American beer really fucking sucks. Collectively I mean. There are one or 2 out there that are ok, but they always cost a zillion dollars for a lousy 6 pack. But all in all, American beer is piss water. I live in Milwaukee, and I confess 90% of the beer that comes out of this town is shit. Miller brewing wonders why it’s sales keep dropping? Stop bottling goat piss and calling it beer. I enjoy going on a web site called “Rate Beer.com”. I just made another entry. Last night I noticed a beer at the Pick-n-Save. “Sterling”. An old name in beer, but it’s the first time I’ve ever seen it in this part of the country.
Pittsburgh Brewing Company makes this stuff. I bought a 12 pack. It’s shit.
I dumped the rest of the beer out and ate the cans. They tasted better than the foul, corn water inside of them. I’ve tried just about every beer there is. Cheap beer, medium priced beer, expensive beer. American brewers need to stop putting corn and rice in their beer, abandon chemical fermentation, and brew a decent beer at a good price. And they need to sell more beers in bottles. The biggest complaint I have is about being able to taste the fucking can more than the beer itself. You can not convince me that the beer Fredrick Miller, or Captain Pabst brewed 150 years ago tasted like the slop their companies are pumping out now. Blech.
Actually, American beer is very good. You just happen to drink cheap shit. What do you expect for $4 for six?
Good American beers at reasonable prices:
Sam Adams
Pete’s Wicked Ale
Sierra Nevada
Yeungling
Of course, you’ll have to pay maybe another two bucks per six-pack. But all of these should be around $6-7 bucks per six.
Other American brews that may or may not be available in your locale are:
Stoudt’s (Scarlet Lady E.S.B. is yummy)
Troegs
Flying Fish
Anchor Steam
Smuttynose Shoal’s Pale Ale
Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot
C’mon down to the Baltimore area, enjoy some great brews, and take home a case of Natty Boh. :eek:
What part of "I’ve tried just about every beer there is. Cheap beer, medium priced beer, expensive beer" did you not get?
I’ve tried it all. The problem with the beers you listed is, like I said earlier, a person should not have to pay $8.99 for a six pack of beer. (that’s how much some of those cost around here). That’s absurd.
Are you drinking the beer from the can? That’s your first mistake right there. Get thee some beer glasses, and pour the beer into them first, then you won’t taste the can. Sheesh.
Your second mistake, as Neurotik mentions, is that you are buying shitty beer. Now, I’m as staunchly patriotic as the next guy (why is american beer like sex in a canoe? Both fucking near water…), but truth be told, Canadian mass-market beer is only very slightly better (Moosehead beer: the only Canadian beer with a picture of the factory on the label) Whereas the microbrewed beers from the States are just as good as good beers anywhere. In fact, the best beer I have ever tasted anywhere is New Glarus Uff Da, from Wisconsin. Mmmmm. Uff Da… [wipes drool from chin]
So you’re gonna have to accept that U$ 6-8 per six-pack is the minimum you’ll even look at, and then start sampling. I recommend a beer tasting. Get a dozen friends, buy a couple of bottles of a dozen different styles, and see what you like. I’d get a lager, pale ale, wheat beer, kolsch, brown ale, IPA, bock, dark lager, bock, porter and stout, at the least. Most all mass-market beers are lagers, which is my least favourite style of beer, and the mass-market ones are poor implementations of it, so it is no wonder I’m no big fan…
Then buy a dozen different beers of your favourite style, as identified by you and you alone, with no influence of mass-marketing hype.
Hey! presto! you’re drinking good beer 
Once you have been to Europe and tasted REAL beer, American beer all tastes like watered down window cleaner.
[Monty Python] American beer is like having sex in a row boat…it’s fucking close to water. [/Monty Python]
I totally agree about the chemical fermentation and the fucking corn water. A lot of Americans seem to have no palate for beer at all. Philistines.
Actually, to buy beer, a person needs to spend exactly that much. Below that, it is not beer, but piss-water. The reason piss-water is brewed with rice and corn and all that shit is that it is cheaper than barley, and they pass the savings on to you. There are hundreds upon hundreds of American brewers not using that stuff, but they charge $8.99 for a six-pack. Not much you can do about that, unless you start brewing your own. But it does not point to American beer being shitty, it points to you being cheap 
I get Yuengling recyclables for $14 a case.
It’s a respectably good beer, and I’m close to the brewery, so it’s always fresh.
Budweiser, while not good, is never… bad. Each Budweiser I’ve ever had is identically and consistently mediocre. This may not sound like much of a bragging point to you, but their is a great deal of comfort on my part in knowing that my beer will be drinkable.
