Click on link to see origin of this argument. Below is the excerpt. Additions welcomed:
Pepe le Pew said...
...Americans are in no position to give lessons regarding beer.
My Frontier Thesis said...
That Americans don't make good or great beer nowadays, Pepe, is evidence of — once again — your Ameriphobia.
Alright, fellahs: time to draft a list of the fine micro-drafts that have been filtered from sea to boozing sea, across the fruited plains. Just for Pepe. Just this once.
Here's a couple you need to try Pepe:
1.) Boulevard Wheat (out of Kansas City, Missouri)
2.) Mirror Pond (out of Oregon)
3.) Summit Maibock (St. Paul, Minnesota)
4.) Moose Drool (Big Sky Brewery, out of Bozeman, Montana)
5.) Lienenkugles, Red Lager (Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin)
Okay. There are four, off the top of my brain, Pepe. Try those and then come back. Your French Nationalism might influence your taste buds, though. But to be honest, microbrewing has increasingly gained speed since the 1980s (perhaps even earlier) in Yankee-land. Be as honest as a xenophob can. I'll look for your French recommend asap.
~mft
Wednesday, August 08, 2007
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9 comments:
You are right mft - I only meant this in the sense that the most popular beers in the US are a small step better than mouthwash. But it isn't like the French have lessons to give on the subject to anyone either.
The only French beer I know is Kronenbourg. Not buch different from a Bud.
and there is worse: try kanterbrau
Have never tried a French beer. Have tried a couple of Belgian brews, one was fine and the other, some sort of monastery labelled ale [this was 20 years ago, so don't remember names..sorry] was awful. I'm now curious if there is some good beer in Quebec
Oh, yeah -- Kanterbrau. Right, I had it - more like Schlitz.
There was some type of thick French beer that my cousin purchased once up in Grand Forks. I can't recollect the name, but I think it was about 12% booze. About $20/bottle, too.
Prohibition really screwed up beer-making in America. The country has only been able to recover in the last couple decades. That's what you get when Women (or Men) are allowed to Legislate Morality unto us Infidel and Heathen Sinners with a Christian Temperence Movement.
I hadn't thought through what affect prohibition had on the quality of beer/wine in this country...shame on me, for once you bring it up it makes perfect "aha!" sense.
Let's be glad that, finally, we seem to have largely recovered from that travesty.
May the days of Wonderbread washed down with Schlitz never curse this land again.
With all the German, Irish, Scottish, British, and You-Name-It immigrants arriving to the American shores throughout the 19th-century, and with all of that Virgin Land to grow barley and grains in, and with all that fresh Allegheny and Rocky Mountain water to brew it with, don't tell mft that Yankees haven't figured out a way to brew a good Infidel ale, pilsner, or lager.
...F*cking prohibition...
One more note: I witnessed a rather sad spectacle a couple nights ago. A friend of mine who hails from the Slavic area of eastern Europe was drinking a Hamm's (a cheap variety of Miller) out of an aluminium can. He's only been in Bismarck for approximately 3-4 years. As my other friend and I drank our Grolsch, we thought the whole situation bizarre.
We have to try and prevent this type of assimilation, fellahs. Click on the blue Hamm's link above. Here's an excerpt (to provide you with what Hamm's is all about):
The original Hamm's was established in 1865 when Theodore Hamm, a German immigrant, inherited the Excelsior Brewery from his friend and business associate, A. F. Kellar. Kellar had constructed his brewery over artesian wells in a section of the valley of the Phalen Creek valley near St. Paul, Minnesota, known as Swede Hollow. Hamm hired Christopher Figg to be his masterbrewer, and by the 1880s the T. Hamm Brewing Company was reckoned the second largest in Minnesota.
His son, William, and grandson, William Jr. inherited the operation in 1903. During Prohibition the company survived by producing soft drinks and other food products, leaving it in a position to expand rapidly through acquisitions after the repeal of Prohibition in 1933. In 1968 the company was acquired by the Heublein Brewing Company, which sold it to Olympia Brewing Company. In 1980 Olympia merged with Pabst, which was acquired by Stroh's in 1984 and it by Miller Brewing in 1999. The future of the brand is uncertain. There is limited distribution in North America.
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