness to it. If you like dark beers and like some kick i highly recommend this. Needless to say after splitting 3 bottles with my friend we were feeling quite good.

Having just spent 3 months in the UK, I really didn't like Cobra at all. For the "Indian" beers that are available outside India, Kingfisher is by far the best in my opinion. I couldn't figure out the attraction that you Brits seemed to have for it.

I did sample more than a few pints of Peeterman Artois though, which is not carried much over here in the states. I found that to be fantastic. Waitrose also had a fair trade beer sale and I stocked up on some Beewyched, which I thought was really good for a honey'd ale.

To day I'll be drinkig some sweet Nils Oscar Pils. Swedish small brewery whom really get the genuine taste as "home brewers" do. Yummy.


Sadly link is in swedish, but looking under the image, you'll see three blue circles explaining the taste. From top til bottom: Bitterness, fullness, sweetness.

Nils Oscar Company AB - öl och Sprit - Från Ax till Strupe

I can recommend Efes Pilsen, if you can get a hold of it.

Efes Beverage Group - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

My experience with the American, or in fact any other beer or ale brewed outisde of Europe (with the exception of Budweiser and global trademarks), is somewhat limited. But to those interested in regional specialties, I can nothing but recommend the Bavarian (a state in southern Germany) Weißbier, literally white-beer", ale brewed from malted wheat.

Weissbier has a lot of varities but probably the most common one is Hefeweiss, in which the yeast used in fermentation isn't filtered out. It gives the beer an unique and yeasty flavour.

So if you want to experience something unique and drink something that in my mind is the "beer of beers", take a trip to Munich in Germany, rent a car and take a trip to the countryside and find your nearest monastery. Then enjoy the autumn in the beautiful Bavarian countryside while drinking weißbier and eating grilled pork and potato salad.

Good trademarks you might find in alcohol stores are Erdinger (my absolute favourite), Paulaner and Franziskaner. Erdinger Hefeweiss especially. Note: overuse of said beverage will have an hypnotizing effect to the drinker whenever exposed to the mere presence of it.

I'm sitting here with a Hercules Double IPA from Great Divide Brewing.

It's clearly one of the best beers I've ever had. I'm really stunned. I knew Titan IPA was amazing but Hercules is something much much better.

I'm not sure my bottle of Westvleteren can mach this.

This weekend the beer store by me started getting in Stone's 12th anniversary beer. It's a "bitter chocolate oatmeal stout" and I have to say it's quite delicious. Contrary to having bitter in the name, I don't think it's that bad. It's quite drinkable and even friends who didn't like stouts a lot seemed to at least enjoy a few sips.

Brown's Brown’s Brewing Co. :: Troy, NY out in Albany, NY also has a rather tasty Black Cherry Porter. I'm not usually a fan of porters, but the black cherry sweetens it up just enough. The only unfortunate thing is that it's from a pretty small brew-pup so it's pretty hard to get outside of the immediate area.

Have to say this thread has been helpful for me finding stuff, never would have known about that Maharaja IPA if I didn't read about it here.

I live in NJ, which has some weird beer distribution. We don't even get all of Harpoon's stuff and they are based just a few states away. Fortunately I live in an area with some decent stores, it's just everything is scattered all over the place. I tend to like a lot of styles, except most Wheat Beers, a Dunkelweizen is my limit there.

If you want to try a a bunch of good beers, I'd recommend anything from Weyerbacher. They are based in Easton, PA, and luckily my area is right in the middle of their distribution network. Most everything they make is good, but the real stand out beers they make are beers that have been aged in bourbon caskets. Heresy, the stout aged this way, is excellent, though it is very much a sipping beer. They also have a three other barrel aged beers I know of. Insanity, which is a barelywine, and pretty strong, Blasphemy, a QUAD which I have not tried yet, and Prophecy, a Tripel which I have not had a chance to try. Their other stuff non aged stuff is pretty good too.

Another company which I have recently had some stuff from is Ninkasi, a pretty new and small brewery based in Oregon. Unfortunately, my supplier for their beers has dried up, and I have no way to easily get anything from them here, hoping that changes soon, I still have more of their beers to try!

If you're in the PNW (or outside it, who knows) go for Full Sail Old Boardhead '07. Barleywine, around 9% abv, but only a bit of the sweetness most barleywines have. Mostly reminded me of a brown ale, with shades of an IPA and stout creeping in. Quite tasty, but definitely packs a healthy punch, so drink with caution if you're not used to high-% beers.

I've had some of the St Louis based Schlafly beers in the past and not been impressed, but I had some of their Kolsch last weekend and it was excellent. I'm not familiar enough with the style to know how theirs compares to any others, but the stuff I had was silky smooth and made for a fantastic hot-summer-day beer.

I second that Kolsch. Definitely not my style of ale, but when its hot as shit in St. Louis I think almost anything gets a few extra points.

As far as Schlafly goes, I usually love their #15 amber ale when I get it on tap. Out of the bottle it seems day to day.

OK, I just bought two 6-packs of beer for a party tonight: Longboard Lager and Fire Rock Pale Ale, both made by Kona Brewing Co. in Hawaii. Anyone know what I should expect?

Hertog Jan is definitely the best dutch beer, but it was posted before, so here three german Beers, which i like the most:

Schwelmer Bernstein (4,8% a bit like a Pilsner but a little more spicy, yet a different brew).
Schwelmer Bernstein Bock (with 6,5% and 17° Plato a delicious strong beer with a smooth taste).

Schwelmer is a german Company which exports alot to the USA and Australia, not much to other European countries though (Schwelmer Beer Imports North America, Inc. - Homepage - Brewing since 1830).

The next one is more or less a local one, which is not even available in all parts of Germany:

Vormann Alt, an extraordinary sweet and smooth Alt beer with 5%alc.

Allthough i'm not a big fan of Alt beers, this one is damn tasty and not so bitter.

Edit: Spelling.

Kona beer update -

Neither was all that impressive, but the Longboard was the better of the two. It just seemed to have more flavor, and will probably go with a wider variety of foods. Overall, it's OK for an American-style lager, although I'd have liked a bit more carbonation. For a PA though, I'll stick with Sierra Nevada. The Fire Rock was just damn lacking and I definitely won't buy more of it once this batch is gone.

As far as California breweries go, look for stuff by Bear Republic, Green Flash, Lost Coast, or Stone. All four produce excellent stuff, though obviously Stone is the most famous by a wide margin.

Kona, sadly, is pretty much generic supermarket beer. None of their stuff is really all that distinguishable from the Sam Adams offering of the same type. So basically it's drinkable but you might as well just get Sam.