Lots of times I have had truly excellent beers, only to find that the next case I bought was skunked. I have the memory of the perfect beer in the form of a St. Pauli Girl. For me, no other beer has come close to that one occasion and that one beer. But all St. Pauli Girl’s are different. Same with Heineken, Guinness, etc.
As Forrest Gump says: “Premium Beers are like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’ll get.”
Consistency is a virtue.
Rheingold has come back from the dead and is available in NYC. It’s a pretty damn decent dry beer.
Ha. I bet you also like to complain that you’ve tried all the different kinds of scotch that sell for $8.99 a bottle and none of them taste like that single malt you had once in Aberdeen.
<------- Smokes weed instead.
Fucking shitty American weed.
I didn’t know that Sterling was still available. You sure are right; that stuff is like drinking watered down cat piss. As a teenager we drank anything and wouldn’t drink that stuff. You must be fucking crazy to have finished a sixer of that stuff.
PK, you gotta move somewhere with better breweries. I live in a town of 25,000 people and three breweries. They make everything from IPAs to a Scottish Ale that will bend a spoon.
$3 a pint is about the maximum price, 6 packs cost about $6-7 and I can get a growler (1/2 gallon bottle) for $5.
Oh, and they all use barley and hops that were grown within 200 miles. Some of them even contract with farmers to grow specific strains of hops and barley.
Whistlepig
Oh yeah, cites. I’m too lazy to cut and paste URLS, but if you are coming to Montana, google:
Blackfoot River Brewing Company
Sleeping Giant Brewing Company
I love the fact that they are both about a 10 minute walk from my house. And best of all, the “Oktoberfest” beers are coming!
i have to admit, i do enjoy some of the american beers. albeit they’re weak, and some have little or no taste at all, they do the trick nicely sometimes.
now, Canadian beer…there’s quality! 
To coin a phrase, Fuck American Beer. That’s right, FAB. I’ve only had a few good ones, and most were microbrews. Maybe I was spoiled after a year at RAF Lakenheath, where I was introduced to Tetley’s (bitters,) John Courage (bitters,) Guiness (Irish stout, not the American export) Bass Pale (pale ale,) Big Ben (lager,) McEwuans (SIC) (Dark ale) and many others. European beers, especally from the UK and Ireland are the best in the world, bar none.
Pfft. The darkest fucking beer I ever had was from Athens, Georgia. Printer’s Ink Stout. I held it up to a bright light and it was still perfectly opaque. And it was heavenly. Abita Turbo Dog. Fat Tire Ale. Dixie Brewing’s excellent Blackened Voodoo. There are plenty of American brews which stand up to the best the world has to offer, including “factory” Guinness.
I’m a Shiner Bock man myself. “Taste one, and you’ll understand.” Many of the so called “microbrews” are specialty beers that will only be palatable to a distinct niche. I enjoy some, but not others. What mass produced U.S. lagers need to be compared to is mass produced beers opf other countries.
Sorry, but Heiniken or Carlesberg (or Harp, but more on that one later), the dominant Eurppean imports in the U.S., I find no better. The most watery beer around is Amstel. About this notion that beer has to be made according to German purity laws to be good I feel is pure bullshit. These people have been fooled by marketing campaigns. That a beer has to be more exxpensive to be better is also bullshit. The biggest price of producing beer is the sterilization of the equipment.
Some Mexican beers are OK, some taste even more watery than any american beer.
I have it in my favorites somewhere, but can’t find it right now, I have a link to a list of beers and their alcohol content. Quite surprizing. Harp is surprizingly weak. Amstel light is the lighest beer period. Budweiser has a higher than average content. Busch, a cheaper beer, has a marginally higher content than Budweiser.
Not to say that alcohol content determines a quality beer. Magnum, Country Club, or King Cobra would be up there if that was the case. But when compared to mass produced lagers of other lands, the American brands are respectable.
Lets also keep in mind that I’m 6’1 and weigh almost 250. Trying to get a buzz on good beer would cost me a mint!
But on average I drink about 3-6 beers almost every day: 1-2 after work, 1-2 with supper, 1-2 in the evening before bed. Now, you all know I make a good living, but putting out almost $10 a day for beer is ridiculous. Ounce per ounce it costs more than gasoline.
My main rant here is with the poor quality of American standards: Bud, Miller, Pabst, cooers etc. All available anywhere. All shit.
And these aren’t really all that cheap either. I see Bud for 17.99/case.
That’s not cheap.
And I do pour beer into a glass. Some of this stuff retains the “can” taste. Blech.
As for the real good stuff: the mainstream brewers should be trying to make their beers that good. You know they could do it at a better price than 8 bucks a sixer. The main problem is the American beer drinkers palate has been perverted over the last 30 years by “light” beers, and demand isn’t high enough for the majors to mass produce good, hearty beer!