I did a search, and no one has mentioned Fruli yet. It’s mixed with strawberry juice and it’s great. Too bad you are too far away to get your mitts on Kawartha Lakes Brewery Raspberry Wheat Ale - I never liked beer because I found it too bitter, but a pint of that stuff on a hot day is… indescribably good.
Yep, that’s the one. I told you I was too lazy to get up and look. 
Optimator? It sounds like a brand name for motor oil.
I notice that you didn’t sing the praises of Big Buck’s Brewery.
If you don’t like it, don’t drink it. Re-read your OP and wherever it says “drinking beer,” substitute “sex with cat cadavers.” That should clarify your course of action. Unless you think you could come to enjoy sex with cat cadavers…
My husband is trying to like beer, too, but he’s not having much success.
In the fridge right now we have some Great Lakes Burning River, Woodchuck Cider (Granny Smith, I think), Leinenkugel Honey Weiss, and a Saranac variety pack of some sort.
No real success with any of it.
He’s decided he doesn’t like hops, either. One of the Saranac beers specifically said that it was strongly hoppy, and he liked it least of all.
If the OP says he doens’t like hops, I might recommend a brown ale. Newcastle is readily available anywhere that sells beer, and is very low on the bitterness scale. A beer like that allows a lot more of the malty tones to come through, and isn’t overshadowed with bitterness or hoppy flavor.
I love beer, but I understand where the OP’s dislike of hops comes from. I don’t generally gravitate towards pale ales for that same reason. I like a moderate amount of hoppy bitterness, but beers that intend to overwhelm with hops certainly succeed with me. I love rich, flavorful beers, but I prefer them to be balanced.
Just to clarify…I WANT to like beer, I really wish everyone would stop telling me this.
Anyways, TJ had shit for a selection. A couple more stores and I wound up with a bottle of Optimater (sp) and some Woodchuck. We’ll see how that goes, plus I still have the others from before. There’s a store in Brookfield that has a TON of beer by the bottle, but I’ll wait till I’m out there, it’s about a 30 minute drive.
Fruli is bad news. I tried it for the first time last weekend and it was like drinking strawberry juice. I couldn’t taste any alcohol, I can’t remember the last time I got drunk that fast.
Why?
My husband wants to like beer because it’s easy to get, it’s a sociable sort of drink, and he likes to drink one drink per day but the things that he tends to like are fruity drinks that are worse for him than beer is.
Ah. In that case, start with a really watery light beer and work your way up to Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, the finest of all beers known to man.
re-read the thread, I mentioned several reasons.
let’s see.
It would be nice to be able to go to a bar and not order a $6.00 mixed drink or margarita.
It would be nice to have a drink at someone’s house when all they have is beer.
It would be nice to be able to go out drinking with someone and not wind up shitfaced becuase I’m drinking vodka tonics and they’re having beer.
And several other, mostly social, reasons.
Could we please just stick to the OP? Please?
Geez, in college I got harped on becuase I didn’t like beer, and now I get harped on because I want to like it.
That’s unfortunate about TJ’s. But I guess it’s not surprising. There’s huge variation between what TJ’s offer even within ten miles. I guess it’s not a stretch to think the TJs in WI isn’t going to be exactly like CA…
I’ve found that the local Albertson’s or Von’s has a much better beer selection than TJ’s.
JoeyB, take a look at these style guidelines for some direction in your search. If you find something you can tolerate, then look for other examples of the style. (These are listed at the end of each descriptor.) I’d suggest starting with some English Brown Ales, maybe a Mild if you can find one in this country, and maybe some of the maltier German brews.
Joey P, out of curiosity, how old are you? I was in college before I really enjoyed the stuff and I wonder if your age is a factor.
Kvass might be a good stepping stone if you have Russian stores in the area.
27 today.
Thank you for the link. I think I’ll try some of the Dark Lagers, they seem to be the lowest on the IBU scale.
Joey P, have you tried Guiness? It’s got a nice meaty flavor to it, and doesn’t taste like other beers. Despite its thick appearance–for lack of a better word–it’s actually lower in calories and alchohol content than many other non lite beers.
As far as the acquired taste thing goes, the first time I tried beer–at age 14–I thought it was the best thing I’d ever found in my life. In retrospect, that probably wasn’t a good sign.