OK, we’re in the Eurovision, so I guess for the sake of argument you can call us Europeans…
The “default” local beer around here is Goldstar, a decent local lager. It, followed by Tuborg, Heineken, Carlsberg and Guinness, is the most common beer found at bars and restaurants.
The most prevalent crappy beers are Maccabi, which is pretty bad, and Nesher, which is awful. Oddly enough, the only people I know who actually drinks them are my parents - but then, they were raised on American beers.
As far as UK brands go, Carling is probably the generic lager.
Foster’s is probably the ultimate pisswater to be found in most pubs, though. I was relieved to discover that Australians hate it, too.
Okocim is a pretty decent , middle-of-the-road lager. Zywiec is one of the other big Polish brands, and (IMHO) better than Okocim, although they are similar types of beer, and I’ve never noticed any particular hangover inducing qualities in either. Both Okocim and Zywiec have porters that are ranked as one of the best Baltic porters in the world by many beer types. A Baltic porter is much thicker than a standard porter…almost similar to a double bock or a less roasted imperial/Russian stout. I’ve never seen the porters on draft, but if you like thick, heavy beers with an alcoholic kick (7.5%+) and see it in a bottle at the store, pick one up for yourself.
In Italy, I think it’s actually “all of the above”: Neither Peroni, Nastro Azzuro, Messina, Birra del Sole, nor even Moretti (a Heineken product) are much more than “Bud Italiano”.
(Yet, I’ll drink the shit out of every last one of them. Birra del Sole is only E0.90 for 66cl!)
I don’t drink the stuff but IIRC the Bud brewed for the Irish market is slightly more alcoholic than its American cousin. Pretty much like the people here really. Budweiser is very popular here, and no, I don’t know why. Marketing works I imagine.
Bud is 5.0% percent alcohol by volume in the US (unless you’re in one of those states where 3.2% ABW [or 4.0% ABV] is the max.) I can’t imagine it being much higher in Ireland, but I suppose it’s possible. (For reference, Irish Guinness is 4.3% alcohol, but Guinness is an alcohol light beer, for the most part.)
I just googled it and I recalled wrong. Irish Budweiser is 4.3% (the standard for beer in Ireland) so it’s actually weaker than the United Statesian stuff.
Yeah, it seems to be a common misconception that European beer is stronger than American beer. Here’s the alcohol content of a number of light “fucking near water” (as the old joke goes) beers:
Bud: 5.0%
Old Style: 5.0%
Miller Genuine Draft: 4.7%
Busch: 4.6%
Coors: 5.0%
Compare with:
Stella Artois: 5.2%
Heineken: 5.0%
Harp: 4.3%
Warsteiner: 4.8%
Beck’s: 4.8%
Pilsner Urquell: 4.4%
Staropramen: 5.0%
Newcastle Brown Ale: 4.7%
Bass Ale: 4.4%
And so on…
Now, there’s plenty of stronger stuff out there (as there is here, too), but by and large, the alcoholic contents of European and American mass-market beers tend to be about the same, and I would even suggest that, on the whole, European beers are fractionally weaker (alcoholically) than American beers. Even Miller Light and Bud Light are still 4.2% beers.
I think what confuses people is a combination of things. Serving sizes tend to be a bit bigger in Europe (there’s a lot of 500ml bottles vs 355ml 12 oz. bottles here; American pints are about 450ml vs 500 ml servings on the continent and 568 ml for a British pint.) Also, European beers tend to have more body and unfermentables in them, giving them the impression of being heavier, stronger beers (see how many people here are under the misapprehension that Guinness is a strong, alcoholic brew, when, in fact, it’s more like an American light beer when it comes to alcohol levels.) Thirdly, when traveling through the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the labeling can be a bit confusing, with numbers like 10% and 12% appearing on the labels. These numbers do not refer to alcohol content but degrees Plato, so they should actually be labeled as 10° and 12°, but due to confusion with the temparature mark of degrees, this got changed to a percentage sign (which caused even more confusion). This number refers to the sugar content/starting gravity of the unfermented wort. 12° is roughly equal to about 5% ABV, depending on how much is fermented out.
I was in Ireland in '05 and saw the same thing, along with a lot of Coors Light. According to a few young locals, Coors Light was actually “in” amongst the youth, since it’s watery, drinkable, and American. Coulda been pulling my leg, but I saw it getting ordered by Irish youths, so I think he was being honest.
I thought it was tragic that kids were drinking such terrible beer when Guinness, Smithwick’s, Kilkenny, and other decent beers were the same price or cheaper, but…then I remembered how often I see American kids paying for “imports” like Corona and Red Stripe. 
Cactus waltz----I must not have been clear, because I agree 100% on how good Staropramen is!!!
One of my fondest beer memories was the first time I visited Prague, sitting outside in that majestic old city and drinking a cold draught Staropramen—What an amazing place and of course for beer lovers it is one of the true must-visits on the Great European Beer Tour.
I am not a beer snob, my default go-to beer for home consumption is Pabst Blue Ribbon (and Utahs 3.2 version at that) but I will drink Budweiser on occasion, as well as a myriad of other basic American lagers. I have been lucky enough to have spent considerable time travelling Europe, on several different occasions, but that certainly does not make me feel I am somehow above drinking a few cans of Strohs once in a while…
Matthew
In Denmark, the mass-market brands are Carlsberg, Tuborg and to a lesser extent, Faxe.
In Canada, Bud is pretty huge, but Molson Canadian and Labatt Blue are pretty big.
Yep, and I’ve said before, I’d be happy if we exported all the Steinlager. 
(Though I suspect as comparisons go, Lion Red would be NZ’s “Bud”). shudder
I was there in July. They said the top three beers, in order, was Heineken, Budweiser, and then Guinness.
Nice - I’ll have to see if I can track those down.
There certainly wasn’t anything wrong with the taste of Okocim, and to be honest the hangover was probably more to do with the quantity consumed than the beer itself. I’ll maybe need to give it another go when I’ve got my sensible head on.
Maybe they’re drinking it ironically like hipsters in the U.S. with PBR.
Nope. Sorry. We’re just lame when it comes to drinking. We’re good at it but no finesse.
They are nice certainly, but no more so than any other nice internationally marketed beer.
There’s an off license down the road from us here in Belfast, it does quite a few beers and spirits you can’t get in the supermarkets or other off licences. I bought a few international beers, Moretti and Peroni included but they really didn’t taste all that better than the usually suspects from the supermarkets such as Kronenburg.
What? I love Pilsner Urquell.
As an aside… twenty years ago I was living in Germany - where your local brewery is king. At that time, the EU was forcing the import of beers that did not meet the ‘reinheitsgebot’ standards - it was quite controversial…
During an TV interview with a German beer industry spokesman, a friend started laughing so hard he cried. I missed it (poor German skills) and asked what had been said - it was ‘This doesn’t matter in Germany, the only ones who will drink that foreign beer live under the bridges’.
A propos of nothing in particular, the default tap beer in Cardiff is Brains, which is the local brewery. I love that name. And when I was at uni there in the late 80s/early 90s, their “strong” beer (5%) was called Brains SA, which stood for “special ale” (I think), but was popularly known as “skull attack”.