Mediocre Imports That Are Actually Great Freshly Squeezed

From what I've heard, what we get in the states is brewed in Canada and is absolutely not the same beer. I'm unaware of a controversy, I've just been led to believe that it's a basic fact. I could be WAY off on that though.

 

Pilsner Urquell
Guinness
Smithwick's
Stella Artois
Heineken
Munich beers - still good in U.S. but not quite as good as in Munich
I'm not into any particular English beers, so can't comment on them.

All are amazing in country, on draft.

The bottles of Belgian beers are pretty comparable since freshness doesn't matter as much and they're typically served in bottles in Belgium anyway.

 

I honestly think this is a bit psychological. I moved to Europe and Heineken, Stella Artois and Becks still taste bad to me over here.

 

Most UK beers.

A lot of the less good examples are the ones that make it over to the US to begin with, and they're not on cask, and they're old.

 

Rating beer is like a "consumer reports". A few might feel that beers brewed on a different continent should be graded on a curve. However, that's not how I see it. I determine a beer from the way I taste it at a given moment, not whether if I tasted Duvel in California, Brazil, or Belgium (I've had Duvel in these places which are nowhere near each other). Likewise, a beer drinker in Amsterdam may have a different take on Titan IPA as somebody in Colorado would.

True, some beers travel better than others, though if someone had never been to Bavaria, how would he/she know how much better Paulaner is at the source than the export bottled version?

 

Guinness in Kiev, Ukraine in 2001 = very bad. You could see through it.

 

Diageo markets number of Guinness stouts in the US - the keg, bottle and cans of "Draught" are brewed in Ireland as is the "Guinness Foreign Extra Stout" (and the now defunct "250th Anniversary").

The Extra Stout is brewed under license in Canada, by Labatt or Moosehead in recent years (check the city listed on the label). Previously the US got both Canadian and Irish GES, but the latter disappeared about a decade ago.

Smithwick's and Kilkenny are also brewed in Ireland for the US market. Harp is Canadian-brewed.

US TTB labeling regulations make the country of origin of the beer pretty clear.

A forum search will show it's a constant topic.

 

St. Pauli Girl is nice when fresh enough. I don't see it much without some age on it though.

 

I don't think that'd count though, it's not sold here in Germany, only for export. Although I heard something of that changing, but still haven't seen it sold.

 

I see, I misunderstood the question a bit I guess.

 

Here's a guy that believes that imports are much better fresh. The video begins to relate to this thread at about 1:15, but the whole video is worth watching in my opinion.

 

I hadn't really experienced the effect that age could have on a beer until late last year, december I think, when I bought some cans of a Swedish macro lager beer, the first can I had had a muted taste, in a word it tasted stale, very different from what I remembered the beer tasting having had it a number of times before, and so I looked at the best before date and it was set to May of this year 2014, the other cans had a best before date set to the same month that I had bought the beers in, only a year ahead. Somehow I had picked up an old can along with some fresh cans, and the difference was like night and day. So I can imagine that if you get an import which has sat on the shelf for several months, that it wont be as fresh tasting as it would have been when it was one month old, or two months old.

 

If I knew how to shorten the video for the sake of the thread, I would have. Glad you dug the whole thing though!

 

The Guiness I had at the Hethrow London Airport Hotel was waayyy better than the numerous Guinesses I've tried state side both on tap and bottled. I know this has been discussed many times on the forums, so I'm sorry I commented again on that.

I had numerous local cask ales in local pubs around SE UK and they were all fairly mediocre beers (and looking at BA reviews they were rated mediocre so I just had bad luck on where I was at and what was offerred I guess).