/beer/ general

I won't argue the rest of your faggotry, but yes, in the midwest bud light (and all AB products of the same tier) are $15 for a 30 case. Sometimes they're maybe $17 but you can absolutely buy it for 50 cents a can.

>in the midwest
>buying Bud products
haha, now I know you aren't from the midwest
$15 30 pack is a normal price for cheap tier beer, but super advertising budget light beer is usually more like $18 24 packs

Pale ales are super nice in hot weather.
Drinking pic related. Haven't had it since I turned 21, five years ago. Can't believe I used to shit on this beer. It's phenomenal and priced reasonably. Probably my new go to.

I live in the midwest and have never seen bud light that cheap, ever.

Full disclosure I live about ten miles from the St. Louis brewery.

Missouri is the south

No one wants to claim missouri

Nigger please.

If your state is mostly red you are definitely not a northerner

The stars aligned for me.

Last night I went out to eat and they had Pliny the Younger on tap, and tonight I went out to a different restaurant and they just happened to have fucking Pliny the Elder on tap.

Never had either, I feel like I'm missing out.

Right now having some Alaskan Freeride Pale Ale. It is alright, nothing special. Easy to drink, tastes fine. I mainly got it because I haven't had it before and it seemed like one of the few non-IPA beers available. Don't get me wrong, I love IPAs as much as the next user, but holy fuck it seems like they make up 80% of what's on the shelves here (WA).

Im not a fan of IPA but pliny the elder is good. Very balanced. Never had the younger.

I much prefer the elder, but would say the younger is the more balanced and less hop forward, so would probably appeal more to someone not really into IPAs. Both are definitely solid beers worthy of their reputations, though I wouldn't go out of my way or stand in line for hours for the younger, the elder was definitely one of the best I've ever had and it was just a fluke they had a keg (they'll go through it before the night is over, and they don't even list it).

Yeah. I came across pliny the elder in my local beer store. Bought three. The most drinkable ipa ive had has been founders all day ipa, the most flavorful has been pliny. Its hoppy, piney, citrusy,but all very balanced.

Another thing people need to understand with a beer like Pliny is the importance of freshness. The difference between a 2 week old Pliny and a 2 month old Pliny is going to be night and day, and I'm honestly pretty sure that many people who think they hate IPAs have been drinking expired beer.

Does Pliny really sit on shelves for much time. Based on its reputation, I can't imagine much sitting around

I got a case of this 6 weeks ago and then immediately went on a diet so they've been gathering dust. My favorite of the macrobreweries.

Alaskan is weird, the times I had their beers on draught they were excellent, but all the bottles of those same beers were very underwhelming.

People buy it up quickly, but some people might not realize that it's meant to be drunk immediately.

I don't know, I have a few smaller/more obscure breweries that I can always find on shelves, but can almost never find fresh, and it's infuriating. I asked the beer guy at my biggest local beer/liquor store if I could get a discount on something past it's best by date and he said he'll put all those out for half off around Christmas, as though anyone would want to drink them by that point (this was around a month ago).

People find any reason to dislike bitter or hop-forward beers.

Why can't you just admit it's because your palate is as unrefined as it was when your mommy was serving you fish sticks and ketchup?

Lets be honest. It's not a coincidence that IPAs are the most successful style of beer put out by literally any brewery that offers them, yet everyone on this board seems to get triggered when someone mentions them.

In b4 I'm the one who is triggered. I'm happily triggered and I'll fight any one of you because there isn't a style of beer I don't love.

yo i bought this racer 5 IPA and it has a really nasty after taste, is there a reason for that?

>It's not a coincidence that IPA's are the most successful style of beer put out... Yet everyone on this board seems to get triggered when someone mentions them.
Because it's a meme? Jack Daniels is pretty bad compared to most other whiskey, yet it's selling better than most I know. Bud Lite is monumentally more liked than IPAs, but I'll take a stab that you have shit on it and people that drank it multiple times before. "Popular for a reason" is a retarded argument.

