Next country to make a Great Leap Forward in Beer quality...

Some great hops come out of New Zealand, wouldn't mind seeing some stuff from that part of the world

 

This is awesome. We've got Olympic hockey smack back and forth with someone in China on a beer forum. The Internet is kind of cool sometimes. USA! USA!

 

If the mods will allow one more round of good natured smack... Those Montreal Canadiens were professionals, right?

We should meet for a beer (or two, or three...) and talk hockey!

 

Dieu du Ceil is like Canada's Stone Brewing, and Unibroue is our Southern Tier. Neither are talked about very much. The three you hear about are Bellwoods, Four Winds and Driftwood.

 

New Zealand was way ahead of the game considering their small population when I was down there last year. Australia's coming along nicely and I may be a little bias but Canada has some bad ass breweries that get zero exposure south of the boarder.

 

Freight? In 50 years everyone will have their own Beer Transporter.

 

None.

 

Now that I think about it, there's another beer I've seen around lately from Canada - Howe Sound. Haven't tried anything from them yet, but they are on my "short list" of breweries to try out.

 

Alabama or Utah

 

Thank you kind sir for your support! I know I have brought up this subject with some many faucets: Italy not having a brewing history, the expensive and even what do Italians know about beer.

Well, it would seem that most Italian brewers acknowledge their lack of history but look inward to their own culture and put their culinary touch into. Also, many of the brewers respect, admire, pay homage to the German and Belgian school of brewing(as an example I share often the Del Ducato bought a tank of 3 Fontienen lambic to mix with their own)

In any case, I love to promote Italian craft but even with my "insane" love for it, I will also commit my heart t American craft and in particular Wyoming brews, since I am proud to say I will be leading an off flavor course with 3 Wyoming breweries! Exciting!

Once again thank your support and let us hope that the expense of this wonderful craft ease up!

 

And one note I always make, especially for Italian and Spanish brews, is that there is such a touch of their culinary tastes infused,literally and figurativel, into the beer. Think of the Italian brewery Piccolo Sessonette which used chinotto for a traditional saison, and challenges your palate with a bitter almost amaro like flavor .

 

http://goo.gl/pLgFDi

You can have those.

 

Ireland's up to about 70 breweries now, with at least twenty of those being as good as any other European craft breweries.

Biggest hurdle for Irish craft is, legally, you can't offer samples or fill growlers at the brewery.

 

I'd put France in the category of unknown/unhyped. Northern France has a great brewing tradition, similar to Belgium...they just don't get any credit for it. Try anything from Thiriez and you'll see why breweries like Jester King go do collabs with them. Something like Cuvée Des Jonquilles can compete with Belgian-brewed saison/bière de garde (IMHO), although I suppose it is hard to get outside of France.

 

Yeah, Ireland might be one of the places to leap. I was there in 2010 and to me it seemed the craft beer scene was nearly non-existant. Although the traditional smaller breweries already in place are pretty crafty.

 

Canadian brewers are there and doing great stuff. The West Coast is a hotbed, Victoria/Vancouver are really hitting it out of the park. They're just not making it across the border for the most part.

 

Some really good beers in Ireland now, more craft ales appearing all the time, even middle of the road pubs are now stocking the odd craft beer, come over and try some!

 

This one surprised me... Any particular reason Ecuador is an up-and-comer in the beer world?

 

North Cuba (aka Miami)

 

I will guess China due to the emergence of their middle class and entrepreneurial spirit.

 

The Netherlands have really improved in the last few years, they keep getting better. Het Uiltje, Oersoep & Oedipus are wonderful breweries. The Netherlands get rarely mentioned when it comes to beer safe for the Trappist beers & De Molen.

I can see a few Eastern European countries really explode, I put my money on countries like Estonia & Latvia. My exposure there is highly limited mainly to Labietis & Põhjala. It seems to me like they have the right mix of reasonable living standards, love for beer & a long history with beer.

The eastern part of France has actually quite an established beer culture / history. Le Paradis, Mont Salève & Thiriez (origin of the famous French saison yeast if I am not mistaken) are really good breweries. Paris apparently has a small burgeoning movement. Rest of France appears to have quite a lot of breweries but not much quality.

I am a bit surprised by so many people mentioning Italy, they have a pretty established brewing scenes & have had one for a few years now.

 

There was a great deal of interest over here shown by prospective Italian brewers a few years ago.Good to know it bore fruit.

 

South Africa is coming on.

 

I was impressed by how passionate about craft beer South Africa seems to be. I think they'll probably be doing some exciting things soon!

