November 30, 2004

Beer History - Do you like beer? Here is the concise history of beer, with no guarantee of accuracy, because the people that compiled it were drunk.

You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.

posted by Nostrildamus 20 years ago
  • Do you like beer? No. I do not. I like beers.
  • What is your favorite beers? I'd go for St Peter's ale, Speckled Hen, ESB
  • I'm afraid of bears.
  • It's my birthday. My wonderful, caring, generous wife has given me a 5L microbarrel of zerodegree's most excellent wheat ale. This makes me very, very happy. After the brutal assualts of the megabreweries on British Beer in the 70s and 80s, it is truly a delight to see the wild success of innovative, fresh, exciting microbrews across the UK. Happy Birthday Me! does this count as self linkage?
  • Happy Birthday, Chaz! Those are indeed pretty good, Wibble. Abbot Ale used always to be my favourite, among a crowded field of contenders, but I've had some less delightful pints of it recently. I like Young's Special, though I know some will disagree. If you want something seriously strong, a bottle of Old Nick is hard to beat. Probably the best single pint I ever had was Owd Roger, brought up from the cellar in jugs in a stone-flagged pub somewhere in Yorkshire (wish I could remember where). Porterish stuff, which isn't what I usually go for, but absolutely delicious - and nicely cool...
  • *Raises a glass of Sierra Nevada Pale Ale to Chaz' health* Beer is not the answer. Beer is the question. Yes, is the answer.
  • English beers that I would recommend to anyone: St Austell Brewery Doom Bar - lovely, rich, hearty Cornish brew. Smiles Bristol IPA - light, refreshing, hoppy. Bath Ales' Gem - Dark, deep and delicious. Anything else by Bath Ales Butcombe Blonde - a cloudy, almost European-style concoction of mellow fruitiness Almost anything by Barum Brewery (tagline - 'Beer - it's not just for breakfast") Beer should be served slightly below room temperature. It should be drawn manually with no gas assistance. Ideally, the stillage should be behind the bar. But then, I'm English... My parents swear I was conceived after my father had drunk nine pints of Young's Special. This explains a lot...
  • I didn't like Spitfire, when I tried it. But I tried it in Hampshire, and I've heard it doesn't travel well from its native Kent. Then again, anything lighter than a stout is making love in a canoe, to me. Curse the medicine that keeps me off the beer!
  • Sam Smith's beers make me so very warm and fuzzy inside. On a more local note the Berkshire Brewing Company, fondly refered in these parts as the BBC makes a coffeehouse porter that make my toes curl in delight.
  • I make my own beer - it's very easy. Anyone who can follow a recipe can make delicious beer in their own home brewery, the quality and taste of which betters much of the swill currently skunking on your well-lit grocer's coolcase. And for around $3 a six, too. There's nothing like the taste of a cold mug of ale that you've personally seen from grain to glass. That said, I do enjoy a Fuller's ESB once in a while. A glass or two of Guinness with lunch is a fine winter bracer. Hot summer days nearly demand a Red Stripe. And I like to keep several bottles of Miller's High Life, Beck's, Pilsner Urquell, and Molson Golden in the littlefridge for emergencies.
  • I know the Miller's really isn't a proper quaff, but it's the beer I grew up drinking. Doesn't hurt that it's cheap, either.
  • Would I like a beer? Yes! Yes, I would! A Guiness, Fuller's ESB, Young's Chocolate Stout, Newcastle Brown, or a Stella would suffice. Who's buyin'?
  • "Late 1500's Queen Elizabeth I of England drank strong ale for breakfast." Early 1990s Simon of London shows me the joy of eating baked beans for breakfast. god, i love the English...
  • Smithwicks, Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse, Stella the egyptian and the other, Reissdorf Koelsch, Hoegaarden, Wieckse Witte, Newcastle Brown, Yuengling and many others but my brain won't function
  • Ah, beer for breakfast! At Smithfield (the ancient London meat market, for those who might not know) there are a couple of pubs with the traditional right to open early, and you can get a hefty breakfast of bacon, eggs, sausage, black pudding and all the rest with a nice couple of pints. The Fox and [hounds? damn my memory] is more used by visitors these days, but the Cock, right in the middle of the market, is less fancy and still full of men in bloody overalls exchanging witty repartee (or it was the last time I went).
  • Great link Nostril! I lurves beer, but it likes me less and less as I get older. /winer
