“Vile” is an opinion word, of course. I had the opposite of an ax to grind: New Belgium is opening a brewery locally with excellent benefits, and I kept hoping my wife would get a job there (still kind of hold out that hope if only as a fantasy–she has no interest). They’re doing great things, environmentally speaking, for a local river system. I really like them as a company.
So I wish I didn’t dislike their beer so much.
I wouldn’t have used the word “vile” for it, but silenus kind of likes to go big :). I understand what he means. It doesn’t require ax-grinding. I’m glad you like their beer; clearly a lot of people like it. But for me, their beers are among the worse craft beers that I’ve had.
extremely unpleasant.
synonyms: foul, nasty, unpleasant, bad, disagreeable, horrid, horrible, dreadful, abominable, atrocious, offensive, obnoxious, odious, unsavory, repulsive, disgusting, distasteful, loathsome, hateful, nauseating, sickening
**archaic**
of little worth or value.*
I think “vile” sums up New Belgium’s offerings quite nicely.
As for “east/west” - where, exactly, did I slam “East Coast brewing?” I slammed Jim Koch*. Last time I checked he didn’t own Dogfish Head or Shipyard, both of whom put out wonderful brews.
Ballast Point can be owned by anybody, I don’t care. They still turn out quality product. Hell, I don’t care if they get bought by InBev!
And that slam was over his taste buds, not over his business acumen.
The new wave of beer drinkers around here are drinking Yung but many more are going for small batch Craft beers. There must be 10 or more micro brewing places in town.
I realize Budweiser and Bud Light are available everywhere, and drank everywhere, but it’s never been a brand I see a lot of people drinking where I live in PA. Yuengling is on tap at nearly every bar, and is very popular among those who drink mass-market, non-light beer. It is far and away the most popular non-light beer here. Most bars also have the bland trifecta - Bud Light, Miller Lite and Coors Light - on tap, and I see far more people drinking ML and CL than BL. It kind of bugs me that bars tie up three tap systems for these three light beers, but they apparently sell.
I don’t think I’ve ever bought a case of Bud or BL in my life, and we never had it at parties when I was younger, or now. Now, when I’ve been down south, they drink a crapload of Bud and BL, but not so much in PA.
I have a similar opinion of New Belgium, but there are a couple of beers they make that are pretty good. I enjoy their Abbey (dubbel), especially for the quality-to-price. (A six-pack is $9 here.) Their trippel is decent, too, but the dubbel is where it’s at for me. Great not only for drinking, but also for making carbonade flamande (beef stew with beer) without breaking the bank. Two bottles for the stew, four for me.
Recipe, please. You can PM me that if you want. I have a couple of bottles of Chimay Red that would do nicely in that stew. They were a gift, so what the heck. Does the stew go with Duvel?
Here’s the general recipe. Serve with pommes frites if possible. A Flanders red would be perfect for this recipe and has a little tang to it that is nice. The usual beers are that, an old bruin, or dubbel. It’s a very simple recipe. Here’s my Flemish friend’s inexact instructions, which is more-or-less what I do; The other recipe I’ve made and is also solid, but I use the bread smeared with mustard to thicken the stew.
Yep, and I corrected the statement following your post along with a Wiki cite. All factually correct and properly amended for historic context. I’ll spell it out for you: Samuel Adams was first launched in 1985 and BBC used contract brewing at least through 1997. So, for more than the first decade, and more than a third of the life of the company, the Boston Brewing Company used contract brewing.
Here it is again from Wikipedia: “Initially, Koch rented excess capacity and brewed the beer at the Pittsburgh Brewing Company, best known for their Iron City brand of beer. As sales increased Koch developed other contract arrangements at various brewing facilities with excess capacity, ranging from Stroh breweries, Portland’s original Blitz-Weinhard brewery (shuttered in 1999), Cincinnati’s Hudepohl-Schoenling brewery (eventually purchased by the Boston Beer Company in early 1997), and industry giant SABMiller. The Boston Beer Company also has a small R&D brewery located in Boston (Jamaica Plain), Massachusetts, where public tours and beer tastings are offered. The brewery occupies part of the premises of the old Haffenreffer Brewery.[14][15]”
Interesting. I have never particularly enjoyed any of the abbey-style ales I’ve had, and now I’m realizing that New Belgium is a reference to that particular style, which is not what I drink beer for: it’s a particular yeasty flavor that I don’t care for. Give me a bog-standard stout or IPA or ESB or ESP or wheat beer any day over a Belgian ale.
But it sounds like even some people who like Belgian-style ales don’t care for New Belgium? Huh.
I like Belgian styles, but most of New Belgium’s offerings aren’t anywhere near as yeasty as most Belgian styles I’ve had. The thing I dislike about New Belgium is, I think, their grain bill. It’s very cereal-y to me and, as I’ve described on these boards, it tastes (to me) like somebody took beer and filtered it through Special K or something. That’s especially true of Fat Tire. I don’t find that beer’s flavor Belgian yeasty at all. It’s a very low ester (not a lot of fruit and spice flavors), neutral yeast to my recollection. I just taste a lot of cereal-y grain with a bit of nutiness.
