Dougster75

Ok... my parents and are visiting for Christmas and my Dad is a real ale fan. If he was to drink lager, he would drink the stronger tasting stuff eg original Lowenbrau, sometimes Leffe, Grolsch at worst. Has anybody found any American stuff that tastes vaguely good?

We have a Specs nearby that sells all the good stuff but it tends to be a bit pricey in the six packs. Given the quantity we'll be putting away over Christmas, I'd like to be getting some big packs if possible. Has anybody found an American or Mexican brand that has a decent bit of flavour?

Cheers!

Doug.

buckspazz

I like Samuel Adam's Boston Lager.

tonrob

There are literally hundreds of American beer brands that offer excellent quality - brewed by a large and growing number of small and regional "craft breweries" dotted around the length and breadth of the country. Look for a decent-sized liquor store in your area and peruse the shelves.

This site offers a wealth of info depending on how much you want to research this. It would be impossible for me just to make a sweeping generalization as to what's best in your area - but you can search as to what's local and good on the link I gave.

Don't think you have to restrict yourself to lager, in fact ales (of many kinds) outnumber lagers in the offerings of craft breweries. And please try to avoid the relatively bland bigger offerings like Sam Adams - it's a step up from Bud but not much more in comparison with what's really out there.

Real ale (i.e. unpasteurized, unfiltered and served without gas) is hard to find in the States - there are only about 500 bars nationwide that serve this but you may get lucky. This site may be a good place to see if there are any places in your area.

Good luck!

Hiro11

Texas has quite a few good breweries. Shiner (the brewery is actually called Spoetzl), for example, makes a number of excellent brews. I have a bunch of their Smokehaus helles in my fridge right now and grew up drinking Shiner Bock. Pete's from San Antonio has been around for a few decades (ancient in American regional brewery terms) and makes good stuff. Abita from Louisiana is one of my favorite breweries in the US, I particularly like their "Turbodog" which sounds like a novelty beer but is actually a fairly restrained and very tasty brown ale that's been around for a relatively long time. These breweries are mid-sized regional companies not tiny man-in-a-shed operations, you should be able to find their stuff readily available in supermarkets and the like.

There are literally thousands of smaller, more esoteric American breweries that make good stuff. My favorites here in the midwest are Great Lakes, Capital, Kalamazoo (Bell's), Three Floyds and Goose Island. It pays to buy the local stuff as it usually is fresher and tastes better. As Tonrob says, go to a good liquor store and buy some stuff that looks interesting, it will probably be pretty good.

tonrob

P.S. Leffe is an ale, not a lager.

Sorry - the beer geek in me couldn't hold that in any longer...

Floridared

Wow, there are sooo many great American Ales, you can pick a lot of them up from Total Wine http://www.totalwine.com/ http://www.examiner.com/x-10354-Hous...eer-in-Houston I have a Restaurant and decided to give people the choice of good beer with their food 4 years ago, and once I started to look around, American craft beer was the way to go!! Rogue from Oregon, and Stone Brewing from California are fantastic beers. Arrogant Bastard is a beer that would put hairs on anyones chest!! Real Ales would not travel well from the UK, so they are best drank in Britain. I have 15 beers on draught and the majority are from the USA.

gman123

I heard that micro-breweries are becoming more popular now in the states?

another bloody yank

Really? There are a few around if you look.

Duncan Roberts

In general, craft brewing in the US is far bigger than the UK and the US brewing industry is far more creative, advanced and technically competent than the UK. The latter two are close though and the UK is catching up. If you can't find 10 good US brews within 10 minutes of your house you either live in the middle of nowhere, a dry county or are blind. Also, the age old old saying is true, you g et what you pay for. Expect to pay about $7-10 a 6-pack of good beer or around $15 for a 12-pack.

TimberHut

Don't be so tight. Just go down your local liquor store and pick out a lot of the 6 packs of ale that you've always wanted to try & have a good session with your folks.

You'll enjoy it and so will they.

Dougster75

Thanks all... I'll go and have a poke around in Specs. Didn't want to go getting hundreds of bottles of something horrible and I don't have time to taste them all... then again... no harm in trying.

I'll bite the bullet and go for a ton of the six packs... Thank goodness for all those glass recycling facilities we've found...

chartreuse

Get a few of the six packs of premium stuff that others have suggested. Then stock up with cooking lager, for after.

For drinkable cooking lager, I buy Tecate (comes in 18 can packs) or Miller Genuine Draft (MGD - not Miller Lite or Miller Hi-Life, which comes in 18s and 30s). It was Steerpike who turned me on to MGD - good advice.

BritishGuy36

I've never been into strong beer....can still get Fosters and [genuine] Stella locally here, so it's all good.

Leyther

I know that here in Denver there are a few liquor stores that allow you to make your own six-pack from the single bottles that are going out of date, broke from their original etc. So if you shop around, you may find something similar in your area, at least this way would give you the opportunity to try out six different beers for about 8 or 9 bucks.

The price of craft is usually pretty pricey compared to the domestics (Bud, Miller etc), you are looking at $7-$10 per 6 pack and $15-$18 for a 12 pack. However you may find that some brewers combine up to four different beers in their 12 packs, so they too can offer a nice selection for one price, rather than buying multiple packs in order to try them all.

If your dad likes the stronger ales, then now is certainly the best time, IMO, to find them with the abundance of winter seasonals about.

tonrob

Some stores our way will allow mix and match without those conditions - you can pretty much get any combination you want.