I usually assume when Europeans complain about American beers, they just are complaining about our “domestic” beers like Bud Light, Coors, PBR, etc. which makes sense, they are our bottom shelf beers.
I recently chatted with someone at a party who said “no, all American beers are bad” including microbrewery beers.
I’ve never been to Europe so I wouldn’t know, but I do like my Left Handed Milk Stout, NWPAs, and hell even the hipstered out IPAs.
Are these what y’all are referencing?
Not as bad as American “chocolate” .
I’ve had plenty of really good craft beer but anything mass produced is fine at best and gutter water at worst.
Exactly. Imagine if we judged European beer based on nothing but Heineken.
American here:
There’s a LOT of bad American beer, but to say ALL is just plain dumb. The micro brewery boom made a lot of small breweries pop up and about 90% had no idea what they were doing so yea a lot of them are kinda garbage.
I personally know micro brewers in NY who studied their ass off to make some incredible beers that I would put right up there with Westies and Cantillon.
One of the best beers I’ve ever had is from a Gypsy brewer in NY called Cantina Cantina. The guy used to work in my local distributor, then went to work for our favorite local brewer Barrier, then took his expertise to Greenport Brewery and turned around their whole operation, then started brewing his own absolute masterpieces.
My point is the best of the best is probably going to be buried deep under a pile of garbage beers cause they’re usually obsessed with making art and don’t focus on getting their name out there.
European mainstream beer isn’t anything to brag about.
That people in the Netherlands actually buy Heineken’s makes me thing that they must like skunky beer there.
The fuck? American craft beer is absolutely delicious. A lot of light beer brands are also good. Who’s saying American beer sucks?
Maybe it’s because I don’t really like beer (or alcohol) but I’ve been to Germany and the beer wasn’t any better or worse than American beer.
The Jagermeister, on the other hand, was definitely way better in Germany.
Because of the German Purity Law, there isn’t much that German beer can do to experiment or try new things. There are some excellent German beers (Brlo is one), but generally you don’t get the variety that you find in other countries.
Real talk, it’s your common mass produced and internationally sold beers that suck. S’ok, a lot of mass produced Canadian beer sucks too (lookin’ at you, Alexander Keith’s. Pride of Nova Scotia indeed.)
The issue is that the good stuff doesn’t often make it outside of your borders. I’ve had decent beer when actually in the U.S before.
Will say I will drink a cold PBR if there’s no other valid choice, but if someone just has Coors or Bud (especially Bud - but especially Bud Light) I’ll stick with water. Only other American beer that reaches Canada I’d probably drink is Lucky Lager, but that’s more out of nostalgia for west coast teenaged mayham than its own merits, and Kokanee would produce the same effect and caveat anyway.
Edit: After thinking about it more, I’ve enjoyed Sam Adams limited releases before, and we get those sometimes.
I’ve enjoyed Sam Adams limited releases before,
The Summer Ale is nice on a hot day
The American beer you get in Canada is terrible. Budweiser and Miller and shit like that. American beer at an American pub was great, when I last visited.
Beer-drinking European living in 'Murica here. For certain styles, the US has fantastic beers available. In particular IPAs (which don’t always have to be mega hoppy!), pale ales, pilsners, amber ales, and stouts. Plenty of great choices to be found here, if you discover the right breweries. That’s key, because there are a lot breweries with imo questionable taste.
What’s harder to find are good beers of other styles, such as Belgian or German beers. US breweries try, sometimes, but they aren’t succeeding.
I’ll say that you’re generally right that American breweries don’t do Belgian beers perfectly always, but there are a handful that are great. The thing about craft brewing is you have to go around and try new things. There’s so many options, and most are mediocre at best. However, with there being so many options, a small few nail certain things, whatever that may be.
That’s kinda the difference - local specialties mostly can’t be beaten on their own turf. Also, in America you’ve got to actually seek out the good stuff and go local, the InBev stuff is meticulously targeted at swine with no taste.
This is the correct answer. Pacific Northwest microbrew is awesome for many styles. But not German/Belgian style beers - you guys haven’t figured them out yet. The big nationally distributed beers like coors and bud are basically horse urine.
I’m particularly fond of Belgian beers and my partner is fond of German beers. They’re of course not as good in America as the real thing, but there are definitely some solid options. In fact that’s what I will say is nice about American beers: you can find something decent of any style of beer you can imagine, and some truly excellent ones in a handful of styles as you mentioned already.
The Belgian and German styles are largely ignored by the national breweries, but a lot of more local or regional microbreweries are crushing it when it comes to them.
I live in Europe, but was an expert taste panelist at New Belgium Brewing in the US when I lived there.
Lefthand Milk Stout Nitro is a great beer.
There’s a lot of good beer all over the world (okay, much of it anyway). Quality has a LOT more to do with freshness, cleanliness, and lack of dissolved oxygen in the beer. You can also find bad beer most anywhere. Don’t let someone making silly blanket statement get ya down.
I will just go ahead and contradict myself by making a blanket statement that the low end of food is just better in most of the EU cuz of how much stricter the rules are. From McDonald’s to the grocery store, you kinda can’t get “terrible” food.