That’s a very good summation of what Fat Tire tastes like to me as well. Just not something I want to drink. Ever.
If I feel like drinking Belgian, there are plenty of good examples around. Duvel lives in the beer fridge, for example. Along with AleSmith’s Horny Devil, 'Lil Devil, and the wife’s current favorite Refuge Blood Orange Wit.
For me, it’s a Ford/Chevy/Toyota thing. I’m not a truck guy, but if you tell me that the only truck you will ever own is a Ford F-150, I will respect your opinion. If you tell me that Chevy Silverados and Toyota Tundras are junk, your opinion is no longer credible to me.
“Junk” is an opinion word also. When you use it to describe a very popular truck with a lot of owners and positive independent reviews, the word says more about the person using it than the product. That’s where I’m coming from.
Fair enough. I haven’t had one in a few years, so I don’t really remember much about the flavor except that I didn’t like it at all.
I don’t know enough about trucks to know whether this analogy works. I do know that when New Belgium beer is described as “vile,” I kind of nod internally.
One more thing I don’t know: what on earth does it mean for an opinion to be “not credible”?
Well, I don’t know how to explain it without another analogy or two, so maybe you can educate me. If you think that Glocks are swell, good for you. If you tell me that H&K makes shitty pistols, your opinion isn’t credible to me. If you think that Benchmade knives are the best on the planet, I’m okay with that. If you tell me that Spiderco makes shitty knives, your opinion is no longer credible, as I originally stated, TO ME.
If you really want me to say it in pain english (I think I was being more polite than coy) when a person makes blanket negative statements about brands and product lines that are generally well regarded, my opinion is that the person saying it is full of shit.
If I said that Sierra Nevada beer was vile, I would expect a negative reaction to that. Not because I dislike Sierra Nevada, but because it’s not a reasonable description of the beer. I may not like Sierra Nevada beer, but that doesn’t change the fact that it’s a premium beer made from high quality ingredients by people who give a shit about beer and it’s well regarded by consumers and established beer critics.
That’s what I’m against. Not the preference of brands or products, but the denigration of others. Claiming that New Glarus sucks or Southern Tier is vile is a pointless endeavor. It adds nothing to the conversation. You can like what you like without shitting on everything else that competes with it.
I think it’s funny to say that New Belgium sucks as a blanket statement; their beers are a pretty varied lot, and some are pretty good, while others aren’t at all my cup of tea.
For example, Fat Tire is way too sweet for me, while their Blue Paddle pilsner is decent, if not exactly 100% in-style. Their Ranger IPA isn’t bad either, nor is their 1554 black lager.
Personally, I think it’s pretty hyperbolic to describe the products of a skillful brewery using high quality ingredients as “vile”. Maybe one or two offerings, but not everything they make.
I mean, Sam Adams has stuff I don’t care for, as does New Belgium. I, for my part don’t much care for very many things Dogfish Head makes; to me, they tend to be either exceptionally weird (Raison d’Extra) to my palate or to lack any pretense at subtlety (90 minute IPA).
But neither is “vile”, just not my cup of tea. For example, I find 90 min IPA to be fairly unbalanced, but I can’t deny that it is brewed with care and skill. It’s just that the target they were aiming for is one that I don’t like.
Shrug. I wouldn’t oblige. If you think it’s vile, that’s just, like, your opinion, man. If you tell me that homemade cheesecake baked in a water bath and dressed with fresh strawberries is vile, I might double-check to make sure we’re talking about the same thing; if we are, I’ll say, de gustibus, and move on.
Same thing with Sierra Nevada, or Highland Farms, or New Belgium, except that in the latter case it’ll turn out that our tastes are more aligned.
For some beers, the yeast used has a flavor to some drinkers that would fairly be termed “vile.” For me, Bud just tastes vile. Yet, I can drink (and at least tolerate and maybe enen enjoy them for what they are) Schmidt, Rainier, Costco Light Beer, Sapporo, Kirin, Tsingtao (only if from the original brewery using Laoshan spring water in Qingdao), the standard brews from most of the majors, etc. But Bud just is wrong. It’s so bad, that I can be stuck on a 15 hour flight across the pacific, and if the only beer is Bud, then I just won’t drink.
I can totally understand if the signature taste profile of a brewery is simply off putting for that drinker.
Could be the yeast, could be the rice. But I’m with you - if the choice is a Budweiser product or sobriety, I’ll take sobriety. I have yet to find a beer from that brewery that I can stomach, and I’ve picked them out in double-blind tests run by our homebrew club.
And yes, my characterizing of a brewery’s products as “vile” is just an opinion, and quite often one based on a limited sampling of their product. Tough. There are too many good beers out there for me to waste my time and taste buds trying to discover if New Belgium makes a beer I think tastes good. I’ve tried several of their flagship brews, and that was enough. They won’t get another try. Well-made crap produced by talented, dedicated brewers is still crap. I know, I’ve made enough of it over the years!
Jake - As LHoD noted, I tend to “go big” with my edicts and pronouncements. Trust me, I know what I sound like a lot of the time (raving lunatic). But at least I’m consistently nuts!
