For hard stuff, nothing beats** Belvedere vodka**. I keep a bottle in the freezer. My recipe involves removing the bottle from the freezer, pouring a liberal splash into a glass, and drinking it.
For beer, I’ve been drinking Lagunita’s offerings lately. One nice evening last week I tried many bottles. Then I noticed an 800 number on a label. I called and talked with a nice guy in California who was looking forward to his workday ending so that he could replicate my feat. Cheers!
The best place to start is a pub that specializes in beer. Many foreign beers or microbrews lack preservatives, so they don’t stand up to long traveling under adverse conditions. If you buy a sixpack off the shelf, you might not be getting the freshest stuff. That’s also an expensive way to determine your favorite styles.
The pub should have a good selection on tap & in the bottle and will offer the “flights” mentioned above. The beer list should be well annotated & bartenders knowledgeable. And, of course, there will be a bunch of “experts” standing around!
Check out any local breweries, as well. Houston hasSt Arnold’s–forbidden from selling at the brewery due to our state’s insane liquor laws, but offering samples after the tour. (Their Elissa IPA is a special favorite.)
ETA: Reading up on my beloved Elissa, I noticed that St Arnold’s does not pasteurize its beers. So they need to be shipped cool. Think local!
Since Rigamarole is located in LA, I’ll will suggest heading to the nearest Bevmo. They schedule regular beer and wine tastings, and the sales-people are generally pretty knowledgable. They also have a huge beer department.
Basic rules of thumb when figuring out a beer to try:
Never drink anything out of a clear bottle.
Never drink anything out of a green bottle.
Fresher is better.
Taste/Flavor does not equal Heaviness/Alcohol content.
Life is too short to drink bad beer.
Never trust a skinny brewer.
You don’t need to be a snob to enjoy good beer. The main thing to do is start trying different ones. Not jusrt different brewers, buyt different types of beer. Maybe you prefer lagers over ales. IPAs instead of stouts. And don’t forget Octoberfests and Weissbiers. Then see if you care to get into barley wines…
Blackened Voodoo, Bell’s Oberon, and Abita Turbodog were among my faves. But in the Chicago area my standbys when picking up 12s at the grocery store were generally the various products from Goose Island, Sam Adams and Leinenkugels. Those brewers worst products are head ans shoulders above AB/Miller’s best. Give them a try - and if you don’t think so, maybe you are just not a beer drinker.
Check out the local liquor stores to see if they have beer tastings. Eat out at brewpubs - even chains like Rock Bottom brew great beers. Or host a tasting of your own. When you travel, ask what local brews are available - especially on tap.
(Sober now for 6 years, and I still miss my beer!) 
Speaking of Bell’s, I would recommend their Third Coast Old Ale. Be careful, though. It’s got a 10.2 ABV.
Good suggestion. Somehow, I totally forgot about Duvel.
And, if you have somewhat warped taste buds and think you might like sour beers (as I do), you can try finding some unflavored lambics or Flemish sour ales to sate your thirst. Some of these can really be an acquired taste, but I think they’re just wonderful chilled on a hot summer night. Anything by 3 Fonteinen or Cantillon are good. Lost Abbey and Russian River in the US (both from California) have also achieved quite a bit of renown for their sour ales. Or, Liefman’s Goudeband, for an actual Belgian product that shouldn’t be too hard to find.
Looks like you’ve got yourself a lot of homework to do. Get crackin!
Excellent list. Not always easy to find some of those, though.
Dogfish is HQ’ed in Milton, Delaware, and they have a few “Alehouses” in Maryland and NoVa.
Personally I’m a big fan of the IPA’s. Maltier and more bitter the better. Sierra Nevada is good; Redhook Longhammer is great.
