[alexander]

I wanted to make a thread about beer, because i like beer, but not in the sense of consuming large amounts of it, rather, wine-like experience. I drink about a bottle or two a week, and try my best to try beers listen to people's recommendations, in my general pursuit of good, quality beer, one that satisfies taste buds, for the type of beer that it is.

Lots of beer out there, lots of total crap, lots of average beer, less good beer, and less yet of excellent beer. Somehow good beer is hard to find, sure there are plenty of brewers, and it's not hard to find a company that is really passionate about everything, from the creation of the flavor, to traditions of beer making, what is hard to find, is really excellent beer, truly excellent.

So in this thread i would like to call on people that have over the years found really great beer, bottled or not, even home-brewed (if you post a recipe i will rep you). I am not even asking to post description of how it tases, even just beer is fine (i can find the rest of the information, and perhaps get the beer to try)

As for me, i prefer German and Belgian beers, mainly because some are really excellent, some of which i will name, others i will wait until next time

In no particular order, these are great beers that i have so far found (oh dont post bud, corona, etc, budweiser does make micro brews, i am aware, for beer shows, etc, please name the brew if you can, or at least describe the beer or where you had it, but in general if you just say bud, or corona, i will delete your post!).

Spaten Premium Lager
Spaten Optimator
Spaten Oktoberfest
Stella Artois
Hoegaarden Original White Ale
Leffe Bold (wanna try the other ones)

gonna stop here for now, see what other people like...

Oh, please feel free to comment on any beer, i want to know what people think about any of the beers posted here

Hope this does not turn into another one of those threads that loose it's original purpose in 10 posts...

[freeztar]

My favorites would have to be Bud and Corona.

But really, I love good quality beer as well (perhaps too much at times).
I used to home brew several years ago, but it's so time consuming and doesn't really save a lot of money, so I stopped. I was able to make a nice batch of ginger stout beer before I stopped. I don't remember the exact recipe I used, but it was tasty. I basically let the ginger ferment with the mash and then strained it out at bottling time. It was pretty strong (the ginger), but I love ginger so it was perfect for me.

As far as commercial brews are concerned, here's a list of some of my favorite dark beers:

Sweetwater Festive Ale (only available during the holidays, and probably only in Atlanta )
Newcastle Brown Ale
Guinness (of course)
Anchor Steam Porter
Rogue Hazelnut Brown (Yummy!)


Not dark beer, but awesome nonetheless:

Franziskaner (the hefeweizen (weissbeer) they make is my most favorite beer ever!)
Hoegarden
Sweetwater 420
Sweetwater Blue
Sweetwater IPA
Anchor Steam Liberty Ale


More to come as I think of them...

[alexander]

my friend brewed a mocha imperial stout... i need to try it, it was just bottled a month or so ago and i will get a recepie... the only way you can make that work for you if you brew 5 galons at a time, and brew a batch once a month... gets you around 40-50 bottles if i'm not mistaken.... once i get my car squared away, i wanna get the brewing supplies and start brewing myself

have you tried spaten beer? i really recommend it to at least try... if you can find it, get oktoberfest (the beer they brew only for and at the time of the festival), i have a 6-pack its really good.

but i have found a better one, i have to remember the name, its a pricey dark beer, soooo awesome though, but it comes out to almost $2/bottle...

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by alexander

my friend brewed a mocha imperial stout... i need to try it, it was just bottled a month or so ago and i will get a recepie... the only way you can make that work for you if you brew 5 galons at a time, and brew a batch once a month... gets you around 40-50 bottles if i'm not mistaken.... once i get my car squared away, i wanna get the brewing supplies and start brewing myself

Yeah, I brewed 5 gallons and if I remember correctly I would always end up with about 50 bottles (though some bottles were bigger than 12oz). If you plan on brewing in the near future then I recommend you start saving bottle now. I recommend the bottles that have a rubber gasket attached to the top of the bottle. That way you don't have to mess with capping or buying caps. They're a lot easier and can be reused again and again. Grolsch makes bottles like I describe, but that beer is so terrible I would not recommend drinking 50 of them to get the bottles. Keep your eyes open though because a lot of good foreign beer comes in these types of bottles, so you could get a good brew to drink and then have a bottle saved afterwards. Friends can help a lot in this regard too.

have you tried spaten beer? i really recommend it to at least try... if you can find it, get oktoberfest (the beer they brew only for and at the time of the festival), i have a 6-pack its really good.

