Controversial Beer Opinions Thread

A little early to tell... good. Great even, in some cases. Best in the world? Eh... Its like some people think the last few hundred years never happened. I get that most people have a bias towards their own country.

 

Ya it's real hard to tell. It seems to me like we might have dashed out to an early lead as far as available variety at any one time. And it does appear to me that we have seized the lead in hop forward beers (primarily by pioneering a hop breeding revolution), but as to the culture around beer consumption, the culture of beer appreciation, and the majority of styles I don't have a wide enough sample size to estimate but it seems we might not be so #1

 

Most people in Michigan and other states with cold winters and warm summers won't admit that the vast majority of the beer in their cellar (basement) is better off being stored at fridge temp.

 

or admit the beer was past code.

 

This may or may not be the right thread to register this semi rant without starting a new thread, but it's the closest current one so here goes. My wife and I are in Fairbanks, Alaska for the first time and hit the Silver Gulch brewery last night. The food was good and they had a good selection of bottles available but I wanted to try one of theirs. I asked our waitress, who was both efficient and friendly, which of the seasonals were available and she said all of 'em. So I decided to push the season and ordered an Oktoberfest.

When she brought it to the table, it was a good heads up that something was amiss because it was a cola color instead of the marzen clear copper color or the lighter and more yellowish festbier. The taste further indicated a major deviation from the style. Make no doubt about it, it wasn't bad in a DFH Raison D'Être kind of way; but it 100% was not adhering to the style at all. Since it tasted good anyway and complemented the food, and I'm on vacation and not wanting to bust chops, I just mentioned to the waitress after settling the bill (and tipping generously) that although the beer was fine it didn't adhere to what an Oktoberfest should look, smell and taste like.

Maybe the bartender pulled off the wrong tap but looking at a previous review of the beer in question indicated a similar situation. Maybe they have a strange understanding of the style.

 

Sounds like you had a Festbier and not a Marzen but either way you ordered an Oktoberfest and both marzens and festbiers are Oktoberfest so don't see the issie.

 

A festbier should not be "cola-colored" by any means though... That's an even bigger mistake if the intended style was genuinely festbier, and not a marzen.

 

Any Fest Bee I’ve had has been straw colored, Marzens maybe copper colored. The color was off from what you ordered, and Oktoberfests don’t taste like the DFH offering.

 

I mentioned festbier in my original comment and it definitely wasn't that. Thanks for the feedback.

 

yeah I guess I did miss the looked like coca-cola part.

 

yeah I missed that part.

 

The most controversial part of your post...

 

Grist House in Pittsburgh did buy a former Nike missile command center. So you may see it!

 

Agree on prices! Was in Asheville recently and couldn't believe I was drinking beer at breweries for like $6/pint. It was soooo much cheaper to drink there than PA. Or WV. I wouldn't say the beer was better than PA, but at least it was cheaper!

 

My controversial opinions of the day.

There are no more meaningless comments about beer than, "that beer doesn't even taste like beer" or its corollary, "that person likes that beer because it doesn't taste like beer."

I suggest if beer drinkers of all types from all countries were pressed to name beers that "taste like beer" the list would have so many different styles on it it the meaninglessness of the idea would be revealed.

"Traditional" is a close competitor for the uselessness title. Traditional means "existing in or as part of a tradition; long-established". Beer has been brewed for thousands of years. How long does a beer need to be around to be long established? How far back do we need to go to find true traditional styles? Can any modern styles, i.e. styles around since modern understanding of yeast, be considered traditional? We also misuse the term constantly, saying things like, "that isn't a traditional IPA" when original IPA was bretted and barreled, and used ingredients different than used nowadays, and nobody (or damned few) alive today has tasted them. Using the term traditional clouds rather than clears a discussion about beer.

 

Well, I think if such an exercise was actually done, the overwhelming majority of answers would be something like Bud, and the meaningfulness of the idea would be revealed.

 

Ahhh, so when folks say that that beer is for people who don't like the taste of beer that is a compliment to those people. I have been interpreting it wrong

 

The thing that actually should have given @CaptainHate a "heads up that something was amiss" was a brewery having all of their "seasonals" available.

Beer fans' ideas of Marzen and Festbier are actually far too restrictive or misguided. Marzen and Festbier do not really indicate color. Marzen refers to strength and a Festbier is a beer for a festival. You can have a dark Marzen or Festbier. Granted, you wouldn't expect a cola-colored beer at the Munich Oktoberfest anymore... but the original celebrations would have had something more like a Dunkel than the pale beers there today.

Marzen:


Festbier:

 

Budweiser certainly features flavors historically associated with beer, just in very low quantities. People who particularly enjoy the flavors historically associated with beer tend to dislike Budweiser for its inadequacy as an imparter of those flavors.

Beers designed to taste like, say, tropical fruit juice (while retaining the cultural cachet and alcohol of beer), either through the use of fruits directly or through the employment of hops designed to taste as such (much as the Impossible Burger is designed to taste like a ground beef patty while being meat-free), are satisfying, at least in large part, different flavor preferences among their consumers as they intentionally minimize, distract from, cover up, and replace flavors historically associated with beer in order to broaden the appeal of the beverage.

Someone who strongly prefers or largely limits his beer consumption to flavoring-adjuncted beers or beers that rely on similar taste preferences probably isn't much of a fan of the flavors historically associated with beer (or perhaps is just a much bigger fan of other flavors). Seems pretty straightforward.

I think most people, even those with heads firmly implanted in the sand, intuitively understand this distinction, even as they may argue to what extent the "beer flavors" and "non-beer flavors" dominate in any given beer.