…but my fridge houses a 30pack of MGD at all times…
I was in the same position as the OP only a few years ago, and on the recommendation of a “beer snob” I worked with I ventured out into trying better stuff, and it has been well worth it. My recommendation is to look at beeradvocate and find the top 3 beers in each style and begin trying them bottle by bottle. You will quickly learn which styles fit your pallette, and which you cannot stand. After drinking a few IPA’s, I safely able to say that those were not for me, and I tended to enjoy more of the stouts and porters.
My favorites are Sam Smith’s Oatmeal Stout and Ayinger Celebrator doppelbock when I want something with some real substance, and Sam Adams Oktoberfest or Pilsner Urquell for something more quenching and light. The Oktoberfest is only seasonal, and the Celebrator may be a little more difficult to find after bock season (spring), but you should be able to find the others fairly readily.
On a side note, any recommendations on Scottish Ales? I had the Belhaven variety at a recent beerfest, and really enjoyed it, and reading up on the style, it sounds like I would enjoy it.
Dogfish Head is out of Milton, Delaware. Lately, I’ve really been enjoying their Palo Santo Marron beer. It’s a bit pricey and comes in 4-packs, but, IMHO, worth the price.
Judging by some of those other beers you listed, I’m guessing you’re in the Midwest. Stone Brewery just started distributing here in Chicago. I’m excited to try more of their stuff.
Yes, if you can find Bell’s where you’re at, pretty much every one of their beers range from good to top of its class. They’re my favorite all-around brewery with an incredible depth and range to the types of beer they produce well.
Great beer, unlike what’s considered to be great wine, is accessible to the common man. Consider the price of a six-pack of Budweiser; maybe $5 or $6. For a six of a typical American craft beer, you’re looking at the whopping expense of $8 to $12 at the very most. 750 milliliter bottles of limited runs can seem pricey, at $4 to $10, but it’s no more expensive than a bottle of cheap wine.
Compare that to wine, where those that are considered great, or truly sublime, carry very hefty price tags, approaching six digits a bottle. Also, with wine, there’s diminishing returns with increased price tags; is a $100 bottle of wine five times better than a $20 bottle? A $8 six-pack of craft beer, though, is usually going to be much, much better than a $5 macro.
With craft beer, you get a lot of bang for your buck compared to other forms of food and drink snobbery.
You probably won’t be able to find it, but Surly Brewing Company up here in Minneapolis is putting out some good brews. They’re very hoppy, however, even their stout. Very hoppy. They even say that these are not beers with training wheels. If you like hops, look for Surly Furious. Surly Bender is a little less hoppy, more like a traditional pilsner.
Furthermore Brewery (out of Wisconsin) also makes an excellent Belgian called Fatty Boombalatty - it’s really nice. They’ve also a few other styles that are tasty.
Other than that, Belgians are where it’s at, for me at least. The aforementioned Chimay and Duvel are good, but look for Pauwel Kwak. It’s malty, creamy, honey-y, outstanding. I love it. Optimator is also good. Delirium Tremens is nice. I’ve also had a quadrupel that was fantastic - it resembled not so much beer as port and cognac and was just amazing. I love malty brews.
Have to admit that I find that attitude of “not beers with training wheels” annoying. Not everything has to be hopped to the Nth degree, and many that try completely swamp all the other aspects of the beer. I know it’s marketing, but I still hate it.
Since you are in a major Californian metropolitan area you shouldn’t have any issues finding good beer - it has been my impression that California is less restrictive than most states about beer sales (they certainly don’t appear to have any silly Sunday purchases restrictions). I second looking through BevMo, there is a good chance they’ll have some of the items listed here.
I wouldn’t get caught up on the “snobbery” part of this. Basically, drink what you think tastes nice. Having said that if all that you have tried is Bud, Miller and Coors you probably have a very limited understanding of what is available and could be missing out on things you really would enjoy.
I didn’t enjoy beer until I branched out a bit and found a few styles that I like a lot - things like porters, stouts and pale ales. These are very different experiences from the Millers of the world. I’d recommend sampling a variety of different styles and seeing if any seem particularly interesting to you - if you find something then you could sample some specific brands within that style to see if you have any preferences.
