So, the first person here to invent the beer shower could…
…clean up!
On topic: I remember as a young’un seeing a billboard, “Life’s Too Short To Drink Cheap Beer.”
And as a side effect, I can’t afford to get too drunk.
If it comes in a 12 ounce bottle in a quantity of 6 then it’s almost certainly brewed in some mega-brewery by a bunch of guys who know nothing about brewing but are basically factory workers who push a button.
Beers like the recently famous Brooklyn Lager are brewed somewhere up in Western New York in the same factory that brews their competitors. Check the label, folks. The recipe is really the only thing that makes it unique - the brewing process doesn’t change and therefore there is no real “quality” difference, per se.
Sam Adams is not a “Craft Beer”. Stella Artoise is not a “Craft Beer”. If you’re looking for a craft beer you have to go to the microbrew and buy the 1.5 liter bottle that probably comes in quantity 4. If you buy the 12 ounce bottle/quantity 6 pack at the microbrew it probably was shipped there from the factory.
Is there a quality difference between a craft beer and its mass-produced alternative? Yes. A huge one. It takes skill, expertise and attention to make a great beer. Is there a price difference? Not really. Brooklyn Brewery makes 99% (guess) of it’s beer in a big factory in Utica because that’s the only practical way they can deliver product to the Rite Aid in your neighborhood.
Does it matter? Not necessarily. If it’s 103 degrees and I’m sitting on a deck in Texas then ice cold Lone Star is just fine by me.
Mr. Jones is just waiting patiently for July to come so he can make it out to Cisco Brewery on Nantucket. Yummy.
So what are you waiting for? Hop to it!
Well, the thread is actually about cheap macrobrews vs even cheaper macrobrews (NOT craft beers versus macrobrews), but I’ll take exception to this.
Every craft brewer, except two, in Texas bottles 6-packs of 12 ounce bottles on top of kegs. One exception is Southern Star brewery in Conroe, which does not ever bottle and only sells 6-packs in aluminum cans (I’m guessing this still falls under your rule). The other exception would be Live Oak in Austin, which only sells kegs. And they all brew entirely on site with their original owners and brewmasters taking direct part.
Of course, I’m not including the Spoetzl Brewery (Shiner), since it’s not really a craft beer, though they are trying to branch out into that market with some of their offerings.
The thread is about “cheap beer” and “the pricier stuff”. I know because that’s what it says right there at the top of my browser windows.
I would gather that Texas microbrews would go to the trouble of bottling in 12 oz bottles because the 750ml looks too much like a wine bottle for them there Tekshuns and they most likely associate beer in a glass with a cheap kegger.
Admittedly, I speculate.
The 5th of a gallon/750ml bottle format is tried and true over the last few centuries and I can’t see why a craft brew would want to move away from it. Bottling beer is hard. Better off having a machine do it if you have to do it 6 times every time you’re going to make a sale.
Beer isn’t like wine. The price of a bottle of beer will generally reflect the ingredients and work that went into it - unlike wine where a whole bunch of other factors come into play.
Especially at a macrobrewery level where there is virtually no skill that goes into the making of the beer - the price is more-or-less for higher quality ingredients. Do the cheap beers give you the squats? Maybe - could happen. The expensive beers could to if you don’t stomach the ingredients well. The cheap beers have very little of anything that would resemble character or good flavor. They may be beeachwood aged or firebrewed or whatever but they’re still “all like screwing in a canoe” as the saying goes. The idea that Keystone light is somehow “better” or “worse” than Busch light is laughable.
They both suck. But who cares, it’s only beer. Grab yourself a plastic cup and belly up the keg.
I only pointed it out because the OP came back repeatedly and made the point that “the pricier stuff” meant the pricier macrobrews and made specific examples in the OP.
As in Busch vs Budweiser. Budweiser IS pricier than Busch. So, all the stuff about craft beers is a big sidetrack.
Of course, I do realize that actually reading the OP instead of just the forum topic is not always done.
The 12 ounce bottling also holds for Seattle area and Portland area microbrews. I’m pretty sure it’s also true for the Colorado and California microbreweries (but I can’t be certain).
Even the European imports are doing the same thing. Instead of 500mL or 750mL, you’ll often see 12 ounce (~350 mL) or 330 cL = 1/3 Liter (~11.2 ounce) bottles of the German or Belgian imports.