>trump got elected, and unless you're a millionaire you're literally a retard if you voted for him

Yeah, people pretty much just emulate what their parents did and plug their ears (and mouths) to new ideas sometimes.

I am curious why do Americans meme IPA so much?

I'm curious why shitposters on Veeky Forums can't differentiate between "like" and "meme"?

When you realize that IPA was simply a method to keep beer from spoiling during long shipping and storage in a tropical climate, it kind of changes your perspective.

It's a shitty style of beer that developed out of the necessity to get somewhat palatable beer to Brits stuck in India. Surprisingly, it became the go to, must have beer for all the young american 1,000,000 scoville unit hot shot heros that would no more know an oak cask from a garage can.

Not shitposting but everytime I hear about beer it's always IPA, it's like how people memed bacon so much.

IPA is kind of like the gold standard of beer brewing; the best of the best. It's not that people don't appreciate and drink other styles, it's just that IPAs are the best. They're not the best for every setting/mood/occasion, but purely from a brewer standpoint, it's basically the benchmark.

It's kind of like the heavyweight of the boxing world; everyone wants to see the heavyweight champion because he's the one who can beat all the other champions, as interesting as they may be to watch fight.

IPAs are nice and medium-bodied with a lot of that fresh hop taste. A lot of flavors come through on hops: grassy, citrusy, bitter and mild. My favorite beers have lovely grapefruit or lemon tones that are in there thanks to the hops. I would like them whether they are trendy or not, but I understand how some people might not like them or might be seriously tired of hearing about them.

That's a myth. Maybe by the time you graduate high school you'll be old enough to appreciate bitter food and drink.

went beer shop

>Kernel Brown Ale
>Kernel Export Stout
>Kernel Pale Ale
>Magic Rock Surreal Stout
>Orval
>Trappist Rochefort 10
>Thornbridge Chocolate Stout
>Thornbridge Bourbon-aged Stout

T B H
B
H

I have a westvleteren 12 purchased a few years ago when they limited released to the states

For reasons not my fault it's been in my fridge since.

I'm scared to drink it - think it's still ok to drink?

It's not going to hurt you or taste bad or anything, no

They age fine

For several years in a refrigerator though?

I had a dogfish 120 minute that also stayed in a refrigerator for a couple years. Opened it and it was awful - shared with some friends and everyone got sick...

Maybe it was just that particular bottle

nobody got sick from an ipa that was only a couple years old. I had some of an 80+ year old lager that was probably shitty to begin with because reasons and it didn't hurt me at all

The refrigerator stopped any sort of yeast activity depending on the temperature, and yes. While there is a best buy date on the bottle usually, the westy lasts for like 5 to 6 years in cellaring temps. Also the people didn't get sick from the beer. I guarantee that.

Tried some chocolate orange stout from some local brewery.

Wasn't as bad as it sounds.

No pathogens can survive in the environment of beer, no matter its age, primarily because it's too acidic, and secondarily because of the alcohol.

>"popular for a reason" is a perfectly fine argument. The consumer is literally the only thing that dictates whether a product is good or not. Not to mention the fact that an IPA and a Bud Light aren't even in the same market nor even share overlap in target audience. The only thing they have in common are that they both can be classified as a "malt beverage", yet their collective differences distance them to the point of apples and oranges. Sure, I've shit on Bud Light, and it's because I don't identify with a Bud Light drinker in the slightest. I drink strictly craft beer, and I identify with craft beer drinkers because they have discerning taste. A Bud Light drinker most certainly does not have discerning taste.

>muh origin of the name

Not an IPA on the market today is made in honor of its namesake. Not to mention that every beer has hops and hop character in it, but got forbid it's anything more than just a subtlety or the tasteless spergs will start to screech about things they don't like being nothing more than memes.

