Frazz by Jef Mallett for August 15, 2012

But they could use Pykrete in place of ice!!

Room temperature beer makes me sleepy.

I once heard that Americans serve ice cold beer to kill the bad flavor of American beers. Probably some truth to that since I hate the flavor of our most popular beers.

Frazz needs to invent mowing WITHOUT coveralls!

vishooter, my problem with popular American beers is that they don’t HAVE any flavor……But all beer has to be as cold as posible, (Tip: drink it fast so it doesn’t get warm! Now back to our regular comment, already in progress…)…I sometimes drink beer with ice, stays nice and cold….Anybody else getting a little thirsty?

An oldie, but a goodie:

Q: “Why do the Brits drink warm beer?”A: “Because Lucas makes refrigerators, too.”

Push mowers are great, but finding a repairman with a backlap machine so they work well and quietly is purt’near impossible these days.

From experience, you are unlikely to find much ROOT beer in England at all. My British friends, acquaintances and family all think that root beer tastes like liniment.

I remember in the 1970s (before the North Sea oil field came in), George McRobie telling about seeing two beer trucks crossing on the M. “There was a time when each pub brewed their own. Beer fans would travel some distance to sample outstanding brews. Yet beer is mostly water and here they are burning Middle Eastern diesel fuel to carry water from one end of the country to the other.”

Primarily because we don’t like drinks which taste and smell like disinfectant as root beer does, as a result we just don’t like it. We have it over here but it just doesn’t sell to high or even medium volume. MacD had to stop selling it about a decade ago as it wasn’t selling.

By the way singlespeed most beer over here is not made by Bass. We have dozens of Brewerys such as Greene King, Fullers, Flowers and dozens of others. Bass is primarily a midlands beer. We also have thousands of local breweries (micro breweries) many of which have been running for decades. Personally I prefer Trappist Ales but that is another story.

Actually British beers have no flavor either

You, sir, are grotesquely ignorant of British beer, obviously, and I find it in my heart to doubt you have ever even been near it, or for that matter ever even been near a Wetherspoons pub. I have nothing against American craft beers, but they are only now catching up to CAMRA standards.

Old Peculier (a Yorkshire ale) taught me the value of “warm” English beers. When refrigerator cold, it is awful; but when at “British room temperature” (about 18-20 C = 65-68 F), it is delightful. Popular American beers, on the other hand, are awful at American room temperature (72-80 F = 22-27 C) and are better cool.

.If Newcie Brown and Old Peculiar are the best British beer you’ve had, then no wonder you have a bad impression of it. But honestly, that is NOT what is to be had. And real ales are alive and thriving — everything from the Titanic brewery I linked to above, the excellent Orkney brewery and the fairly standard-not-special Greene King, right down to our very own most recent small local upstarts Brewdog. You should have a look at the various databases of British real ales online.

I think you are probably correct, that the surge of microbreweries in the US and the resurgence of real ales in the UK are probably contemporaneous. However, there are in fact a few breweries scattered around this area which have been brewing since at least Victorian times, although they didn’t have the mass market, and the expertise and the experience was never lost. And I’ve found only a few American microbrewery beers which are nearly as good. (Note, too, that I do visit the US semi-regularly. And with that in mind, any recommendations for when I’m there next week?)

zedman, in a limited way, I concur. Milwaukee has always had more body….Truth be told though, Stroh’s went out of business when I stopped drinking it. I’d like to drink an ice cold Signature right now……Go Tigers!.

Actually, you’re all looking in the wrong direction. The best beer I’ve ever had is Castlemain’s XXXX, an Aussie beer. They brew up some really good beers Down Under as well as bottle some really good wines. You should look for them. :-)

Come on people, American beer is not a category any more than American wine is, and the same can be said for British beer. There are countless brews, some good, some bad. Also, they don’t serve beer warm in the UK, they serve it at cellar temperature, which is about 50F, far from warm, and a temp that most American craft beers would benefit from as well. I’m a bit disappointed in Jef for promoting this misconception.

“Why is American beer like making love in a canoe?”

“Because it’s f*cking close to water.”

There. It had to be said.

I assume it’s as annoying as being called a “Yank” when you’re from Texas.

Root beer by Guiness

Where did San Miguel Dark go? Now I gotta find six buck IPA’s, claiming they’re a Porter.

As to root beer, I’ve given up, everything I try tastes like syrup.