Michelob Porter Ale and Amber Bock are two of my regular stand-bys. I think they taste just fine, and I’ve had beer from all over the world.
Have I had that one special, internationally renowned and critically acclaimed beer that you can onjly get from some obscure gasthaus in some remote village in Germany or Belgium? No.
But I’ve tried all the majors (Tsingtao, Kirin, Peroni, Guinness, Bass, Kiliian’s, Beck’s, Amstel, etc., etc.,) as well as some very, very good local one-offs in Europe, and microbrews that were sublime and some that were worse than mass-produced stuff. There’s a microbrew/restaurant in St. Charles that apparently thinks any fermented beverage served ice-fucking-cold is “good beer.”
I think a lot of beer snobbery comes from people deliberately bashing the “big boys” of beer in order to tout their local favorite, and therefore look like they’re “cool, and in-the-know with the ‘hip stuff,’ dude.”
Which is why it’s interesting that Pabst Blue Ribbon is becoming a “cool” beer again. I see it stocked (and often ordered) at some fairly hip bars, by the same people who also buy the most obscure micro-brews.
Maybe Miller tinkered with the formula some. In any case, it looks like a fashion trend coupled with savvy marketing is accounting more for it’s comeback than anything.
Yeah, I think that’s a lot to do with it. That said, it can be a pretty damn decent beer. I was in Green Bay a few weeks ago and had a PBR from the tap that tasted positively delicious. Usually, PBR is an underwhelming experience for me, and I default to Old Style when I want a real cheap brew, since they are the working class beer of choice around here, and the kegs and bottles get turned around quickly, so you have a relatively fresh product. But I actually did a double take when I had this PBR and exclaimed to my friend, “Holy shit, this Pabst tastes great.” And I don’t think it was the atmosphere in Green Bay clouding my impressions.
But I wouldn’t say all American mass-produced beer is pretty bad. I think Sam Adam’s line of beers is solid, and, while I generally drink beers from Bell’s, Three Floyd’s, Goose Island, and Dogfish Head with regularity, I wouldn’t cry if I had to be stuck drinking Sam Adams for the rest of my life. Their lager is one of the few I actually enjoy. I can’t say the same of Budmillcoors.
I’ve always considered the Michelob line from A-B to be pretty solid, and it’s only gotten better with the intro of Amber Bock and Porter Ale. They’re not extravagantly good, but they are good, widely available, and reasonably priced.
On a side note: for the longest time, I read your screen name as “pukymel.”
Seconded. This is the first product by AB that I have been able to tolerate. I actually would buy it again. It’s not Sierra Nevada, but it’s drinkable.
The main adjuncts used by American brewers are rice and corn. AB mainly uses rice, which is why their beers taste so bad to me. If you have ever had a beer brewed using corn as an adjunct, you would know it. “Corny” beers are very distinctive in their flavor profile. Midwestern super-cheaps were known for that taste.
Because snobs say it does. Really. I like all kinds of beer. I’ve drank all the fancy American beers and all the imports, and travelled Europe and Asia and had their great beers in their homelands. They’re delicious. But I still like American beer about 60% of the time. It’s a different product, and when close-minded people from other countries taste something different, they immediately turn their noses up and say it sucks. A certain percentage of Americans are always going to agree with whatever Europeans say because they think that’s the cool thing to do.
Oh, and microbreweries have been pretty aggressively spreading the “American beer sucks” meme for the last few years at least. It’s marketing.
No, it’s the truth. Cheap beer is cheap beer, wherever you go. Mass produced anything has to appeal to the lowest common denominator, which means the first thing sacrificed is distinctive taste.
I have, and I can’t say I’d ever drink it again. I prefer regular Budweiser to the American Ale. I don’t know what it is, but there’s just something off about that beer. It still has some distinctive Bud characteristics, but then there’s this hop flavor that throws my brain and taste buds off, and I simply can’t make sense of the beer. It’s the grain-bill/body of the beer that doesn’t work for me–it just doesn’t feel right with those hops. That said, I am in the minority in this opinion. Most beer buffs say American Ale is a solid offering from Anheuser-Busch. I’d rather have a regular Bud or Old Style.
You’re saying it’s not marketing for microbreweries to compare mass beers to piss, and put up signs like “Buttwiper” (parody of Budweiser)? And also that cheap beer is objectively bad? I disagree.
Doesn’t matter, you are objectively wrong, Silenus. It’s uis part of their marketing strategy to diss mass-market beers. Signs and advertising that concept are also marketing. And unless you are very, very mutated, something’s financial cost has no distinctive relationship to its taste.
So that weird, almost salty undertaste that makes PBR PBR and MGD MGD, the flavor that is missing from even similar but better beers like Tecate and Stella, that weird flavor that inspired this thread, that’s on purpose? Someone thought that would be a marketing plus? I don’t believe this.
But there’s cheap beer and there’s cheap beer. There’s nothing special about Coca-Cola, but it sure beats RC Cola.
Reasonably good mass produced ales do what they do - refresh you and give you a buzz for a good price - along a range from not very good (Labatt’s Blue) to reasonably good (Stella or Bud.) But if you want worse, brother, you can get a LOT worse. The real economy beers can be genuinely horrible. Lakepooooort!
Well, it’s not so much a marketing plus as it is a design decision. It’s not like Miller comes out with ads saying “Miller Genuine Draft: For The Beer Drinker Who Likes Beer That Has the Aftertaste of The Stuff People Put In Their Swimming Pools To Kill The Algae,” even though it does. But they’ve made a merchandising decision to make a mediocre but drinkable beer that fills a market niche for cheap, light, pop beer. Nobody at Miller has an illusions they’re brewing up first rate stuff, just as nobody at McDonald’s has any illusion that a Big Mac is equivalent to aged prime rib.
I like it. I enjoy a good fancy brew once in a while too. In fact I brew my own. Sometimes a low alcohol low flavor beer is just perfect. In fact I’d say, most of the time it is. I really have trouble drinking beer with excesively high alcohol, I don’t like the taste. I will make the exception for a very hoppy brew on occasion, but usually I very much dislike the bitterness of hops. Specifically, I hate the alpha acids, but I love the more aromatic betas.
If I like beer that appeals to the lowest common denomenator, then I’m not such a snob that I will pretend to like a beer I don’t. I agree, it is all about marketing.
Ironically, I would say it is Tecate that has a horrible flavor and Stella is just as much a tastless lager as anything else. I like Stella though. I don’t like any beers from Mexico. Maybe Corona is OK, but I don’t have any need to pay for it when I’ve got perfectly good Bud Light.
Indeed it can, and if people limit their judgement to their own judgement, that would be different. But it’s very much a conscious marketing technique.