What's a good REAL beer?

I went to a local English pub. They serve authentic English beer and even have exchange students from England with crooked teeth and delightful accents. A co-worker talked me into trying a REAL beer...Strongarm. It was a Cask Ale which is at room temperature (I never knew what cask ale was before this). Of course I'm used to American (blah) and Canadian beer. I was cautious trying a 'warm' beer. But once I put some strongarm in my mouth, IT WAS LIKE MY MOUTH WAS HAVING A PARTY AND EVERYONE WAS COMING! Strongarm was AWESOME! I've never tasted anything like it. It was SMOOTH and tasty. And it didn't have to be cold to be good! This stuff was strong too!

After this experience, I have to say you British bloke have the best beer ever. It's a shame it has to be so expensive in the USA.

So, is there any other good British beer I should try when I go back to the pub? They have some "Wheat Ale" which I tried a bit of and gagged. I tried some IPA (India Pale Ale?) which wasn't that great.

 

Theres Tons of british beers, The best however are normally from small local breweries. For example, Theres a brewery near me that make a dam nice bitter - HSB (Short for Hampshire Strong Bitter), and theres tons of this kind of place across the country. The trouble with beer is that it is inherently expensive to ship in its "pure" state (as in not simply shipping instructions and brewing the beer, shipping the completed stuff over) Because its a dense material (i.e. 1kg/litre), and you need a fair amount to get merry.
So basically, yes, british beer is damn good, yes it will be more expensive abroad, and there aren't any in particular I can reccomend as most good beers are local.

Oooh, although one you should be able to get around the world is John smiths ( Just make sure you Go for extra smooth), Which is a nice very smooth bitter, and is probably available everywhere with a bit of hunting. Give it a go, its a beer I've managed to get people who don't like beer to drink and enjoy

 

It's called "John Smiths"? We have a Beers Of The World store which literally has thousands of beer from around the world. I'll ask for it. Thanks for the info! Or should I say...
CHEERS!

 

John Smiths Extra Smooth. The normal stuff (non "Extra Smooth") Is shite.

 

The Manchester brew (quite popular nationally) is Boddingtons. Funnily enough the brewery stinks and it's right next door to the city's main prison, so you get all the inmates gaging for a drop of beer from the smell yet they can't drink it haha!

 

That's hilarious!

 

There is no good beer.

 

I have a question: American beer has quite a reputation for being awful. Don't the main US breweries KNOW it??? Haven't they ever tried anything to improve the taste of their beers, or do they assume that nothing is wrong with what they make?

 

Americans are used to this crap beer. Most Americans buy Canadian beer though, which is a little better. I'm actually drinking Yuengling beer which is from America's old brewery. The problem is Americans drink their beer ice cold. This numbs our taste buds. When I tried a cask ale (Strongarm) for the first time, it was so much different than this pee water I have been drinking. The beer wasn't ice cold and I could taste what a real beer is like.

American breweries are money hungry. They want to put out as much product as possible and don't care about taste. I would love to move to England if it wasn't for 1.) all the rain, 2.) the long plane ride, 3.) the bad teeth, and 4.) the hooligans who follow soccer. Manchester United ALL THE WAY! (Ok, so an American is taking it over...)

 

Bad teeth? I think you've been watching too much Austin Powers mate

I miss British beer quite a lot being here in Japan. Every now and then I may stumble across a bar that sells BASS or John Smith beer and I've even seen Carling Black Label and Boddingtons once but mostly I drink Japanese Larger/Beer. The No.1 beer at the moment is ASAHI Super Dry. Taste like bitter piss to me ! In fact all the ASAHI stuff taste like piss. It's amazing how the Japanese follow what others say. I was told many years ago ASAHI wasn't number 1 but KIRIN was (Owned by Mitsubishi). However for some reason or another word started to spread that ASAHI was the best so everyone bought it. It still tastes like the same shite it was when it wasn't popular. Personally I like KIRIN Classic Larger Beer. It tastes pretty much like British stuff in the way that it actually has body and not like cold piss. Another one to get here is Sapporo's Yebisu (Pronounced Ebisu). It's got a good smooth body and quite strong too. I've been to the Sapporo brewery about 4 times over my 7 years here in Japan. If you take the tour (Which is very dull) you get 20 minutes at the end of it to drink as much Yebisu as you want !!! I always come out falling over My most glasses (tall 500ml) yet is 5 in 20 minutes. I tell you, that's 2.5 liters of Yebisu in 20 minutes can sure play with your head.

