Finally.

[ThePearDream]

So, when I go to gatherings at my mother in-law's place. They always ask me if I want a beer, and I usually decline. Then someone tries to give me crap about why I'm not drinking. It's not that I don't drink. It's because the only beer they usually have is Coors Light and Corona. I'd just rather not put myself through the pain of drinking that trash. And, not being an alcoholic, I'm perfectly fine with just not drinking. I'm not a beer snob by any means, but there are literally thousands of better options out there. Hell, even a Bud Light would be a marginal improvement. The last figure I saw, showed Colorado having 250 breweries, and I'm positive that any one of those would be better than Coors.

Not to mention that Pete Coors is a scumbag.

[Larry Mal]

Is he? Coors isn't a big thing around here.

The Busches are certainly a weird group of people, of course, they lose control of the company and now it's part of some international conglomerate and now I see little reason to support Anheuser Busch. Like, I prefer Budweiser to Pabst and the other junk I drink, but Budweiser is like $8 a six pack and if I'm going to pay that, I'll spend a little more for something I like better, and if I'm just wanting some cheap stuff to guzzle while I post bullshit on a guitar forum I'll get Stag or Pabst.

I have no idea how beer became so expensive.

[Singlebladepickup]

I'm no alcoholic, but I'll pretty much drink whatever. That said, my friend drinks high life like it's going out of style and I think I'd just as soon not have a beer. A different friend of mine loves Bud Straw-Rita which is of course some kind of strawberry margarita beer. I like Strawberry beer ok, but why did Budweiser choose to make fruit-flavored beers?

I have no problem with light beer, although I never buy it. I also don't hate Corona - I hate Tecate. When I want cheap beer I choose PBR (*smiles, displays can*). The gas station near my house sells a 6pack of 16 ounce pbr's for like $5.60. I'm not some hipster who says it's delicious, but it's as good as Budweiser and about as good a value as I can find. Maybe that should be their slogan.

[Larry Mal]

Yeah, I happily drink PBR, and while I wouldn't say it's as good as Budweiser, it's 90% as good.

That's not a highly quantified figure, that 90%.

And when it comes to "better", expensive, craft beers, sure, I enjoy that. But if it's after long day, and I get the kids to bed, and I'm watching some bullshit on Youtube I'm not like, savoring the beer at that point. Maybe I should be, I don't know. Same with wine, I know a lot about wine compared to your average person, I had to sell it for years. It's not that I can't sit there and appreciate qualities that a wine has, it's more that I don't want to, I don't want to smell the cork, I don't want to research the terroir, I don't want to evaluate the vintage, I just want something in a glass that I can drink. It's quite likely that I'm more interested in doing whatever I'm doing while I drink the wine or beer than I am in the wine or beer itself.

That's not to say that I won't spend some time learning about beverages, it's just that not every single bottle of beer needs to be some fucking experience.

[Embenny]

Is he? Coors isn't a big thing around here.

The Busches are certainly a weird group of people, of course, they lose control of the company and now it's part of some international conglomerate and now I see little reason to support Anheuser Busch. Like, I prefer Budweiser to Pabst and the other junk I drink, but Budweiser is like $8 a six pack and if I'm going to pay that, I'll spend a little more for something I like better, and if I'm just wanting some cheap stuff to guzzle while I post bullshit on a guitar forum I'll get Stag or Pabst.

I have no idea how beer became so expensive.

In my part of Canada, a 6-pack of Budweiser is $13. Even converting to USD, that's $10. Prices can go way, way higher than that for something better.

I never developed a taste for beer, wine, or really any alcohol, so I had to look that number up, but I do know for sure that alcohol is crazy-expensive here. When I go to the States, I see hard liquor for $12 or so that costs $30-$40 here.

[ThePearDream]

Yeah, I happily drink PBR, and while I wouldn't say it's as good as Budweiser, it's 90% as good.

That's not a highly quantified figure, that 90%.

And when it comes to "better", expensive, craft beers, sure, I enjoy that. But if it's after long day, and I get the kids to bed, and I'm watching some bullshit on Youtube I'm not like, savoring the beer at that point. Maybe I should be, I don't know. Same with wine, I know a lot about wine compared to your average person, I had to sell it for years. It's not that I can't sit there and appreciate qualities that a wine has, it's more that I don't want to, I don't want to smell the cork, I don't want to research the terroir, I don't want to evaluate the vintage, I just want something in a glass that I can drink. It's quite likely that I'm more interested in doing whatever I'm doing while I drink the wine or beer than I am in the wine or beer itself.

That's not to say that I won't spend some time learning about beverages, it's just that not every single bottle of beer needs to be some fucking experience.

I have a friend who is a total beer nerd. He's always going on about coconut porter this and rhubarb saison that. And that's cool and all, at the right time and place. But I need a beer I can drink after I mow the lawn, and it's not going to be something that's $10 a 4 pack.

My go-to regular ass beer is Shiner Bock. It's readily available around here for $1 less than Coors or Bud, but tastes way better. Their light beer is one of the only good ones I've ever had, and is perfect for a hot summer day of grilling or yard work.

[Larry Mal]

Right! And that's my thing when people complain about the American lager, like Budweiser. It is a lighter style of beer by design, it's a feature, not a bug. Things get hot here in the United States and when people came up with that style of beer, it was designed to be refreshment more than anything. When people actually drank, they drank hard liquor. Beer was designed to be refreshment that one could have at any time of the day.

