BEER THREAD PART DEUX: Post the best beer you've ever tasted.

Money is going to fall from the sky.

Boulevard Rye-on-Rye

Mikkeller Beer Geek Breakfast

Founders Curmudgeon's Better Half

Weihestephaner Hefe Weissbier

St. Bernardus ABT 12

No best beer, but a lot of favorites. Depends on my mood.

There is a reason it comes in a 4-pack.

Innis and Gunn rum cask
Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout
Young's Double Chocolate Stout
Chimay
Skullsplitter
a second for Old Rasputin
Many flavors of Bell's - Two Hearted stout, Victory stout, etc...
and lots of Magic Hat brews turn me on.

those are some of my very favorites but I'm not so picky I can't enjoy a Yuengling on occasion. Many occasions actually.

and went into business again I think.

Lagunitas Little Sumpin. Love this beer.

Russian River: Blind Pig. Pliny is the trendy choice but for me nothing beats the Pig.

Old Rasputin. Nothing like it.

Sierra Nevada: Tumbler. Drinkable brown. LOVE IT, cannot wait till it comes out for fall this year.

Lost Coast INDICA. Love it, big IPA without being over the top.

ADD Bells Oberon for out of NORCAL beers I love.

Close to home, I have been loving Eye of Hawk for months.

A genuine barley sandwich, it's my benchmark for all pale ales, bar none.

Lagers, well, the coldest, closest one generally rates pretty high in my book and a six-pack of Red Stripe stubbies mysteriously appeared in my icebox last night so it's my favorite lager today; I'm easy.

My first pale ale 18 yrs ago. Since then, I have tried hundreds of others but always come back to it.

Haven't come across it on cask in yonks though

http://www.hopback.co.uk/beer-shop/entire-stout.html

Best bottled beer I've ever had is Dogfish Head Palo Santo Marron

http://www.dogfish.com/brews-spirits/the-brews/year-round-brews/palo-santo-marron.htm

Most of the beers I could name as all time favourites are UK cask ales.

A pub near me had the HopBack Entire Stout on this week!

Barely had time to touch the sides of the glass really.

My all time favorite. Also love Bridgeport IPA from Portland, Or.

Trois Pistoles
Young's Double Chocolate Stout

and they had a Lindeman style home brew they were mixing with their chocolate stout for some black and reds.

Raspberry and chocolate beer! Whoda thunk? Food was great too but I have no idea if there was a correlation between the amount of black and reds before dinner and the tastiness of the food...Thing is, I'll never know - I can't see myself walking in there and trying the food without getting their beer...especially considering they'll bring a sample of any beer to everyone at the table - and I can bring my wife and daughter and drink theirs...

This is actually a really hard question to answer. I know when I've had a really bad beer, but under the right circumstances, even a really bad beer isn't so bad.

4th of July, I'm at a family reunion talking with my cousin who I hadn't seen in a year and we're having a couple of beers. Ice Cold Busch Light. And it was all good.

But the best beer? I've had a lot of beers, and I really don't think I could point to one of them and say it was the best or, even less, that I would only want to drink that beer every day for the rest of my life.

Actually, that's what I USUALLY order. Around here you just say "lager" and everyone knows what you mean.

nearly every place with a tap here has it and the fools charge less for it than some other beers! win win!

one of my favorite beer drinking memories was sitting in my aunt's back yard drinking Miller Lites with my cousin. We hadn't seen each other since his sister's wedding some 15 years before...those particular cousins are some of my favorite people on the planet.

and about 20 lbs of homegrown apricots began to thaw. 20 lbs of fruit in 5 gallons made some tasty, strong and well carbonated brew, I tell you. oh it was good

after a shot of tequila, it's all good.

or maybe not evolves, but simply changes. Beers I drank with gusto years ago I no longer find drinkable.

I am about to commit a sacrilege and admit that I really like a Samuel Adams beer. The Latitude 48 IPA.

and I drive by a Dogfish Head brewpub every day, (not easy to do, since there are only two of them), yet many of their beers either underwhelming, or overly thick and sweet. The 60 minute IPA is good, but there are many good IPAs.

My favorite for the past several years has been Flying Dog's Raging Bitch, a Belgian-style IPA.

What is interesting about many of the beers listed in this beer thread and others; I have never seen or heard of them anywhere. Microbreweries can be very regional.