It’s not so much a Texan thing as an American thing. 12 ounce bottles are common everywhere. It doesn’t take a marketing genius to realize that’s probably a good size to use when starting your own craft beer business.
Congratulations, you’ve taken beer snobbery to the next level - taking the bottle size into account.
Technically speaking, there are 3 categories that the mass-market American/Canadian light lager style beers(Bud, Miller, Coors, Labatt’s, Molson, Lone Star, Schlitz, Pabst, Yuengling, etc…) fall into - Premium, Standard and Light.
The difference between categories is defined primarily by original gravity, bitterness and color, with the premiums typically being the highest in the category, and the lights being the lowest.
Within each category, it’s probably the proportion of malt to adjuncts (corn, rice, corn starch, corn syrup, etc…), the type of hops, and the production methods that make the difference. In particular, fermentation temp and lagering time can make a big difference, but they cost $$$.
For example a higher-end standard American light lager might have an OG of 1.045, and about 20 IBU of bitterness, with whatever aroma that’s present coming from Czech & German hops or Czech/German-type US hops (Mt. Hood, Crystal, etc…). It might be 60% malt,40% adjuncts, and be brewed at 50 degrees, and aged (lagered) for 8 weeks.
A cheaper standard American light lager might be 60% adjunct and 40% malt, and be fermented closer to 60 degrees (faster, more off flavors) and only lagered for 4 weeks (less time for the yeast to remove off flavors). Cheaper to produce, and it tastes like it.
Whoever said that no skill goes into the brewing of macrobrews is absolutely dead wrong. Those guys are typically some of the most skilled brewers out there- believe it or not, it’s VERY technically difficult to consistently brew a relatively low gravity, low bitterness lager with little color day in and day out. There’s nowhere to hide, stylistically speaking- any flaw in mashing, ingredients or fermentation will stand out like a sore thumb in such a beer, while in something like Guinness or an IPA, there’s a lot more latitude for off flavors with all the other intense flavors from hops, yeast and malt going on.
Pfft - There are at least 3 more levels of snobbery that I haven’t even alluded to yet.
I wouldn’t assume that because a beer is European it is a craft-brew beer. Europeans pump out factory beer at incredible levels. We get this idea that a beer must be produced with quality and care because the label is really fancy and maybe there’s some engraving on the bottle, but that’s simply not the case.
All of the European beers that you are likely to find at your local Rite Aid are just factory beers designed to take money from American suckers. None of them are any good.
Certainly they know how to make good beer in Europe - they just don’t put their good beer in six 12 oz bottles, slap it in a convenient cardboard carrying case and ship it off to America.
Some of the beer shipped over from Europe is good. Maybe 1%. Most of it is about on the same level as an Anheiser Busch product or something brewed in a factory and Utica and there’s no real reason to prefer one over the other. Maybe you like Coors light better than Bud Light. I have no problem with that. Just don’t assume there’s any real difference between the two. There isn’t.
You want a good beer - you gotta go to the brewery. I recommend you ask when the keg was tapped.
He pushes a button. He runs a factory. He brews someone else’s recipe. He reports on the bottom line. He’s a foreman, not a brewer.
Maybe we would need to agree on a specific definition of “macrobrew”, but I woun’t call some guy who’s running “Brooklyn Lager” through the bottling line this morning and “Saranac Ale” through the bottle line this afternoon really an artiste.
He’s running a factory. No shame in that.
I don’t know what you’re talking about. Almost every craft and microbrewery I could think of sells beers in 12 oz six packs. It’s dependent on the style, of course, (high ABV beers might come in 4 packs of 12 oz, or in 20 oz bombers, Belgian styles often have their own packaging, although not always, etc.)
Being able to maintain that standard from month to month and year to year is something that macrobreweries have perfected and is to be respected. If it were easy to create a consistent flavor profile on a low gravity, light colored and light flavored beer, microbreweries would have invested more time in doing it in addition to branching out into the higher flavored, higher gravity dark beers that many breweries are known for. IPAs are consistently strongly flavored with hops-- that bitterness can hide other issues that may occur during brewing, and they’re really popular with the microbrewery crowd.