Yeah, Spaten is ok. I can't remember if I tried the Octoberfest. Maybe in a few months I'll try it (October).

but i have found a better one, i have to remember the name, its a pricey dark beer, soooo awesome though, but it comes out to almost $2/bottle...

That's not really that pricey. Try buying Chamay (around ~$9 a bottle)!
Plus, if you consider the price of a crappy Bud at the pub (~$3-$4), then it's a steal.

[alexander]

Here's a list of beers i want to try now:

Delirium (they make a few kinds, wanna try them all)
Chimay (those look delicious)
Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse Denkel and Hefe-Weisse Hell (those look amazing... freez, you do the propper shaking of the last little bit too, their propper pooring technique...?)

[freeztar]

Originally Posted by alexander

Here's a list of beers i want to try now:

Delirium (they make a few kinds, wanna try them all)

I've tried the Trems one and I didn't think it was that good. I haven't tried the others yet.

Chimay (those look delicious)

Way overpriced and not that good imho.

Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse Denkel and Hefe-Weisse Hell (those look amazing... freez, you do the propper shaking of the last little bit too, their propper pooring technique...?)

Now you're talking!
I went to the webpage and to the pouring instructions. All they have is a pic of the bottle being shaken. I guess it's for the wheat at the bottom. I've never tried shaking, as I was taught to swirl. Actually, you should do this with any decent hefeweissen. As the beer ages inside the bottle, the tiny "wheat dust" settles to the bottom of the bottle and can get stuck there, even after pouring the beer. So it's best (if you want the extra flavor, some people don't like it) to leave a little beer in the bottom and swirl it (or shake it I guess) until all the white buildup is gone from the bottom of the bottle. Pour and enjoy.

[Boerseun]

Hansa Pilsner! Good beer, good times...

Also, Lion Lager (newly back on the market after a sad and sorry marketing cock-up trashed the brand around ten years ago) is a very, very good commercial brew, but you uncivilized folks living outside the borders of the Republiek van Suid Afrika won't know that, of course.

Personally, I think Guiness is way overrated. Too strong! You need a good beer, not weak, but not too strong either. Else you have two drinks and you're slammed! No fun.

You Aussies might laugh at my unrefined tastes, but over in Aus a few years ago, I had the pleasure of drinking a few local brews there. XXXX is to Aussies what Castle Lager is to us Seffricans. Rumoured to be the National Beer, but total crap. In Aus, I preferred Victoria Bitter. Very good beer, in my honest, inebriated opinion.

For all you home brewers:

Use coloured bottles! Brewers use green or brown bottles for a reason. It increases the beer's shelf life by quite a few weeks, even months. Clear bottles let through light which makes organisms in the beer grow and get all pesky. Beer in a coloured bottle have a shelf life of around three to four months, in a clear bottle less than a month, and in a can up to a year. It's all about the light, you see. Clear-bottled brews with long shelf lifes (like Miller's Genuine Draft) has been pasteurised beyond recognition as a good, solid and honest peer, and taste like catpiss in any case.

Beer shouldn't be ice-filtered, either. That's a load of rubbish that sounded good at the time, but turned out to produce the crappiest of crap beers, ever.

Also, beer shouldn't anywhere on the label or bottle or can or keg mention anything about having been manufactured anywhere in the United States of America or Canada. Sorry to all my American friends, but putting a man on the moon doesn't imply you can brew good beer! You can't! Millers, Bud, they're awfull!

