Best Beer Flavored Beer

Tastes change. In California in the 90s, it was rare to find a brewpub that didn't offer a pale ale, amber ale, hefeweizen, a porter or stout, and not much else. Maybe a brown ale or a red as well. And strong ales were very much a seasonal thing.

 

What I meant, was that a "barrel-aged" barley wine is such a huge variation that it can only be a standard of a "barrel-aged" beer. It's a little alarming that these beers are actually eclipsing "standard" barley wines in the US. Bass No 1 would be the standard (but I don't know if any revivals are now history as well). Thomas Hardy's would be another (please let the new version show up in the US eventually). As far as beers that you can actually find on the shelf - Anchor Old Foghorn. As far as English beers that you can actually still get in the US - J.W. Lee's Harvest and Fuller's Vintage Ale (sibling of Golden Pride).

 

I drink Left Hand Polestar Pilsner when I want something that tastes like beer. It's always fresh, and always delicious.

 

I still think of the old days when the folks who drank AAL were even more of a huge majority. We were pictured as money wasters drinking something other than what beer tastes like. Out west beer tasted like Coors, out east beer tasted like Budweiser, the rest was that foreign crap doesn't even taste like beer. What beer tasted like was AAL lol

It could be what beer tastes like in the future will be barrel aged mango coconut Imperial Porter. I know I will try it, I will never stop enjoying to try as many different and new things that beer tastes like.

 

Duff

 

Essentially any (fresh) helles or pils should fit the bill.
Augustiner, Hofbrau, and Keesmann would be my picks, although only the HB tends to make it to the US.

 

Flensburger Gold, had one last night and it tasted like beer.

 

Yes, perhaps too many are being literalist, possibly an American (or Internet) trait, but certainly here one knows what a man is saying when declares his desire for beer that tastes of beer (which usually means the flavours one gets from proper bitters). Though I used to mock this attitude, I now agree with it, after seeing (and tasting) so many American style beers at absurd prices...There are even beers made with grapefruit flavour hops that have actual grapefruit added (I know, it's hard to believe). Such a statement is often a rejection of the fashion conscious indulgent dimwittery that is contemporary consumerism.

 

Capital Autumnal Fire (doppelbock) and NG Hometown Blonde (pilsener)

 

Hmm, I'd suggest probably an Internet or individual trait since I've seen it crop up here, there and mostly everywhere (including Austria, Belgium, Germany and the UK, especially when visiting those countries. )

 

Was just going to say that!

 

Which the Brewers Association discovered with their original Handwerkbrauergebot. (Sorry, Craft Brewer definition).

This thread is entertaining, even if we can never agree on what is the most "true to style" (or most beer-like ) American IPA.

 

American ground breakers like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and Sam Adams Boston Lager. Some may sneer at these choices, but when these beers emerged they were instrumental in changing the future of beer. And they still are beer tasting beers.

 

For me, it's New Belgium Helles Lager. SOOO GOOOD for an Arizona summer...and just in general.

 

According to many reviews on this website, AAL is still the beer that tastes like beer. According to reviews, the most reviewed IPA tastes like grapefruit, mango, passionfruit, orange, and papaya. The most reviewed stout tastes like coffee and chocolate. The most reviewed AAL tastes "flavorless." Well, it can't really taste like nothing - since it is something, so that must be what beer tastes like then.

 

Left Hand's Sawtooth Ale tastes a lot like beer. It won the bronze in "ordinary or special bitter" category at GABF this year, and I believe it's won in the past as well. At the same time, "beer flavored beer" is what is viewed as ordinary, boring, or even "bad" by a lot of beer geeks. Just look at what beer geeks say the first time they try Fat Tire, a new American classic.

 

LordCrabapple can be a bit naughty at times.

 

What?? Lord Crabapple naughty??? Perish the thought.

 

Korbinian.
Aventinus (Tap 6 or Eisbock editions).
Vitus.
Eliot Ness.
Edmund Fitzgerald.
Skull Splitter.
St. Bernardus Wit and Abt 12.
Oude Gueuze Tilquin (may be stretching "beer flavoured" a bit, depending on one's opinion of sours)
Ayinger Brau Weisse and Ur-Weisse.
Hofbrau Dunkel (preferably on tap in a liter mug).
Mahr's Ungespundet-hefetrub (preferably on tap, left open, pouring directly into my mouth).
Aftermath and Gravitator.
Anything Schlenkerla.

Heck, when I just checked my ratings, there's only one beer in my top ten that's even bourbon barrel-aged, much less with anything else added (above list not representative of just my top ten).