I’m not sure if BevMo does this, but I know a lot of grocery stores allow you to create a 4/6 pack from single bottles, this is an efficient way to try different styles without having to commit to a 6 pack that you might not like. Alternatively something I like to do is go to a microbrewery (try to find one local to you that has good reviews) and order a sampler - they’ll give you a platter with half a dozen small glasses, each with a different beer of your choosing. I’ve often found servers in such places to be pretty good with advice if you say something like “I like pale ales in general - what would you recommend I try here?”. Or you could just ask them to put together a broad selection.
For all the jokes about American beer if you branch out from Bud, Miller and Coors this country is a great place to be for beer lovers. Perhaps I am romanticizing the present at the expense of the past, but it really feels like we live in a golden age in terms of beer selection. I can’t imagine having a wider selection of interesting and unique beers.
I agree. Quite often (and silenus alludes to this in his rule #4) there’s an attitude of “bigger is better.” If you look at some of those aggregate Top 100 beer lists on sites like ratebeer.com or beeradvocate.com, they’re dominated by imperial stouts and imperial IPAs. However, I get the feeling that culture is slowly changing. I think beer drinkers are getting burnt out on Imperial IPA, Imperial Stout, Imperial Bock, Imperial Wheat, etc. There will always be a place for these styles, but I’m guessing the next generation of brewing is going to have more emphasis on malt-hop balance and session beers. It’s already happening. When I go to Goose Island Brewery, there has been a shift to more reasonable 4-5% beers with a nice balance between malt and hops (there were even two 3.5% beer on tap that were surprisingly drinkable for the low alcohol level.)
Yep, the Age of Empire needs to end. Hop-Monsters are nice for those of us who swing that way, but they actively repel more drinkers than they attract.
You pulled a good allusion from Rule #4, although what I addressing was the fact that Guinness, for example, is a rather light-bodied, lower-alcohol beer, though you’d never know it from the flavor. Too many people who are unfamiliar with the zymurgistic arts think that the more flavorful a beer is, the heavier it has to be and the higher the alcohol content.
To add to the list of beers to try, I recommend anything made by Pyramid Brewing out of Berkeley, and Full Sail Brewing out of Portland. I’ve never had a beer from either place that I didn’t like.
I remember very long ago when I was living in North Carolina hanging out with some friends of friends I didn’t know very well. I was drinking some kind of dark beer, but it was the dark version of a domestic macrobrew; something like the equivalent of a Coors Dark. Hey, it was North Carolina in the early nineties; microbrews were hard to find.
Anyway, I was talking to a guy who was drinking Natural Light in a can. He looked at my beer and said something like “dark beer, eh?” I said “Would you like one?” His reply was so perfect it stuck with me: “No thanks, I don’t like the taste of beer.”
Such a perfect answer; unassailable, and with no antagonism going either way. He wasn’t mocking my snobbery, and you have to respect it when someone just doesn’t like the taste of something. And hey, there never was a better justification for drinking Natty Light.
:o You are correct, as is Capt. Ridley’s Shooting Party. Thank you for the correction. I really shouldn’t post while tired. I knew Bass wasn’t American, but somehow, I always thought Blue Moon was foreign for some reason.
One caution about Bevmo though, I’ve gotten a few packs of skunked beer from them and they were all in dark bottles. Just don’t grab the last six pack on the shelf.
I’ll second silenus on Pyramid too. If you’re ever in Berkeley, take their tour. They give everyone a complimentary glass of beer (or soda) afterward.
Blue Moon is actually manufactured by Coors. They don’t want you to know this.
I like their FAQ answering style:
*Q: What if I don’t agree with your list?
A: We don’t care.
Q: What if I don’t agree with your formula?
A: We don’t care.
Q: How can {insert beer} be better than {insert beer}?
A: Ask your first grade math teacher. *
I’ve developed a fondness for IPAs; my current favorite is Sierra Nevada’s Torpedo IPA.