I also hate beer. Stick to cider if you want to drink something beer-coloured. Strongbow is widely available and okay.
Don’t worry about me finding something to drink, when it comes to liquor, I have no issue with quenching myself. OTOH, it would be nice to enjoy a beer as well, for several reasons. (Cheaper then a mixed drink, can ‘keep up’ with the others with out getting shitfaced etc…)
I saw that, I thought I was getting flipped off. Is it hoppy? I’ve come to the conclusion that it really is the hops I don’t like.
I have no idea if that is seasonal or not, but I’m pretty sure I saw it when I was out looking yesterday. If it is seasonal, you might want to go check. And if you can’t find it, go to either a liquor store or a mom and pop store that sells wine if they buy anything from the company that sells that, they’ll most likely bring it in for you. I’m guessing you won’t mind but if anything, they might want you to buy the entire case 4X6 pack. If they look kinda on the fence about bringing it in, OFFER to take the whole case.
[quote=Ferret Herder]
It’s an acquired taste, much like coffee, and you don’t have the luxury with beer of being able to drown coffee in lots of cream and sugar (and other additives) to the point where it tastes like a caffeinated hot cocoa, and then taper off.
[quote]
I think it’s the opposite. I think you can start (I’m hopping) with less hoppy beers and work your way up to ‘normal’ hoppy.
What does anodyne mean. I looked it up, it means it has healing powers. Somehow I don’t think that’s what you are referring to.
Anodyne is a adjective that is roughly equivalent to inoffensive or innocuous, when used in the sense that Quartz was using it.
I’m guessing he meant that those ciders are the least unusual ones, and that they are the ones least likely to offend or alarm or gross out someone who is new to cider. There are probably more unusual ciders you could try once you’ve developed a taste for the mainstream ones.
I was in your shoes a couple of months ago. I made the decision (again) that I wanted to like beer. I had tried, and failed, several other times, but I really wanted to be able to enjoy a pitcher with my friends. With a little work, I have successfully learned to enjoy beer and I attribute that success to several factors.
The first is cider. Several people have already mentioned cider and it is a great place to start. Throughout college, I drank Woodchuck, which is a fairly sweet hard apple cider. During my senior year (I just graduated in May), I transitioned to some of the dryer ciders. Hornsby and K were readily available in my area and I started drinking them. Woodchuck was just too sweet to drink much of without getting a belly-ache from the sugar.
The other factor, I think, was how I drink my coffee. I drink an obscene amount of coffee and I had been using those flavored creamers, but then I realized that they didn’t actually contain any dairy product in them, so I switched to cream and sugar. From there, I started weaning myself off the sugar and thus developing my taste for bitter flavored things. I think that was a big aspect of me learning to like beer. Before, when I had tried, I didn’t really like the bitter flavor. After developing that like with my coffee habits, I was able to more easily accept the flavor in beer.
So, I started drinking dryer ciders and unsweetened coffee; how did I make the transition to beer? I started with Corona. It’s a lighter beer without much of the flavor that I normally associate with beer. Plus, you get to stick a lime in it. I’ve heard the lime was originally meant to keep flies out in Mexico, but it does a lot for the flavor. I liked how limes taste; I didn’t like how beer taste. Lime flavored beer…I could handle it. I drank a Corona each evening I ate at home and, after a while, I began to enjoy it. When I went out for dinner, I would order something different depending on what they had on tap and make mental notes on what sort of flavors and textures the different beers had.
It took a few months work (work probably isn’t the best word for it…), but I learned to like beer. I recently made Mexican food and decided to pick up some Corona to go with it. Now, I think it tastes kind of weak. I got used to drinking Sam Adams at home and the Corona didn’t have the same body that I was used to.
Anyone who says that North American beer is all crap either lives east of the Rockies or in Canada (let’s face it, the beer situation in Canada is bleak, aside from those guys in Quebec. I can not comprehend, with Seattle and Portland et al so close, how BC can be such a beer wasteland. There are a handful of passable micros up here, but generally, egad!)
I second the Belgian approach for the OP. Try a fruit lambic perhaps.
Now you’re displaying your own ignorance. There’s plenty of beer east of the Rockies that’re mighty fine. Having lived in Colorado and Michigan, I can say that the Michigan beer scene is at least as good, and some think better, than the Colorado beer scene.