When Budweiser was introduced in 1876, and Pabst is even older than that at 1833, people weren't drinking soda or Powerade, you know? Very few people had fruit juice to drink at all, and a lot of people didn't even have indoor plumbing and would have had well water to drink, which has its own problems.

People forget that. The American lager is a style of beer as valid as anything else is, and should only be evaluated on whether or not it's a good version of what it's designed to be.

[Singlebladepickup]

Things get hot here in the United States and when people came up with that style of beer, it was designed to be refreshment more than anything.

Coors does nail the refreshment thing perhaps better than any other, as it's practically water. Shiner is definitely cool and inexpensive. Abita is about that cost as well, and is about as good or maybe a little better IMO. Their Andy Gator is 8% alcohol and sold in large individual bottles where I live - it will get you crunk and it doesn't taste too strong.

I drank an $11 4-pack on my birthday, it was cool. Mostly I like drinking something cheap that will get me a buzz after 32 ounces or so.

[Larry Mal]

Sometimes I get nice German beers and such. I'm feeling a little oversaturated by the craft beer movement at present, though. I'm so sick of anything that has "-PA" after its name, so tired and bored of fucking pale ales.

I also cringe when I read about a new restaurant and who is running the "beverage program" and shit. Maybe just because I don't get out anymore... can you tell?

[ThePearDream]

Things get hot here in the United States and when people came up with that style of beer, it was designed to be refreshment more than anything.

Coors does nail the refreshment thing perhaps better than any other, as it's practically water. Shiner is definitely cool and inexpensive. Abita is about that cost as well, and is about as good or maybe a little better IMO. Their Andy Gator is 8% alcohol and sold in large individual bottles where I live - it will get you crunk and it doesn't taste too strong.

I drank an $11 4-pack on my birthday, it was cool. Mostly I like drinking something cheap that will get me a buzz after 32 ounces or so.

Abita is good stuff. I've never seen it around here though.

What if somebody wants to drink a beer with a meal. Are you really going to have a quadruple hopped zucchini sour with your hamburger? I hope not. You want something that won't overpower the food (which to my mind, has a much greater potential for delivering an interesting combination of flavors).

[mackerelmint]

No, don't fool yourself, brother. There's simply no comparison. My wife, who's from Chicago, was talking the same stuff. I poured a glass of Budweiser, a great beer, and a glass of Miller High Life. She complained about how I hadn't made it a blind taste test, and I told her I couldn't, since Miller High Life has some weird chemical foam to it... it hangs on the side of the glass like a sick rat in the rain. Disgusting.

Do the same test. You'll see.

Budweiser, and Busch, are very good beers, though.

How dare you, sir.

While I'm no great fan of the Miller Genuine Draft, I will defend the High Life until the end of my days. I find it to be a fine beer, goes down easy and satisfies. I can't say the same for either Budweiser or Busch.

A couple of years ago, I was visiting my parents and my dad was remarking on a $17 bottle of beer he had seen for sale earlier that day. He said something to the effect of "you can get a plenty good beer for $5 a bottle", to which I replied that all those fancy beers are wasted on me as I'm perfectly content to drink Miller High Life when I actually drink beer, which is seldom because liquor drinks exist. My mom said "Yeah, it was the one you always liked as a baby". So I asked. She told me that my grandfather enjoyed feeding beer to babies, because he thought (correctly) that it was funny, and that I didn't like any of them except for miller high life. Apparently I sucked that stuff down with gusto. And why wouldn't I have? It's pretty good.

So I can honestly say that It's been my beer of choice for 40 years, even though I'm less than 2 months shy of 41, myself. I also like Hamm's, and Olympia. Coors not at all.

[Larry Mal]

Hamm's is pretty good, but I bought 30 of the damn things for $11 and by around beer #22 I was dreading having #23 (this didn't all happen during the same day).

Sorry to ruin your very infancy! I usually try and tell myself that I'm only making your adult years worse. There's a quiet dignity in that.

But really, Miller High Life is dreadful. Don't trust me, trust your eyes. Pour it in a glass. Watch how the head lapses into the side of the glass and hangs there weirdly. Why does it do that? That's not how beer is supposed to look. It seems to have some kind of chemical foaming agent to it.

I'm not shitting you, buy a can of Budweiser, buy a can of Miller High Life, pour them both in glasses. Whatever they do to Miller in the lab looks fucking weird in a glass. You'll see the difference.

Miller sucks.

[Jaguar018]

I like High Life more than Budweiser, but I did go to college in Wisconsin, so that has something to do with it. You don't drink the foam that sticks on the side of the glass anyway. I was also there when the craft brew thing started to rev up, and Wisconsin being Wisconsin it had a considerable lead over the rest of the country in terms of having smaller breweries.

I gave up on IPAs long ago. That stuff is junior varsity.

[shadowplay]

Fuck that American Budweiser river deep and mountain high. It's roughly as appetising as a pint of cat piss but at least over the water here it's a handy pointer that the drinker in a clueless knob with a taste for every shite thing imaginable, so long as it's heavily advertised on the idiot box.

This is REAL Budweiser.



I'm not even being much of a snob on this since you can buy own brand pilsner from Aldi that's cheaper than USA Bud malt liquor pish and way better.

D

[Larry Mal]

"Czechvar", we know that as here. Budweiser has to be called "Bud" as I understand it in Europe. That same beer can only be imported here as "Czechvar". And it's good beer... I like Czech beers in general.