 

I can confirm craft beer in Poland is definitely growing FAST. A few years ago the most interesting thing in mainstream stores were the Baltic porters, with Alebrowar and Browar Pinta around but hard to find. Now there are more American-style IPA's than they know what to do with. Pracownia Piwa is great... plus Doctor Brew and Birbant made RB's best new brewers list last year. I even saw Knee Deep's Simtra, Logsdon's Seizoen Bretta and a variety of Cantillon in Warsaw, so they're starting to import some great stuff, too. Shout out to Lawendowa 8 in Gdansk, which is a great bar if you're ever in the area.

 

My wife lived in Barcelona for most of the past year, so I spent a lot of time there. I have to say, the craft beer scene there feels a LOT like the U.S. scene did 6 or 7 years ago. Obsession with hops, new beer bars opening seemingly every week, many mediocre breweries opening up but a handful of really really good ones.

Edge Brewing in BCN is fantastic. BIIR in BCN makes a great lambic. Naparbier in Navarro is outstanding. Dougall's in Cantabria is superb. And a lot of the small, local Catalan breweries are perfectly solid. The craft beer future in Spain/Catalunya seems very bright.

 

I love the Naparbier Sai Saison. I spent some time at La Cerveteca there, cool bar/bottle shop.

 

For me Canada and particulary Quebec and in Europe, Scandinavia, Netherlands, Englands, Italy really explose here. I tasted very good beers from Spain, Poland, Germany, Latevia etc

We have more 700 breweries but only 20-30 for "craft beer", they brew traditionnal french ale (blonde ambrée brune

Yeah Thiritez rocks! We, the beer geeks we don't support traditionnal biere de garde style because it's not innovative

You forgot Pays Flamand, it's the only french breweries with barrel aging program. We have a lot of late here.

 

North Korea. I read somewhere recently (last issue of BA maybe?) that they're working on an ale that will grant everlasting life, superhuman strength, and glory.

 

I was in Spain this past Summer and had some amazing local beers. The top breweries were Naparbier, La Pirata and Monsieur Gordo. In total I tried 45 different Spanish craft beers.

Japan is also killing it. I've been impressed with the growth I've seen in the craft industry since I started visiting in 2006.

 

Sweden. I hear there are some good things coming out of Sweden lately. Perhaps it will continue that way.

 

Ahhh bett me to the ball here. Sweden has improved a lot, been a lot of breweries but few has rised high but laterly in Sout of Sweden there is a few really goods once along with Omnipollo.

Malmö Brewing Co, Brekeriet and Brewski is really really good.
Some is up and comming as well, some great meaderies such as Mjödhamnen and Sathipaja.

Lemme know if you wan to be convinced!

 

I tend to disagreee there. Sure, the pale lagers have mostly been crap. But in the dark department, at least as long as I can remember, also the bigger polish brewers made some more than decent stuff. Some of the best baltic porters came, and still come,from poland.

BTW, when I read a lot of stuff here, I think the lesser known,classic beer styles of many european countries are highly underrated.

 

Yes, advances in 'beer quality' seems to mean beer made in the 'American style'...For me it's pretty grim to hear countries following American fashion so slavishly...

 

Zywiec is certainly a benchmark for the style but after that I found a big drop-off. Okocim is solid but not so memorable.

Can you recommend some good old school Polish dark brews that make it to the states?

 

That may be true, but I don't think we are talking here about countries with historical brewing traditions converting to American craft and calling it a "quality improvement." I'm not an expert on all these countries, but I think for the most part we are talking about countries that previously didn't have significant numbers of small independent breweries doing their own thing. Yes, many seem to be following the American path in terms of beer styles. Isn't it objectively fair to call that an improvement in quality overall when the only other option is a locally brewed Heineken or imported Bud Light?
On an aside, I see Ireland mentioned in a post above, and I was just reading about the brewing history there. 200 breweries around 1850 down to 12 in 2007. Apparently in 2014, there were 50 "craft" breweries which accounted for 1.5% of the consumption. Personally, I would rather see the emergence of all these small breweries (regardless of whether they are doing traditional cask ale or American IIPAs) than only have the option of 6 varieties of Guinness.

 

Thailand. Every time I go I find a few more places serving a much more robust menu than the usual Chang, Leo or Singha. The locals drinking at any of these at any given time are really passionate, always excited to talk beer and really want the scene to grow. While it's nice to get that two pack of talls for a buck on a hot day at 7 Eleven, there's nothing like relaxing on a bean bag with a good bottle from the shop at Mikkeller or walking the Asiatique after a visit to Brew.

 

Sure but sadly the ratio right now is about only 10% great and 20% decent breweries, while the other 70% are just mediocre and awful breweries coming out from literally everywhere. Mexico just started exploding with the craft beer trend.

 

For whatever reason (I have no idea why) there has been a number of expatriates move down there to start craft breweries, as well as a strong local effort. There's more than 50 of them now, and "cerveza artesanal" is becoming very popular. Ecuador has a healthy beer drinking culture so it's ripe for a beer leap forward, as OP put it.