Beer is solely the responsibility of Europe (with one or two tasty alternatives brewed in Mexico, Australia, South Africa, and, yes, even Kenia). And not all of Europe, either. There are some very nice Eastern European beers out there, like Pilsner Urquell. And what's with the Poms and their warm beer? Ugh!

[InfiniteNow]

Originally Posted by Boerseun

You Aussies might laugh at my unrefined tastes, but over in Aus a few years ago, I had the pleasure of drinking a few local brews there. XXXX is to Aussies what Castle Lager is to us Seffricans. Rumoured to be the National Beer, but total crap. In Aus, I preferred Victoria Bitter. Very good beer, in my honest, inebriated opinion.

According to JQ (a beer drinker whose opinion is very relevant to me on the topic), Cooper's is even better. I, however, haven't been able to find it yet on the shelves of my brew provisioners to act on his suggestion.

Originally Posted by Boerseun

Sorry to all my American friends, but putting a man on the moon doesn't imply you can brew good beer! You can't! Millers, Bud, they're awfull!

The big, breweries, yes, but the small local microbrews are absolutely fantastic. We've got a place in Austin that we go to a lot because the food is stellar and they have 7 microbrews made right on sight that are amazing!

Also, some fellas I work with tell me that in Ireland, Budweiser is actually quite good because it's brewed using a different recipe there. I have not been able to validate this claim personally, so don't hold my feet to the fire if I'm mistaken.


I enjoy Delirium, the Tremens and the occasional seasonal brews. Also, I've found one out of Portland (admittedly, I'm not sure if it's Maine or Oregon) called Allegash, and their Trippel is phenomenal.

Enjoy!





To my friends who enjoy a glass of wine... and those who don't.

As Ben Franklin said: In wine there is wisdom, in beer there is freedom, in
water there is bacteria.

In a number of carefully controlled trials, scientists have demonstrated that if we drink 1 liter of water each day, at the end of the year we would have absorbed more than 1 kilo of Escherichia coli, (E. coli) - bacteria found in feces. In other words, we are consuming 1 kilo of poop.

However, we do NOT run that risk when drinking wine & beer (or tequila, rum, whiskey or other liquor) because alcohol has to go through a purification process of boiling, filtering and/or fermenting.

Remember: Water = Poop, Wine = Health

Therefore, it's better to drink wine and talk stupid, than to drink water and be full of shit.

There is no need to thank me for this valuable information: I'm doing it as a public service.

[alexander]

Personally, I think Guiness is way overrated. Too strong! You need a good beer, not weak, but not too strong either. Else you have two drinks and you're slammed! No fun.

also Guiness tastes totally different as if it's the exported kind vs. real Irish Guiness. My friend who has spent numerous months in ireland told me that, he said the taste is totally different, probably due to the fact that they have to put in preservatives in order to export beer and meet all the international standards, but in Ireland, since they don't have to do that, the beer is a lot better (not that i think that it is bad to begin with, but it does not make my really good beer list.)

one more for you guys to try/discuss:

Augustinebrau Mundien - their Munchner bier Maximator, it's so deliciously well put together... i guess it comes with their heritage and tradition, from 1328AD

hope someone else tried this one

[Jay-qu]

Originally Posted by InfiniteNow

According to JQ (a beer drinker whose opinion is very relevant to me on the topic), Cooper's is even better. I, however, haven't been able to find it yet on the shelves of my brew provisioners to act on his suggestion.

Yes, XXXX or forex is considered a rather cheap beer along with VB and Carlton Draft.

My personal favorite is Coopers, but if you cant get hold of it try some JamesBoags (premium lager) or Crown Lager. Also worth trying - but is probably harder to get than coopers is James Squire. They make a selection of botique Golden, pale and Amber ale's.

My all time fav is Coopers Vintage, which is said to improve with age, so I have 18 bottles of the 2007 brew down and will slowly drink them over the next three years