Quite simply you are wrong. I worked in the industry for 3 years. You can call it a macro or not, doesn’t matter, the term is meaningless. Distribution however means everything. It’s legally separated but calling it a “grey area” is more accurately a gun metal grey or ebony area. These are Miller employees in everything but name selling Sam Adams and they leverage the products together. Sam Adams gets tap handles in major public venues and chains based on pricing agreements struck across the Miller portfolio often greased with Miller advertising and marketing collateral. When a bar runs a $4 Sam Adams pint special, it’s printed by a Miller employee on Miller paper and usually has a Miller logo on it somewhere. Many distributors won’t provide discounting on Sam Adams products unless you agree to carry Miller on tap and run weekly exclusive specials.
I’ve never noticed a problem finding Budweiser, but what you write doesn’t surprise me.
The issue with Bud is most obvious on the West and Northwest side, a combination of Eastern Europeans and old school, blue collar white Chicagoans who haven’t been pushed to the burbs yet. In Mexican neighborhoods Bud is very popular, so it can be a block-by-block thing. Edison Park and Bridgeport also tended to be very anti-Bud because of the heavy Police and Fire Department associations.
Yeah, my neighborhood (near Midway) is now majority Mexican, but it was a strong Polish neighborhood (and still is, to some extent). Still, when I say I had issues finding Goose Island, this was before any connection with A-B.
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Is Genesee that bad? They don’t distribute it out in the Pacific Northwest so I’ve never tried it. How does its product compare with the macrobrews like Bud, Miller, and Coors?
Genesee’s flagship is pretty bad, but the Cream Ale, 12 Horse Ale and the seasonal Bock beer are a little better than the Megabrews. They are also the makers of Dundee IIRC. I just finished off a variety pack of Dundee, and I liked them all except the Nut Brown Ale. Wasn’t crazy about the IPA either, but I’m not a fan of IPA’s.
SA Beers are good, but most are a little thin for my taste. I like Yuengling much beter. IMO nothing can compare with Yuengling Porter. and they’re sneaking up on SA too… besides Lager, Black & Tan and Lord Chesterfield Ale, they have a decent Bock beer in the spring, and they recently came out with an Oktoberfest beer.
I sure do like the Sam Adams Cream Stout tho!
Last time I was in Boston in 2009, I had a couple of pints of Harpoon there too- the IPA, if I recall. Good stuff.
I’ll say this- the SA Boston Lager seemed fresher in Boston than down here in Texas, which is a good thing. Not super-fresh lagers tend to get a sharper bitterness than the fresh ones (or maybe the maltiness fades?) and aren’t as balanced as the freshest versions of the style. Pilsner Urquell or Staropramen in Prague is a different beer than in the US- it’s freshness, I’m sure.
And the SA Alpine Spring is good stuff; I can’t quite place it in a category; it’s reminiscent of a Belgian wit brewed without spices and with lager yeast.
There’s an unexpected affinity for Eastern European beers amongst the Mexican population here. I’m not sure if it’s the proximity of the neighborhoods and overlap in bars clientele or what, but Mexicans drink a lot of Czech style pilsners. Heineken and Grolsch are big as are true Polish and Czech beers like Tyskie, Zywiec, Czechvar and Pilsner Urquell.
That would make sense, also given the stylistic overlap between Mexican beers and those types of pilsners. That said, I personally haven’t observed Mexicans drinking a lot of Polish/Czech/German/Dutch beer. Around here, the Polish beer is pretty much exclusively bought up by Polish clientele. Perhaps everyone else is intimidated by the pronunciations. 
And the Mexican clientele seems to go for the usual Mexican brands or American macrobrews.
And the similarity between banda/Norteña music and polkas… coincidence?
Actually, this is something I have noticed a lot in IS media but have never understood. Could someone explain to this ignorant European exactly what it is with red plastic cups? Why do they have to be red?
The red plastic cups are the kind you can buy like a 100 of them for very little money. I don’t know why they are usually red, but blue is also common. If you are drinking Bud, you are either 18 and at your first party, at a crappy picnic, or at some sporting event where they don’t have proper beer. Regardless, you are drinking really cheap beer out of really cheap containers, most of which happen to be red.
Yeah, it’s kind of interesting to note just how much of German/Czech/Polish culture has found its way into Mexican culture, all because of the migration patterns of the 19th century. I’ve always found it amusing that when I was a kid, this neighborhood was majority Polish, and you’d hear polka music blasting out of garages all Saturday morning and afternoon. Many years later, I’m back in the same neighborhood, and you still hear polka blasting, but now it’s all in Spanish.
Solo Cup Company makes the best known of these plastic cups. In my experience, clear plastic cups are as, if not more, popular as disposable cups at parties. If you go to a party in the US that features disposable cups, you’re most likely going to run into either clear or red plastic cups. Why red? No clue. They just seem to be the most ubiquitous and popular. (Whether they’re red because that’s was originally the best-selling color, or if they were originally red or most widely available in red, so that became the most popular color, I don’t know.) Solo does make them in other colors. As stated above, blue is regularly available, and there’s also green and yellow (at least), but neither of those colors approach the ubiquity of red.
Cheers for the red cup answers, guys.
I believe Bohemia is a city in Monterrey.
The Belgians I know would drink beer out of an old boot.
Nm
I’ll happily send you a care package of whatever you’d like from the sunshine state in return for Belgian Red, and other NG offerings. Just sayin…We got Cigar City, Terrapin, The Funky Buddha…
Necessary YouTubelink. Um…enjoy.
This is one of the more interesting threads I’ve happened upon recently, so thanks for all the discussion. I’ll say that I like Sam Adams as well, particularly since no matter what variety it is, I can be pretty sure that it’ll be tasty, and guaranteed that at least it’ll be more interesting than Coors or Miller or whatever. Of course, most places just have the Boston Lager, but even that just beats the pants off the tasteless yellow shit.
I wanted to contribute this link, a story that ran in *Motor Trend *a month or two ago, that I thought the beer snobs (and the wannabe beer snobs) that have contributed here might enjoy. Basically a couple guys take a Cadillac CTS-V Sport Wagon, by all accounts one of the finest vehicles in the world, from California to the Midwest to sample a bunch of microbrews. Sounds like a dream “assignment,” really, and I share the author’s amazement that the bosses signed off on it.
Anyway, they talk a lot more about beer in the article than they do about the car, which is awesome because the car’s basically a known quantity in comparison to these low-volume craft brews, but any Midwestern Dopers who have either tried any of the beers he mentions or could be persuaded to seek some out might find it an interesting read.
Oh, and an enticing quote: “… people who know beer know that the United States now brews the best beer in the world, end of story.” Discuss. 