  • I'm so glad I don't have to worry about making this a front pager. http://home.earthlink.net/~ggghostie/maltliquor.html My search was spawned by a find of a Budweiser Malt Liquor tall-boy in a creek near a place in the woods where we all used to partake of illegally-gotten alcohol in our early teens. Bud Black was our drink of choice. The can I found was nearly spotless, to the point where I'd thought they MIGHT still be making it, even though I KNEW that Budweiser had King Kobra out instead. A quick look at where a pull-tab used to be forced me to investigate. Budweiser Malt Liquor was made for two years, 1971-1973. The exact years we drank this swill. Ah, youth.
  • I was in England for my junior year abroad over 10 years ago now (sigh) which spoiled American beer for me for life. (Of course I've got most of a 12 pack of Milwaukee's Best sitting in the fridge right now, but that's due to financial pressures and not preference.) I don't pretend to know all about British beer these days, but my favorites during those blessed nine months were Old Peculier, Tetley's Bitter, Guiness and Bass (natch). There were some IPAs that I liked too, but their brand is lost in an alcoholic haze. I'd usually start with a light pint and by the end of the evening would refuse to drink anything I could see through. For lunch, though, I had Strongbow. Still wish I could get it here. As for US beers, I'm kinda partial to Red Hook's Stout and ESB. Sam Adams, though gigantic, makes a tasty Scotch Ale and Cream Stout as well. And Sierra Nevada's IPA is hoppy enough to make you think it authentic. And here I am, a man of discerning tastes, reduced to fizzy lager. Pfeh. I need to win the lottery or invent a wall-crawly octopus toy or something.
  • Good Lord, how could I have forgotten my addiction to Newkie Brown in the above post? That's God's beer, that is. The import stuff we get in the US doesn't even come close to what I had in Cambridgeshire.
  • Pabst Blue Ribbon is my beer of usual consumption but now that it's winter Snow Cap is back out Yaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay although it made me loose ten dollars last night at poker
  • I learned how to drink beer on Shiner. (They used to have the best commercials starring Joe Bob Briggs.) Since I came up north, I've found Bell's, from the Kalamazoo Brewing Co. They have a yummy porter and IPA. Of course, I can only afford these occasionally, so I usually drink Hi-Life.
  • My local small brewery has some nice ales (I especially like the S.P.A. and the County Ale), but if I can't get them then a Keith's will set me right.
  • For those in the midwest/midsouth US, Boulevard Pale Ale is quite a friendly thing. The Bully! Porter ain't bad, either. One of these days, when I have some o' that... whaddyacallit... time, I want to try brewing my own. But what I really want to find -- I've only heard of it, but never found a definitive recipe -- is the super secret formula for making pumpkin brandy in the shell. Any who have info on this are welcome to e-mail me.
  • Harp or Stella Artois. I've got a bar by me which features tons and tons of cask ales and other hard to find imports (occasionally including Strongbow, Tenacious), but I can't drink any of that stuff. A friend had me try a really dark porter which tasted (to me, no one else thought this) exactly like soy sauce. Blech. I like really light pilsners,and I don't care if you call me TEH GAY!!!111!!! because of it. A drink I used to make in college all the time was a shot of Bicardi Limon, dumped into a pint (not bottle... keggers baby!) of Corona. Tasted lemony sweet, and you would be lucky to remember the evening after more than four of those bad boys.... ahhhh.... ...
  • Mmmmmm, beer! *Shouts Nostril a schooner of Toohey's Old*
  • Once at closing time in the college bar I still had most of a pint of Guiness and a shot of Southern Comfort that I had purchased at last call. So I did what any drunken American threatened with the loss of his booze would do--dropped the SC shot into the brackish depths of the Guiness and downed it. Yes. It was FOUL. Probably the first Boilermaker actually to make boils. True story.
  • A banana-fest is in order, I think. /although I'm sure someone will get out the cockpunch. For our 'National beer I suggest a very cold bottle of Moosehead. To those with more varied taste, I offer a glass of 'Dragon's Breath' at our well reviewed local brewing company." /actually, I'm trying to take life slowly, but you folks have a good time.
  • It's genetic, I'm tellin' ya.
  • So Fes is a homebrewer. I'm a newbie extract brewer myself but I'd love to go to all-grain in the future. (We need to talk). We've got a local microbrew (Thunderhead Brewing) that makes a Gold Medal winning Espresso Stout, but the best beer I've ever had is their Belgian Dubbel (which is only available occasionally). Since getting into homebrew, I've learned about the effects of LIGHT on beer, which explains why clear and green bottled beers taste "skunky" compared to their counterparts in brown glass.