As someone who likes to cook with wine, there's some good sub $10 bottles out there. Not mind blowing but tasty enough. A friend recently gave me a Rolling Rock. It was an unfortunate experience after I had been drinking SN Celebration just previously.
You convinced me(with some help from my wife). I'm gonna order supplies and brew a couple of batches, and when we get to France I'm going to get a setup going over there as well.
No Not at all, but then since I retired I have zero reasons for going to the Albuquerque/Santa Fe area. And breweries in that area have little interest in sending much of their beers down here. I understand we're a very small market, but it still sucks.
Ok no problem. i had no idea where in New Mexico you were located. Anyway she makes really good saison. She had her own label in Chicago for a few years and brewed for Jester King prior to that.
I will actually be going to Albuquerque next week so I'll look for the saison-good saison is one of my absolute favorite beers. I'm in Silver City, on the wrong side of the state for good beer.
Yeah, I'm this guy 90% of the time, a beer snob that avoids fizzy (little) yellow beers. Having said this, the Michelob Ultra 0% is actually one of the "better" NA beers I have tried.
I've always been a firm believer that even a mass produced beer has its place. I've only run into a few truly horrible absolutely undrinkable beers. But you know what sometimes you a fizzy light beer because at the local American Legion they ain't getting fancy and that's okay. And sometimes you're in a blue collar bar and the crowd doesn't dig hops. Heck sometimes is just real hot out and you need something between beer and Gatorade... I hear you calling Miller Lite!
I mean. I'm not going to ORDER a macro lager, but won't refuse one if offered at the neighbors. Even if it's (multiple) Natty Light (true story). Although, I did have one really GOOD neighbor who allowed me to harbor a couple "emergency" Yuengling in his otherwise all-Natty Light garage fridge for when we hung out to shoot the breeze.
My go to beers are Revolution Anti Hero IPA, Bells Two Hearted, Triptych Dank Meme Hazy American Pale Ale, Tangled Roots Devil’s Paintbox IPA. I do enjoy Bud and Miller but I would prefer an IPA over any mass produced beer.
So much of the "criticism" of craft beer comes from such an ignorant place. The rise from 0% of the market to 15-20% of it by volume happened pretty quick and a lot of people (a suspiciously high number of "business" people) seem to have assumed that it would just keep going up indefinitely. Now, it levels off at what is probably a pretty sustainable level of market share and these clowns come out to say that craft beer just needs to emulate light lager factories to "survive". Craft beer needs to let the vc guys looking for a good investment that's got some cultural cache go, and focus on being the part of the beer industry that let's weirdos express their unhealthy obsession with beer and share it with the rest of the world. It doesn't need to, and can't, be the whole beer market. It's not "dying" because it isn't moving towards total market dominance, it's just a niche product. That's what it is, not a failing of the companies involved
As I was reading your experience, this sounds like a typical wedding/social event I would experience here in MD as well. Saw you were from VA so perhaps it’s a DMV/ mid-Atlantic culture thing.
I haven't followed this for a while, but a friend showed up a couple of weeks ago with something beyond dumb. He's changing jobs, and has a huge pile of rocks he wants to leave on my property. As an incentive(none needed, I have tons of mine and other people's piled up)he brought me an 18 pack of Bud 16 oz aluminum bottles. He opened one for each of us, after he left I realized he had barely touched his. The NA Budweiser my sister left is better than this swill.
Somewhat similar story. Years ago, living in Baltimore, my girlfriend and I hosted an office party at our house. We told everyone not to bring anything, but if they felt they had to, then bring some beer. At home, I purchased a couple cases of imports and craft beer, along with a case and a half of bmc stuff. My gf assured me that this would almost certainly be what everyone would be drinking, and that providing a case and a half wouldn't be enough. However, I was hopeful some of our guests would bring some bmc as well, which they did. I think we had just over 3 cases of bmc (one guy brought a six pack of Busch Light). Long story short, mid way through the party I went out to buy some more craft/import beer. At the end of the party, the guy who brought the Busch Light had drunk 3 cans of it. The rest of the bmc was untouched. Not one bottle or can of it.
I’ve been watching some of the videos @JackHorzempa has posted about the blokes in the UK trying to revive cask ale. The general vibe I get from that series of videos is that cask ale is associated with old, crusty, white men. And old, crusty white men are becoming older, crustier, and whiter with each passing day. The fear, of course, is that when they die, cask dies with them. At the same time, I’m seeing many threads about how may beer drinkers in the US want beer to be simplified. Easy drinking stuff that you can enjoy in large quantities without annihilating your taste buds. As a result, craft breweries are turning out lots of attempts at “just chillin’ with your grandpa in his makeshift small engine repair shop and having a few pops” type of lagers. Most of which, in my opinion, blow (FTPBB). I find these two realities interesting. Perhaps they both reflect the reality that yellow carbonated rubbish is king (as it seems many folks in the UK are reaching for things like BMC if they want a beer). But, I feel like this reflects something else too, though I can’t quite put my finger on it at the moment. Apologies if you read everything I just wrote.
