Try and find anywhere else that keeps five really good real ales, rotated every couple of weeks and many of them sourced locally. I’d rather drink good beer in poor surroundings than poor beer in good surroundings. Oh, and it only costs £1.45 a pint compared with £2.00- £2.50 for real ale elsewhere!
Now if you can find me a local with good staff, good atmosphere, log fire, comfy chairs, five real ales (well kept) for £1.45, let me know.
Apart from the price, at least four pubs within walking distance of my house - one owned by a different chain, and three by two different breweries. And dozens more within a shore bus or car journey. I can cope with the extra 80p on a pint.
And comfy chairs, in Wetherspoons pubs? Or a log fire? Or good staff? Or reliably-well kept beer? Nope, the two near here both fail on all those.
Ah, just noticed your location. I sympathise with the struggle to find good beer anywhere in Scotland. Oh, maybe once, near Waverly station, but can’t remember the name of the place 
The sad thing is there is really good real ale brewed all over Scotland- it’s just difficult finding bars that serve it. The local Sulway Brewery is excellent.
I have just moved from Cornwall, and finding a good pub with well kept real ale was difficult enough there. Still, better than thirty years ago when Courage had a virtual monopoly west of Bristol!
You mean real ale tastes even more like urine than the bland American beers?
I can see how mass-produced American beers compare unfavorably even with Watney’s but what about American ales? For example, where I live I can get Moose Drool which is a dark ale put out by a Montana microbrewery or Fat Tire amber ale–a Colorado microbrew which is now expanding nationally. There are also, among others, the varieties of ales put out by Full Sail, India Pale Ale, and Sam Adams. I’m hoping that at least some American microbrews are better than a mass-produced British ale.
Granted, there’s good real beer to be had in America. Trouble is, it’s mostly on too small a scale to register with us, coupled with the difficulty of breaking into the market here. The end result is that British advicates of beer don’t get a chance to try the American stuff.
Watney’s represents something worse than Bud or Miller - at least those manage to be a mediocre product. It was an experiment in mass-production that just wasn’t very good, couple with inept marketing.
(Slight aside: I think there’s a bit of a terminology jumble here…‘ale’ is just one of the options for cask beer, along with bitter, porter, etc. ‘Beer’ means all of these, but not lager. I get the impression that the American use of ‘ale’ is as a generic term for cask beer?)
Americans, if they bother to differentiate at all, tend to call all lagers “beer.” Ales are the top-fermented brews. There are a number of us on this board who home-brew, so we tend to keep things straight. But you can’t count on the majority of Merkins knowing the difference between a porter and a stout, or a hefeweizen and a Berliner Weisse. On any scale, Watney’s isn’t very good, whatever you call it. 
I misspoke myself. Forgive me. Fat Tire and Moose Drool are better than Watney’s. The Makers of Moose Drool also make Scape Goat, which I prefer. I don’t hate America!
Then why no mentioned of the ultimate American ale - Sierra Nevada Pale? Huh? How come? You’re not fooling anyone, comrade!
You rate it above Anchor? Steam rules!
Anchor Steam is good; Anchor Liberty is better. But nothing beats the Cascade avalanche that is Sierra Nevada!
Yep, there’s definitely a difference. British ale (and certainly ‘real ale’) means cask-fermented (or bottle-fermented) beer, with no added gas.
Ahh…here’s a good summary of the complexities of the term: http://encyclopedia.laborlawtalk.com/Ale
Are you saying that “beer” does not include lager? Every web site or book on brewing that I’ve ever seen indicates that “beer” includes any “alcohol-containing beverages produced by fermenting grain, specifically malt, and flavored with hops.” (From Beeradvocate.com) That would include lager, porter, stouts, hefeweizen, etc., etc. (I understand that as a legal term, usage may be different).
Here’s something that I’m curious about. Many years ago, before I was aware of the grand and glorious variety that is available in the world of beers, I tried some Whatney’s Cream Stout. As the only stout that I had ever tried before that was Guinness, the Watney’s was something of a revelation to me. I discovered that it’s possible to have a beer with some richness and flavor that doesn’t taste burnt and bitter.* But is it really any good? Or is my memory influenced by my inexperience at the time and the years that have passed since?
And for those that say that you can’t find good American beer, you haven’t been looking very hard. Or at all in the last 15 or so years.
NDP, Moose drool looks really good. I’d like to try it. Fat Tire, OTOH - eh. 1554, Abbey, and Trippel, all made by the same brewer (New Belgium), are much better beers IMHO.
*As an aside, I know that saying that I don’t care much for Guinness is something like sacrilege for many people. I don’t care. While I can now drink Guinness without making a face (having aquired a taste for dark beers) my personal opinion is that it bears a great deal of the responsibility for the fact that many people who were introduced to it as an alternative to the typical American lager (since it’s the ubiquitous dark beer found at just about every bar), are now firmly convinced that they “don’t like dark beers”.
Yes. In Britain, ‘beer or lager?’ is an obvious question. Pretty much uniquely, British brewing never jumped on the cold-fermentation wagon. We stuck with what we knew best, for quite a few years
(However, ‘beer’ does also have a more generic role describing all drinks served in pints, but the subtleties of differentiating between the two usages isn’t something I’m going to try to describe!)
Ah, you’re talking about popular (or legal) usage. Fair enough.
I think that it is worth reinforcing the fact that American Micro-brewery bars are excellent. Every one that I have been to has a better selection of really good ales and lagers than an average pub in Britain. The same goes for American bottled beer (by which I mean Steam Ales etc, not mass produced pilsners etc.)available at bars; the selection available is better than that found in most British pubs now- the shelf space that used to go to bottled beer is now often given over to alco-pops and shots.
Selection isn’t really the issue for me. I just want to drink the local stuff the lads are having. Are small breweries alive and well in Albion? It’s been many years since I visited.
There are small breweries but not like the micro-brewery bars in the states. A small brewer would need to service a good number of outlets to keep going. If you haven’t been in the UK for some time then you may have missed a complete circle in brewing. In the sixties and even into the seventies there were local mid size breweries almost everywhere and a local brew. The seventies drove out almost all the local breweries- sold off to conglomerates mostly; a few remained. Then in the eighties and nineties there was a resurgence of the remaining mid size brewers and some arms of the big conglomerates followed by a spectacular explosion of small breweries so that now it is once again possible to drink a local brew. It depends on what stage of this cycle you left blighty.