> I drink strictly craft beer
Why though? There's plenty of non-craft beers that are good. I bet there's loads of them you would like if you just gave them a try. If you just happen to like craft beers better than non-craft then thats one thing but if you literally refuse to try them because
>muh microbrew
You're legit a hippster faggot

>There's plenty of non-craft beers that are good
Unless you're counting craft breweries that are now owned by macros, I can't think of one. Some like PBR are fine but I would never call it a good beer.

Drinking a Westmalle tripel. The best tripel I've had.

>too lazy to refrigerate my beer from last night
>put it on the porch while there is a snowstorm
>ice cold beer

>myth

If by myth you mean historical fact, ok.

>There's plenty of non-craft beers that are good

Not a single beer exists on the market that doesn't qualify as "craft" and doesn't cut a significant portion of their recipe with adjuncts like corn and rice. They add just enough malted barley to call themselves "malt beverage" or "malt specialty" by FDA standards.

Notice how craft beer doesn't have that problem? That's why I drink strictly craft beer. Call me a hipster faggot all you want, I genuinely like beer and I'd prefer it unadulterated with fillers. Care to call me a hipster faggot because I buy organic food too?

Hops wer expensive and beer was mostly drunk by the working class then, so they couldn't afford to put much hops in most beer, so the hoppy stuff was saved for special occasions such as long voyages where the extra hop content kept bacterial growth low

I always have thought of craft beers as mostly really low quantity produced country local stuff. But if you mean anything that isn't Bud light, coors, whatever then I completely agree with you.

Can't think of any American macro I'd classify as good. Refreshing and easy to drink? Yes. Good? No.

Would you say Sierra Nevada, Stone, Alaskan, or Ballast Point are craft? Just curious.

God like.

They're craft by definition. There's a few buzzwords commonly used to describe small, local, or specialty beer breweries, but the most important indicator of craft is that they produce less than 6 million barrels each year. Sierra Nevada, as expansive and successful as they are, still produce less than 10% of what Anheuser Busch produces each year.

I've only heard of Sierra Nevada and Stone but I guess I would say yes. They do have those in Norway so they are obviously not really small and miniscule. Maybe I just have my definitions of craft/macro/micro messed up

The term craft beer is kind of ambiguous. It has a technical definition of basically any brewery that is Sam Adams or smaller, but it really refers more to the beer's quality than the size of the company. Take stuff like Goose Island for instance, they are owned by Budweiser, but most of their stuff is pretty well regarded, the there is stuff that is technically small enough to be considered "craft" but no one considers craft because it is bad like Yuengling.

Life in the US must be terrible if your only beer choices are adjunct lager and overpriced craft beer. In the UK there is a whole market of real ale that is in between the shit beer and the best beer. The sort of beer that won't break the bank but is perfectly drinkable in the pub or at home.
Not quite, hops are expensive true, but the taste for very well hopped beers just didn't really exist until recently. You have to remember nowadays people drink IPA fresh but it was designed to age for months on long sea voyages and only be drunk after the hop flavours had reduced significantly.
Traditionally keeping beers and old ale (your good beer to be dunk on special occasion) were low on hop content and focused on strong malt and yeast profiles. The trend for extremely bitter and hoppy beers is very new.

>You have to remember nowadays people drink IPA fresh but it was designed to age for months
You make it sound like it was some god that created it. It was saved for the long voyages because the weak stuff went bad, and it was too expensive to drink every day

>Life in the US must be terrible if your only beer choices are adjunct lager and overpriced craft beer
Craft beer is much more affordable in the US than England, sure its more than cheap beer, but its well within reach of pretty much anyone

Its also important to note that we have much better tasting hops now. IPA didn't really explode in popularity until the modern super tasty hops were bred

Is there an equivalent of real ale in the US market?
In the UK there are plenty of surviving breweries that are definitely not craft in any way, but they brew good tasting beer with no adjuncts, real hops instead of extract and are hardly more expensive than the shittest of lager.
I ask because due to the prohibition american brewing took a massive ht and your only breweries that have survived the prohibition now brew adjunct pilsners.