Second place: Belhaven Scottish Ale

But I drank a LOT of it for the drug

Are you already used to really sweet drinks? Do you put a lot of sugar in your tea, coffee, etc..? Because that can be a bit of stumbling block going from sweet drinks (colas and such) to beer. In general, stay away from Pale ales (especially India Pale Ale) as they tend to be hoppy and bitter. (Delicious too! but maybe for after you get your beer legs)

Regular ales, however, can be much smoother. 99.9% of all beer is either Ale or Lager. (there are a few weird hybrids out there) Most American macro-brews (Bud, Miller, Coors, etc...) are weak lagers. They don't have much flavor (compared to craft and micro-brews or Trappist ales from Belgium) and I once read that the "brewmaster" for Budweiser was interested in making something as close to water as he could get so more people would drink it. (you know the rule about what you read on the internet but it sounds plausible judging by Bud's taste)

They will do in a pinch if someone is offering them for free but I'f I gotta pay, I'm buying better beer.

Don't be afraid of the dark! Dark ales (and even some German black lagers - Kostritzer is a good schwarzbier) can be fun and tasty. Try an Oatmeal or cream stout...if you like coffee and chocolate, try a Chocolate stout...(Young's and Samuel Smith come to mind.)

You might like fruit beers - Framboise Lambic is a raspberry beer but expensive. I once had a half and half made with raspberry lambic and chocolate stout that kicked total ass but you'll have to find an adventurous pub that stocks both to try it - mine where not imports but made by a local brew-pub.

OH! That's another good way to do it - find a local place that brews their own (BJ's Brewhouse here in Florida and ???? maybe elsewhere is great) because they almost always offer sampler flights - they'll give (or sell) you a sample of one or all of their creations and you can get a sense right away of what you might want to explore.

Take a good long look at Magic Hat. MH #9 is a great beer and my wife (who hates beer) can take a swallow without making beer face. They have other seasonal brews too and I like everything I've had from them but keep in mind their beers are atypical for each style they do - they always put a weird little twist in for fun and flavor. #9 is an exception to the pale ale rule - it's not that bitter and has a hint of apricot to it.

And if ya just want some cheap beer to offer friends, always have a case of Yuengling around. Priced similarly to Bud and the like but brewed with love instead of ass.

There is no question that beer can be an acquired taste - I thought I hated beer for years until I discovered I had just been drinking the wrong beer - but once you get used to it beer is a reward in and of itself.

Good luck!

I'll see if I can get a sampler.

Here are a few relatively approachable representations of some common styles and the style they represent. These beers are probably not that hard to find as long as you don't live in BFE. The first step is to drink these beers and take note of the ones you like.

1) Newcastle ale (brown ale), and Bass Ale (pale ale)

2) Leffe Blond (abbey blond) or Affligem Blond

3) Guinness Draught (dry stout), Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald (robust porter)

4) Saison Dupont or Hennepin (saison)

5) Paulaner salvator (dopplebock)

6) Stella Artois (pilsener)

7) Weihenstephaner hefeweissbier (hefeweisen), Hoegaarden (Belgian wit),

8) Lindemans Kriek or Framboise (lambic)

9) Dogfish head 60 min IPA (american style IPA)

Interpretation:

If you like 1) you will probably enjoy brown ales, brown porters, pale ales, and Irish reds, alt beers, and marzen (vienna lager). Add IPA and Double IPA if you liked 9).
If you like 2) you may enjoy Belgian ales Including triples, and blondes and Belgian strong golden ales. Add saison and biere de garde if you also enjoyed 4), add Double, and Quadrupel if you also enjoyed 5) (irrespective of whether you liked 4).
If you like 3) you may enjoy porters, stouts, and schwartzbier (black lager).
If you like 5) you may enjoy Bock, Doppelbock, and Scotch ale. Add Old Ale if you liked 1). Add Imperial Stout if you liked 3).
If you like 6) you may enjoy European light lagers and ales such as pilesener, Munich helles, Dortmunder, and Kolsch. Dunkel may also be worth trying as it looks, but does not taste like a dark beer.
If you like 7) you may enjoy wheat beers including Wit and Hefeweissen. Add Weissbock if you liked 5).
If you like 8) you may enjoy fruit beers including but not limited to lambic beers.

Limitations:
This test is also flawed because, although I tend to think of the above beers as relatively approachable you may not like one of them without disliking the style as a whole (and this is doubly true of the styles I've correlated in the interpretation), or you might acquire a taste for them. This test can not tell you what you don't like or won't like with any certainty, but it can give you an indication of the styles that might be most rewarding for you to explore.