Yakumo

 

It's because people in America don't drink beer for it's taste... They drink beer to get drunk.

 

Why does everyone in here know what piss tastes like?

 

It's just our image of American beer. It may not taste like piss but we may think it does.

Yakumo

 

British joke I read on Lowbrow.com:

Q: Why is american beer served cold?
A: To differentiate it from piss.

______

I can vouch for Mexican beer being very different from British beer (can't tell which one is better), and definitely MUCH better than american beer. Should you ever get mexican beer: Corona and Estrella are good (and I pass the factory every time I go to work!), Pacifico is good, Nochebuena is VERY good, and Sol is like licking a urinal, only less appealing.

Also - a beer-based drink that will quench your thirst, if you have beer that's not so good. I do this with Estrella or Corona or Tecate, which are cheap:

You take some Clamato/ kermato, some Tabasco sauce, grain salt, pepper (and some mexican sauce called "Jugo Maggi" which you can't get in the sates. Use soy sauce instead), Mexican style Valentina or Huichol sauce (if you can't get these, add three extra drops of tabasco), and enough lemon juice to mix about 300 milliliters.

Add the Clamato/Lemon/Sauce mix
Then add a little of soy sauce, and Tabasco.
Add beer. Stir.
Add grain salt.

Enjoy.

Sounds nasty, and it's probably and aquired taste, but I guarantee you'll kill the thirst, and probably it'll help you escape a hangover for a while.

 

Well, good better beer gets you drunk better, too, so I don't think that's it either. Really it has more to do with marketing and total market domination than anything else. Most people who drink Budweiser or Miller have no idea that there's any such thing as other beers. In my opinion Tecate or Corona are just as bad, the best Mexican beers I've tried are probably Modelo and Dos Equis. Pabst and Heineken and some of those other so-called imports college kids drink suck, too.

There are very very good beers in the U.S., but they're all from micro-breweries (Sierra Nevada is not a micro-brewery), so you can't really get them except locally. Two of the better widely available American beers are probably Shiner Bock and Samuel Adams' specialty beers.

There's good English beers for sure, but in my opinion the best beers are the Northern European ales. The best beer ever is probably La Trappe from the Netherlands. That's some sweet stuff.

I'm really not into beer, though.


...word is bondage...

 

'Spitfire' by Shepard Neame is a popular S.E England brew, hic.

...Check it out if you can find it.

 

That's funny that nobody can agree on which beer is great or bad. I used to have a student from Monterey Mexico who didn't like Corona, and he said that Sol was much better...

As for most beers, I can't really tell the difference (except between Canadian and American beer.) My current favourite in Japan is Ginga Kogen beer (a micro-brewery.) Their Weisen (sp?) beer tastes like bananas, and I LOVE it.

 

American "beer" is just lager, there was some big legal thing going on over things like Budweiser naming their beverage beer, when it's actually lager. Oh and the fact tha Budweiser is a real brandname for a brewery in Europe that makes "real" beer, and was around long long before the US Budweiser company.

 

Few others I've thought of oin the "lager that doesn't taste like piss" area:
Cobra - Indian lager, great with a curry
and
San Miguel - Spanish lager, just plain good.

If I have to drink lager (I have tastebuds so I'm not much of a lager drinker) I'll normally go for one of these. At a push (i.e. the only other drinks available are chick drinks) I'll have fosters.

 

canadian beer all the way! all the US beers i've tasted are awful and should be banned from liquor stores here

i prefer alpine beer (can only be bought here in atlantic canada) and corona from mexico with a slice of lime. sol is pretty good too.