No, not really. Yeah, prohibition killed all but the big shitty breweries, and then over regulation afterwards didn't help.
Luckily for us now it being shitty for so long was probably what lead to craft beer becoming so popular and easy to find now, while in the UK where ok though weak beer was available there was less demand to create craft beer

Yeah that makes sense there is definitely less market pressure in the UK for development within brewing. I like weak beer though. The UK pint is about 15% bigger than the US pint and there are also laws in the UK that say if you ask for a pint you must legally be served 567ml of fluid. Also "session drinking" seems to be far more prevalent in the UK than the US where you drink for 6-10 hours and consume maybe a gallon of beer but not get too drunk. That isn't achievable without weaker beer.

I talked to some beer guys when I was there and they said beer is also taxed based on how much alcohol it has so that has long encouraged the proliferation of lower alcohol beer

Most craft beer in the US is generally $5-8 for a 6 pack and the macros are around $15-20 for 24, so craft isn't actually that much more expensive. Not sure how it is over there.

is $17 too much for the 2016 version? Never had one but I am interested.

I want to say yes, just because there are so many great barrel aged beers for cheaper now, but if you've never had it it'd be worth the experience

thats true too, there are three "cliffs" where alcohol duty on beer increases 1.2%, 2.8% and 7.5% because of this there are very few beers above 7.5% produced in the UK. Brewdog makes a lovely session IPA called nanny state at 0.5%.

>your only beer choices are adjunct lager and overpriced craft beer

Eh, more or less. Europe literally invented beer so it would only make sense that your options are broader.

>Europe literally invented beer so it would only make sense that your options are broader.
Europe did invent America too so that logic doesn't really hold, pretty much the entire midwest was settled by German and Irish people

>Europe invented beer
>beer has existed for thousands of years
>Europe invented America
>America has existed for 250 years

Your logic doesn't hold

I like this argument guys but beer was probably invented somewhere around the middle east shortly after the domestication of wheat.

>domestication of wheat

I think you mean barley.

America split off from Europe culturally. It makes little sense to attribute inventions that predate that split to one and not the other. Its not like America just spontaneously arose, it was created by Europeans who brought their knowledge and traditions with them
>I like this argument guys but beer was probably invented somewhere around the middle east shortly after the domestication of wheat.
True in a sense, but the modern sense of beer in which the definition specifically requires hops was invented in Europe about 1000 years ago

I don't know which was domesticated first but it would definitely be possible to make some sort of beer from wheat

Primitive varieties of wheat can actually be mashed s they contain enough amylase to be self converting. Einkorn, a variety of wild wheat and possibly the first grain ever farmed can be malted and mashed unlike modern wheat to produce a maltose rich wort.

No it's not retard

Show me a craft beer 6 pack @ $5

Are you autistic

I don't think you know what that word means user.

>implying smelly arabs invented my precious beer

Who do you think occupied the fertile crescent during the dawn of agriculture?

IIRC the earliest evidence of brewing was in Armenia, so not exactly arabs.

Yeah, it's pretty much a beer meme overload, but this shit is fucking good. Not my picture.

Finnish refugees at the fringe of the khanate attempting to recover from the loss of technology caused by the nuclear fission bombs dropped at the end of the finno-korean hyper war.

I got a 4 pack of 16 oz cans for 4.99

My grocery store had Otra Vez on sale for $4.50 for like 2 months

Fuck that sounds good. Their regular peanut butter porter is incredible. They had a hazelnut one for awhile that I thought was even better. Too bad they're jam packed from open to close

$5 is low, but the vast majority of craft beer 6 packs are $7-9

Water costs money you dingus.

Sobieski vodka

you can easily get free water

That's either a pretty big bottle, or that dude has very small hands.

Got 3 different stouts, mixing them all
Guinness Extra
Red hare Oatmeal stout
hombrew honey stout

Probably drink a SN porter later or maybe [spoiler]an IPA[/spoiler]

Last year I was lucky enough to get my hands on westleven 12. Was probably the best beer I've ever had. Have any of you tried it or wanted to try it?

Cans of what