marți, 12 mai 2015

Beer in the USA

I'm a great beer lover and the five years spent in The Netherlands taught me that there is a lot more to beer than I previosly thought. 

There is a joke in The Netherlands that living there has the huge advantage of being able to enjoy Belgian beer without having to do with Belgians.

When we moved from Romania to The Netherlands, five years ago, I had a very distorted image of beer. At the time, there was only one kind of beer in my country of birth - 5% alcohol, pilsner recepie (pilsner is a type of lager) and it came in half a liter bottles and cans.

In the Netherlands the variety of beer was huge: Lager, Ale, Trapist, Wite, Weisener, fruit flavoured etc. etc. 

During one of our early shopping trips, we went to the supermarket and bought one bottle of each beer. During the following days we (mostly I) tasted all of them and found some that fitted our tastes. 

One particularity about beer in The Netherlands is that Heineken is a regular mid-level beer. In fact, many Dutch people consider it quite bad.

After moving to the US, we wanted to replicate the one-of-each beer shopping endeavour. But this didn't happen as we expected since the smallest unit one can buy in a supermarket is a six-pack of 350ml bottles. At some shops you can make your own six-pack with one of each, though this applies only to some beers.

There also are variety packs with more beers from the same company, though usually these are of at least 12 bottles. 

In the past days, I have been tasting beers from the US and Mexico... and the conclusion is split:

There are good beers, particularly ales and there is the rest which goes from bad to terrible.


These three beers taste like crap... They are so bad, that they can't be enjoyed even if they are drank with the bucket.

Bud Light has made it on TV... watch the video, particularly after minute 2.15.
   

On the other hand, there are some good beers particularly from Widmer Brothers and Blue Moon (the white one).


I found Hefe to be a very good white beer. Though, I can't not think that somehow someone wanted to make it sound like Leffe.

Up to now, I haven't been able to find a decent lager... well, soon I'll start thinking that Heineken is a good beer :)



Niciun comentariu:

Trimiteți un comentariu