Sour Beer test:
Sour beers including Flanders red, oud bruin, Berliner weissen and gueuze are hard to find and expensive in the US, and I tend to think of them as an acquired taste (especially gueuze). If you find you like saisons (which are sometimes a bit sour) or lambics, and want to branch into sour beers, Baucchus is a relatively approachable (though difficult to find) oud bruin which you can consider trying.

Blegh, didn't like it.

I might be able to give you a few targeted recommendations if you did.

Leffe might also be worth trying, as some of the Belgians give the impression of being sweet (they actually have a relatively low sugar content on average), but if you weren't into Hoegaarden then I wouldn't buy more than one Leffe to start with. You could also try a sweet stout like Young's, or Mackeson triple X, but some people find the heavyness of sweet stouts unappealing.

Bass ale is also a good pale ale to try. It isn't sweet, but its bitterness is moderate enough that it is flavorful and also easygoing.

Pilseners are the cleanest tasting beers. Domestic American beers are claiming to be pilseners, but Stella Artois and Pisener Urquell, taste like actual beers, whereas Budweiser tastes like dilute piss-water (to me anyway).

I also find that Guinness Draught is a good beer to try as an beginner. Its gives the impression of being rich, but it is actually weak (3% abv) and light (something like 90 calories a long neck I think) because of the way it is brewed. If you want to try Guinness though, avoid Guinness extra stout* to begin with, as this beer has a pronounced bitterness which I found unpleasant as an inexperienced drinker. I enjoy it now, but it takes a little time to warm up to the level of bitterness that some of the more pungent beers can have.

These would be the beers I would recommend you try first.

*Draught and Extra Stout are two different beers if that was unclear.

Thank you.

• Ubu Ale
• Le Fin du Monde
• Belhaven Wee Heavy
• Great Divide Hibernation Ale, Yeti
• Great Lakes Elliot Ness Ale, Nosferatu, Edmund Fitzgerald Porter

:sacasm:

Dogfish Theobroma

http://www.dogfish.com/brews-spirits/the-brews/occassional-rarities/theobroma.htm

Nice thing about living in the state that makes the amazing Dogfish is we can find some of the hard-to-find Dogfish brews on tap!

I'll have to look for it.

They bottled it but it's not as good as finding it on tap

Here's a handing locator:

http://www.dogfish.com/brews-spirits/fish-finder.htm

Cask beers are always flat and I don't enjoy them.
If you mean Keg... then heck yeah! Kegs FTW!

Cask shouldn't be flat as a fart if kept well, and cask beer has a huge advantage over keg in that you don't have excessive cold & fizz masking the flavour.

Here in the UK there has been a resurgence of keg beer. Unpasteurized, unfiltered stuff served from key-kegs. Essentially it's like cask ale but cold & fizzy, unlike mainstream kegged beers which are more like fizzy urine or worse still, "smoothflow" stodge.

So the new "craft" kegged beers from UK breweries such as Thornbridge, Brewdog & Magic Rock are of a much higher standard then the kegged beer we had before. However, many of these beers (especially the more sessionable ones) are over-carbonated and they are almost always vastly overpriced. For proof of this just see the prices in Brewdog's new UK chain of bars.

Generally, I don't like beer very much, but during this adventure I was given a glass of Kwak beer from Belgium, which I did enjoy.

Even this stuff tastes good......

I usually dislike IPA beers... but the Lake Erie monster IIPA is fabulous. Malty enough to mask the IIPA bitterness and the yeast has a fabulous citrus profile. If I see it on a menu, I have to have a pint or two. I'm a big dude... and I know at over 9%ABV if I have more than two I won't be driving - lol.

I also love german wit beirs. It's my favorite style of beer. I recently tried my hand at a partial-mash belgian whit (Hoegaarden clone, actually) and I'm a bit dissapointed. Despite using 2X the reccomended amount of bitter orange peel (I love citrus flavors) and leaving the orange in throughout the entire fermentation... I can't hardly taste it. The beer looks and smells like a German Whit, but tastes like a regular wheat beer with a hint of corriander - there is no orange flavor! Nevertheless, it's still better than most supermarket swill.

It's less than two weeks old, so maybe it needs to condition a bit

and Quilmes Stout

In a tiny cellar around Bern. It had been in business for over 300 year. I couln't even pronounce the name. My hosts took me there. It was just the house brew on tap but...DAYUM. And come to think of it, I never had a bad beer in Germany. I never cared for beer in college, preferring to drink cocktails. But that all changed when I went overseas.

Thanks for the list. I will make notes. Once you have had good beer or good wine, the national brands just seem like a cheap drunk at best, horse piss at worst.

Every town had it's own brewery and they all were like the nectar of the gods to me.