Love that you randomly called out left hand and new Belgium. Good name drops 💜
New Belgium is the shit. Trippel in particular is delicious.
New Belgium is amazing.
1554 is one of my favorites, and I introduced my friend to the Voodoo ranger series and that’s how he left the land of domestic beers.
Thank you for your service. 🫡
1554 is one of the GOATs of beer
Ooh I haven’t had the porter in a while actually… go Colorado!
Wow, care to tell us more about New Belgium?
How do you become an expert taster? Did you have to taste every batch to make sure it comes out tasting “correct”? How do they manage that on such a large scale?
Sure! The tasting part is complex but to grossly simplify it:
Each site has a bunch of people who are taster verified and have other jobs (rigorous program that takes a while to be part of) and they 1+ taste panel per day on each site which has a mix of new beers, old shelf beers, all the new releases, all from all of the sites, plus other market stuff (competitor products). You don’t usually know what you’re tasting outside of trainings so you just use a bunch of chemical words to describe the beer (no, you don’t say “fruity”, you talk about the specific fruit compound like acetaldehyde or ethyl hexonoate).
They only use the data of attributes you’re best at, so each taster is like an instrument that they’re also Corsa calibrating with spiked samples throughout all of that.
The best part, by far? Free snacks; good ones too. We already had limitless free beer so that doesn’t incentivize anyone
Beyond that NBB was dope. Love the people, love the beer, the company actually stands up for what it believes in. Based af, if it was in Europe I’d 100% work for them still. But we did wanna leave the US so…
Wow, how fascinating, thanks!
It makes total sense in hindsight that people have specialties. I guess I figured it to be a bit like the wine world where everybody has to have roughly the same skills in order to get by.
Woot! I drink fat tire from new Belgium as a everyday beer, although right now I am drinking modelo especial lol…
Generic American beer sucks. Craft American beer is fucking awesome.
I experienced the same in Australia when I visited so assume it’s probably the same most places.
My American friends made me drink Keystone Ice and this was one of the most disgusting things I did ever drink. The rest was also not great. A few American beers were passable but I had better ones in most European countries.
We have many options for people who just want to drink a bunch of cheap beer. Bud Light, Miller Light, Coors Light, Natural Light, Milwaukee’s Best Light, the list goes on. Most agree the stuff you can buy in a 24 pack at Walmart isn’t good quality beer.
But places like Dogfish Head, Ardent, Foothills, Bell’s, Cigar City, Oskar Blues, Three Notched, Flying Dog, Elysian, Anchor, Lagunitas and many others produce some great beers.
I think it’s of-a-kind
Domestic/mass-produced European beers are much better than domestic/mass-produced American beers.
And European craft beers are better than American craft beers.America has a lot of bad domestic and bad craft beers, but there are enough craft beers that some have gotta be good even if just by luck.
Personally I don’t think it’s a big deal: yes American beers taste like water or fruit water, but I like water, it’s refreshing. Water that gives me a buzz if I drink enough is a win in my book.
I think a lot of American breweries confuse “interesting” beer with “good” beer, because in the US, as long as it doesn’t taste like Coors, you’re fine.
It’s the chicken bacon ranch pizza problem. It’s good. I like it. But I don’t want it every time I have pizza. I definitely can’t eat a whole chicken bacon ranch pizza, even if I spread the leftovers over the week. But a slice every now and then is great.
“Good” American beer is generally pretty fatiguing to drink. Good European beer isn’t. That’s how it is for me at least.
I thought you meant chicken bacon ranch pizza flavoured beer, which I also wouldn’t be surprised about if it existed in the US
Same. Also. Now I’m hungry.
But that’s kinda what I’m talking about: by sheer luck some of those interesting beers have gotta be good.
People hate Coors because it tastes like water, but idk why someone would hate that; water is good.
Sure it’s a bad beer in the sense that it isn’t very beer-ey, but it’s a fine drink because it doesn’t taste like anything. I don’t see how someone can like Perrier water, but not like Coors, they’re practically the same.
Beer is good only in Belgium.
- An Italian
Might I suggest Carrobiolo, in Monza? They make some pretty awesome stuff.
Belgian beer is good but it is so heavy I can only drink one before I feel off.
Heavy in taste or heavy in abv? We have both light in taste and light in alcohol beers, sometimes even both at the same time :)
They are heavy in both really. In Amsterdam I had my first quadruppel though and now my threshold for heavy in taste is much higher.
Heavy in taste/texture. It feels like a rock in my stomach. They still taste good!
You Italians have a beer up by Lago di Como called “Spluga” or something like that. It was damned good especially with the wood fired pizza I had there.
Belgian beer is sooo good, but your local (southern) german beer is always better
Are you south-tirolian or why do you have a German nickname?
That is called a nickname, it has nothing to do with my real name. I am originally from Rome.
Just curious, how did you come up with that nickname?
I was studying biology, and I would sell my soul for a passing mark on my exam.
As a vetted german beer enthusiast, may I say that the big-brand beers are on average as good (or bad) as the american beers I know. Differences imho originate from drinking preferences (light beers) and allowed ingredients or additives, but that has a minor impact on sensory quality. Personally I often missed aroma and bitterness (hops) and gravity of most beers I tried in the USA, but that‘s just me.