Off the top of my head, all of the following are top-notch beer producers based east of the Rockies, with a skew towards Michigan beer since that’s what I’m most familiar with:
Bell’s
Jolly Pumpkin
North Coast
Founder’s
New Glarus
Dogfishhead
Goose Island
Dark Horse
New Holland
Arcadia
There’s a ton more. Your west coast beer prejudice cannot abide!
American beers of note
Sierra Nevada
Everything else. 
If the Double Chocolate Stout doesn’t disgust you, try a Newcastle Brown Ale next.
Darn you, ScareyFaerie! I had just about gotten my jones for Bishop’s Finger buried, and here you go picking at the wound! <mutter, mutter>
Now I have to start looking up flights to Britain again.
okay, through an odd twist of fate, I’ll be stopping at Trader Joes in the next hour or so. I need some UNHOPPY beers, any ideas. Remember, unhoppy, starter, beginner, ‘girly’ sweet beers. Maybe I’ll check into ciders while I’m there.
I drank hard liquor in college, detesting beer until I finally tried Guinness Stout at an Irish pub. If you like liquor, maybe you’ll like the darker beer varieties, like stout and porter. From there I developed a taste for other varieties.
I’m glad that happened before my group played the Sam Adams corporate Christmas party, at the brewery-museum in Boston. I tried numerous varieties there. If you’d had the opportunity to sample Sam Adams’ cask ale, you would not only like beer but worship it.
Perhaps someone can fill me in. In the 90s, I began to shy away from Guinness, as friends who drank a lot more beer than I did said the company had screwed with the formula. What’s the straight dope?
Off to Cafe Society.
I know, I know! There is plenty of good beer in the east, but it more within the realm of possibility that one might be ignorant of it over there, while if you lived in Northern CA or in Oregon even if you weren’t a drinker you’d have to be living in a cave to have this opinion. Mississippi, not so much-- if the best thing you can find locally is Killian’s Red. . . or people who live somewhere that causes them to think Rolling Rock and Corona are boutique beer. In the East good local beer is widely available. In the Northwest it’s ubiquitous and impossible to avoid consciousness of. Matter of degree.
Lightweights, I tell you, fucking lightweights. The point is to drink vodka straight and know that there is ice somewhere in the world.
Actually, on review. . . Goose Island? It’s ok, I wouldn’t call it great. And there’s a “North Coast” brewing company in Michigan, too? Are you sure it’s not the place in Fort Bragg?
But I have had good eastern beers, really!
Try Pete’s Strawberry Blonde, or maybe a TJ’s Blonde Bock (which is just a rebranded Gordon Biersch, I think.)
TJs also carries things like Hoegaarden and lambics, IIRC.
I didn’t care for beer, either, until I tasted my first draft serving of Guinness. I didn’t love it, not by any means, but there was something about the taste I did like. So, I tried other non-domestic and non-major label brands and found that I really enjoyed New Belgium’s Fat Tire Amber, and their 1554 Black Ale. I tend to like the darker ales most of all.
Starting out, though, I’d suggest probably a Fat Tire or a Boulevard Pale Ale.
Goose Island isn’t the best on the list, I’ll give you that. And no, North Coast isn’t Michigan - I said most were Michigan, not all.
And I guess I have to disagree with you on the ubiquitousness of it all as well, at least here. I live in the middle of nowhere, yet good beer abounds. You would have to live in a cave here to not be aware of the existence of good beer. Maybe it’s different in Mississippi, but 'round here at least every bar has at least one or two microbrews. Every grocery store carries Bell’s and at least a few others. Not everyone drinks it, but I think everyone knows that such a thing exists.
I can complain about plenty of stuff around living is such an isolated northern community, but beer ain’t one of them.
I tried to like beer. I’ve tried for 40 years to like beer. It blows. If it were the only alcoholic drink on the planet, I’d be sober for the rest of my days.
Ommegang Brewery in Cooperstown, NY makes Belgian style beers that are not overly hopped. Not only that, they’ve introduced for summer this beer
The name alone makes it trying it worth while.
Midas Touch by Dogfish Head is a beer from a recipe derived from analyzing ancient middle eastern beer jars. It’s something of a beer, a mead, and a wine, as it has barley, honey, and grapes in it. It might be a good beginner beer, as it’s on the sweet side. Besides, it has all that history and mythical resonance going for it.
The best way to make beer taste good, however, is to work out hard, sweat a lot, on a hot, sunny summer day. The first swig of beer then is definitely proof that Og loves us and wants us to be happy.