The Atlantic:
Today’s discerning beer drinkers might be convinced that America’s watery, bland lagers are a recent corporate invention. But the existence of American beers that are, as one industry executive once put it, “less challenging,” has a much longer history. In fact, Thomas Jefferson, himself an accomplished homebrewer, complained that some of his country’s beers were “meagre and often vapid” nearly 200 years ago.
Jefferson never lived to see the worst of it. Starting in about the mid-1800s, American beer has been defined by its dullness. Why? The answer lies in a combination of religious objections to alcohol, hordes of German immigrants, and a bunch of miners who just wanted to drink during their lunch break, says Ranjit Dighe, a professor of economics at the State University of New York at Oswego.
There are some amazing craft beers in America and elsewhere but the major brewery beer – Bud, Coors, Molson and the like – are quite simply not worth drinking.
Most mainstream anything is dull and bland. Beer, hamburgers, television, clothing, music.
Craft beers (many of which have outgrown that designation) in this country have, if anything, surpassed many of their European forebears in flavor and originality. Major breweries (many of which are owned by multinational monster Anheuser-Busch InBev) continue to either imitate or acquire smaller labels to distribute alongside the piss-water that passes for standard beer.
And we wouldn’t now have much of a choice at all had not one “craft” brewery taken beverage distribution into its own hands, trying to return retail-level variety to pre-Prohibition levels, a period of history I wish that article hadn’t glossed over.
I’m going to speculate that the article’s headline was deliberately chosen to incite beer fans to respond, and was written to ignore the parts of American history that might have differed with its thesis.
For an entertaining and enlightening exploration into the marketing of mainstream beer dig up a copy of ‘Beer Blast’ by Philip van Munching http://www.powells.com/biblio/1-9780812930351-3 (if the name sounds familiar, it was his grandfather who first imported Heineken into the US…)
It’s been argued more than once that the impersonal, boring, bland personal computer environment built by Microsoft and IBM opened the door for the more personal offerings from Apple during Jobs 2.0’s reign. Similarly, the Big 3 brewers that dominated for so long made a craft beer resurgence inevitable.
Yeah, I’m gonna go ahead and call this BS. Even my big-truck-loving, country-music-listening redneck relatives have grown out of drinking macrobrews (Budweiser, etc.) and will reach for at least the larger microbrews.
Yes, Budweiser etc. are tailored to be both cheap to produce and have widespread appeal, which means taking a lowest-common-denominator approach. So what? This “American beer is pisswater” thing is horseshit.
American microbrews and craft beers kick the crap out of the best European beer.
I can tell you that mass produced lagers are watery and bland pretty much everywhere, not just in the USA. Very uninformed article.
The American craft beer scene is world class.
“Most mainstream anything is dull and bland. Beer, hamburgers, television, clothing, music.”
Precisely. Assuming there’s a large conglomerate beer in, say, Germany I’ll bet it sucks relative to the smaller breweries.
There’s also the issue of drinking during vacation, weekend and other activities. You can drink 4% beer as you’re hanging out at the beach/cabin/etc all afternoon. Try that with most 7% beers.
There’s an interesting corollary to that: why British beer has more flavour than European beer: tax.
Historically, British beer was taxed on alcohol content whereas as most European beer was taxed on volume.
So you get British beers and ales brewed for flavour (low alcohol, realitively large volume) and European beer brewed for strength, froth, fizz and clarity, small volume and not so much flavour.
British beer comes in pints, is dark, warm and full of flavour. European beer is served in wine glasses, has the flavour of cold piss and knocks you on your butt after three pints.
This is, of course, abroad (pun) generalisation.
There, that’s fixed it for you.
Anecdote does not make anecdata. Does your sample of European craft beers, or even mainstream bees available in most pubs, include Brains, Fullers, Marstons pedigree, Ruddles, or even Tetleys, or any of the burton breweries. And then the cider, the real ales, the IPAs. No? Maybe you’re thinking of the cooking lagers made by carlsberg and carling?
Sorry, this answer is meant for Sean. It’s that tartan bitter carry out having an effect.
See above. American craft beers may be top, but comparing them to similar in Britain or Europe in some sort of highlander competition does neither a service.
Not a fan of Belgian beer, then? The Belgian varieties I’ve tried are a lot of things, but they’re certainly not piss.
Funny story I read about German breweries awhile back…
An American brewmaster went over there a few years ago to talk to his counterparts in old, established, traditional German breweries about their work, and was enormously surprised to find that most of them had little or no interest in what other brewers were doing. Not in other countries. Not in neighboring cities.
I guess the purity law takes its toll?
I couldn’t imagine doing this sort of thing without wanting to sample what colleagues and competitors are capable of. I couldn’t imagine believing I was as expert as I was ever going to be, with no room for improvement or expansion.
You haven’t had a lot of European beer, then. A sizable percentage of the better American brewers will tell you how deeply they’ve been inspired by great European beers…. many of them right on their product descriptions.
That said, Americans seem more inclined to experiment and exaggerate with recipes, which can yield terrific results many older European houses might not have considered.
Oh my god, no. Some of the best I’ve ever had have been Belgian or US Belgian inspired. For instance, if you’ve never had Allagash tripel or their white beer, please try it and thank me later. I’ve been to their brewery in Portland Maine a few times now. Or St. Bernardus, Chimay, Duvel or Brooklyn Breweries Local 1 or 2. I am trying a new one right now called Jo.Vi.Al, a Belgian inspired dubbel from PA, and it’s incredible. VIctory brewery in PA makes a great double IPA, Weyerbacher, also from PA. I could go on, I have not even left the east coast yet, but I think you get the point.
In any case, you are correct when you say this is nothing more than clickbate especially considering the amazing amount of craft brewers out there now and I mean amazing. There is one only ten minutes from me in Massachusetts. Not the greatest, but better than the big Brewers. This is all a bunch of hyperbole.
It’s almost like lots of people like easy-drinking, inoffensive beers for some reason…
The Atlantic needed to boost subscriber enrollment. The article deliberately simplified history.
I’ve happy to have had most of the brands you named. Terrific stuff. Victory makes some of my all-time favorites, as does Flying Fish from NJ. Try to find some Ommegang (Cooperstown, NY) if you can, too.
Actually Ommegang is in most stores I frequent, I particularly like Three Philosophers but have also tried the Whitte, Hennepene, Rare Vos and Abbey Ale. My favorite is Three Philosophers though.That’s also happens to be the beer that made my wife realize that beer can actually be great. Now she often decides on a beer instead of wine when we go out.
In 1979 I made my first trip to Texas. At the time Coors was a mysterious beer because you couldn’t buy it in the eastern part of the USA. So I picked up some at the request of friends. Nobody was impressed. But I also picked up a couple of 6 packs of some Texas beer at a request of a friend. It was so bad that after 2 months 10 of the bottles were still untouched in a house of 20 college students. We learned to be happy with our Rolling Rock.
I didn’t say they were
You make a good pint. I mean point
If it’s Texas beer you’re still curious about, check out Shiner. Just don’t tell anyone I recommended something from Texas. 😉
Pasteur hated the Germans so much he gave his special recipe for lager yeast to Carlsberg. A very much not in Germany Brewer