Though I like many of the flavors of craft beer, I do not agree with the sentiment that any beer I don’t like is crap or that cheaper macrobrew beer is automatically crap. I follow the maxim that “good beer is what you like”, and if you are fond of the lighter flavors and session beer tolerance that many macrobrews produce, then it’s good beer for you. Having brewed some mead and sake and seen the process of beermaking, I know that not everything you brew is going to be good, and not everything you make that’s good will be favored widely. Bottle size does not matter, but it does make your stuff more marketable for crowds who are not going to drink a bomber (1.5L) of beer in a sitting and do not always have friends of similar taste to share with. This “only the stuff that I drink is good” snobbery doesn’t help the argument; if I were to take that position, I would out-snob at least a few of the craft beer snobs in the thread with my taste for lambics and oddball stouts.
Beer that you like to drink is good to have - but that don’t make it good beer.
But I’m not too proud to drink bad beer. Bad beer beats no beer. I just don’t kid myself into thinking it’s good beer. It’s certainly possible that a craft brewer can brew a bad batch or can just be a bad brewer.
The factories can’t ever make a truly good beer. Doesn’t matter what the style is. I guess they do better with the lighter beers - but I wonder if you’ve ever put a truly great Pilsner next to, say, Budweiser. I’m sure that Budweiser does marvels for consistency and maintaining a great bottom line. They’re surely an IS09001 certified quality beer.
But does the taste compare to a great Pilsner?
No. It doesn’t.
What are a few examples of “great” Pilsners, in your opinion?
The best beer is free and cold.
(I know you’re not asking me, but I’ll cast a vote for Victory’s Prima Pils, and Pilsner Urquell when drunk near the source.)
Honestly, I think Pilsners taste like shit, so you’re not really proving a point to me, especially because you’ll drink stuff you don’t like rather than abstain from alcohol. 
If we were talking about great stouts, porters, IPAs, lambics, witbiers and Belgian style ales, I might have more to contribute. Additionally, considering that Budweiser is a lager and you’re trying to compare it to a pilsner, which has a different flavor profile, you’re trying to play a game of apples to oranges. Obviously you like pilsner over lager, but I think both taste only good enough to cook with in chili, not to drink by itself.
Having had a sampling from both the craft beer world and the macrobrew world of witbiers, I can tell you that it’s a tie on most counts-- a good “by the book” witbier is going to have a similar taste profile regardless of whether it’s made by a giant multinational company or by a local brewery who is known for flavor consistency. Same goes for a lot of other types of beer. The wealth of different beer varieties is not meant to be a “[x type of beer] is the only good beer” contest, but one wherein people find stuff that is suited toward their own taste preferences.
Well, to be fair, a pilsner is a type of lager, and Budweiser is a lager that is supposed to be based on Bohemian-style pilsners.
I think you’re completely wrong- those guys could make a better Pilsner than PU, Staropramen(AB-Inbev owns them, BTW), Budweiser Budvar, etc… IF they wanted to. There’s nothing stopping them- they have state-of-the-art, high dollar equipment, very experienced and knowledgeable brewmasters, and the market muscle to get whatever ingredients they damn well please.
The fact of the matter is that the majority of beer consumers don’t like beer with much bitterness, maltiness or color, so that’s what the big boys produce, because it sells.
If more people really liked more strongly flavored beer, then you better believe they’d be making that- look at the various Michelob brews (Michelob Pale Ale isn’t bad at all), and that Bud Light Golden Wheat.
A lot of beer connoisseurs can’t really conceive of people whose beer of choice may be Miller Lite, Bud Light or Coors Light. But they exist, and in huge numbers. I have friends who’ll go to beer pubs (what’s the term for a place with 100 beers on tap but who doesn’t brew their own?) and still get something like Harp or Carlsberg if they can’t get Miller Lite. They just don’t like the others for whatever reason.
I agree - Urquell in Czechy.
There are gobs of small breweries in the Czech Republic that make great Pisners, of course. There are a bunch in Gemany too.
They don’t sell beer here.
Yeah, I’ve mentioned it before on these boards, but Pilsener Urquell really just does not travel well. I’m sure the green bottles don’t help, but it’s amazing to me how much of a difference there is in the beer here vs. the same beer drunk in Czech Republic or even in a neighboring country like Hungary. I had the same experience with Heineken. I hate Heineken, but I had one at a fish & chips type place in the Netherlands, and it actually tasted good (and it came in a brown bottle, too.) Oddly, I’ve never quite had that experience with Guinness. To me, it’s pretty much the same wherever I’ve had it, although the closest to the source I’ve been is England or perhaps the west coast of Scotland.