1. Fair analogy.

2. No.

I am really surprised at PBR. . .I know that I have a few years on y'all but back in the mid 80's my friends and I went through a stage of drinking Pabst just for the ironic value. . .because it was about the worst beer we could find.

Another golden oldie: In the 70's I was in this bar band on the Oregon Coast. . we were doing our set, and some guy gets up, walks to the jukebox, and puts in some coins, and plays "Red Neck, White Socks, Blue Ribbon Beer," because apparently he preferred that to the country/bluegrass we were playing.

And I call Stella Artois the Belgian Budweiser.

I think PBR is PBR for yuppies. Not that Stella is any good. I think it's fine, but I don't know shit.

Also, ever since I read in the New Yorker that some Belgian Trappist monk brewer dude admired Budweiser, I've been drinking that. It's good so long as it's ice cold.

I agre with you, danf. I am old enough to remember the days where there basically was no beer. There was American lager - Bud, PBR, Lone Star, Miller, Michelob - and it was all crappy. The "good" beer was when you splurged for a Canadian lager - Molson, Moosehead - or maybe Amstel - and drank their crappy lager for a change.

I was just turning legal when the craft brew/microbrew revolution took off. We were thrilled to pieces there was all this varied, awesome, delicious new beer to try - a whole new world of choices and taste opened up. Finally, America had decent beer like you could find in England or Germany or Belgium - we were no longer slaves to the watered-down, sour, post-prohibition vestiges of what once was a great American beer industry.

I was living in a big shared house with a bunch of environmental educators at the time, and we travelled all around New England and tried stuff at every brewpub we could find - Otter Creek, Magic Hat, Wachusett, Northampton Brewery, wherever. It was just so awesome to be freed from the monotony. So today, it breaks my heart a little that young people have chosen to go back to that. Of course they are embracing it because there's a chic to appearing gritty and down-home and rejecting the variety that they've got access to now. But those same people, twenty years ago, were the very ones that rushed at craft brews because they were rejecting what was most available.

What it comes down to, for me, is the taste. I drink the beers I drink because I just really like the taste of them. If someone genuinely likes the taste of PBR or Bud, then certainly they should have fun drinking it. But to a large degree, most people drinking PBR are doing it for style reasons, not budget or taste reasons, and most bars that offer it are very mindful of that, as is PBR's marketing team. But whatever, it's just beer.

since I read in the New Yorker that some Belgian Trappist monk brewer dude admired Budweiser

Heh - the guy from Dogfish. He admires them for their incredible consistency, which is really difficult to get in a biological process. On taste, he was not a big fan.

Yeah. My husband drinks PBR for the taste.

I know.

With both PBR and Stella, I'm mostly interested in the way that a fairly average, unremarkable beer has become, thanks to a big advertising and distribution push, astonishingly hip and popular and whatnot.

(Not that this is the case w/PBR or Stella, but I'm also interested in the way that major breweries on one hand buy interests in smaller ones (as with, say, A-B's 25% stake in Red Hook, which also includes a distro agreement), or just buy 'em out (Miller and Leinenkugel) and on the other hand make fake-microbrews like Blue Moon (Coors) and Wild Hop (A-B again). The whole thing reminds me of the record industry.

Last night, I was playing gin with one of my friends, and she told me that, the last time she went to see a movie, there was a Stella commercial in the middle of the previews. And so I said, jokingly, 'What movie was it? Some angsty Catherine Keener drama?' And she said, 'You know, I think it was.'

And I think that Castigliano should admire Annheuser-Busch, if only for their consistency. My last sixer of 60-minute IPA tasted like they left half the hops out.

God I hate those Stella commercials at the movies.

Yeah, Dogfish can be uneven, but when it's good it's so awesome. Since I've gotten into the Slow Food thing I'm much more okay with batches differing and stuff like that.

I like PBR and Stella. I went in one side of the craft beer movement and came out the other when I discovered that hoppy, serious IPAs and so on give me hangovers of doom. I can drink PBR or Stella or Yuengling or my current guilty favorite, Bud Light with Lime, all night long and I'm going to feel okay in the morning. If I drink four microbrews, I will be near death in the AM.

Therefore I drink local beer - Asheville, this town of 60,000, boasts five really good craft breweries - when I'm only having one or at most two. If I'm going out for the evening, it's PBR. As a friend of mine used to say about cheap American beer: it's the beer to drink when you're drinking more than 12.

There are plenty of lighter craft beers, though, mgl, and I suspect they're the most popular and widely-sold varieties. I'm pretty confident that New Belgium sells a whole lot more Fat Tire than they do 1554, and Sierra Nevada more Pale Ale than, y'know, barleywine or something (or Torpedo--that's a great beer). (Granted, Fat Tire and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale are still a lot hoppier than PBR.)

(I point all this out because I suspect that for you, as for me, mgl, part of the appeal of local and craft brews is the anti-multinational, pro-local-biz thing.)

I like Stella from the tap, but bottled, it's just beer.

I don't understand beer.

Brando beer, for waterfront drinking.

Beer happens when the hops and barley love each other very, very much.

I don't understand beer.

At the simplest level, it's a way people figured out to preserve grain.

The Brits I used to work with all called Stella "wife-beater." Apparently that has something to do with the kind of people who drink it in England.

I'm told that Stella is called "wife beater" after the character from A Streetcar Named Desire.

Is PBR trendy? I had no idea. I like Stella but it's not my favorite. I was on a Stella kick for a while. Is Stella trendy? I first started drinking Stella when it was one of the only pale beers available on a trip I took. My favorite beer is Bud Lite and Amstel Lite. I'm pretty certain they will never be hip.

I think it was my 29th birthday, maybe my 28th. I wasn't living in New York yet, anyway, and mr. gaspode was. I came up from Baltimore to celebrate, we went out for dinner then to a Mogwai show at Irving Plaza. At that time the choices of beer there were: Bud, Bud light, Coors light, Amstel light, Heineken (which I hate) and another light beer which escapes me. I drank Bud. After the show, we went to 7B and ordered a pitcher of Yuengling. The first sip was sublime. Flavour! We got a little enthusiastic about the Yuengling after that, but it was worth it.

It's sort of shocking now when I go back and drink something like PBR or Bud. They don't even taste like beer (or anything). I drank metric tons of that crap in college, I remember that 16 oz. cans of Busch were $3.35 a six pack at the Post House Tavern in State College. Sometimes we paid for the six pack in change. Now I mostly drink $10 half gallon growlers from the little Brewery in a warehouse in the east end of Pittsburgh.

I like Stella, Beck's, Boddington's, St. Pauli; because they are good, yummy, old fashioned beers. PBR Bud Coors etc. is line #1 ingredient is Rice. It is not a $ thing; but the imports are non-rice brews = more nutritious, easier on the boddee, and do not ever leave me with a OMG my head and body feel like death warmed over feeling if I have more than a couple of them to drink.
Stella is not an inexpensive beer; I do not understand the 'wife-beater' / Belgian Budweiser connontations.

So, box, what is the definition of a "fake" microbrew? The fact that it's made by a large brewer? So Leinenkugels is no good anymore now that Miller has bought them, even though it's the same breweries that makes it? Samuel Adams is brewed largely by Miller, so that's crap too, right? Just want to make sure here. It's this kind of snobbery that turned me off to the wine business when I worked in it, and it's the same thing in the microbrew world. It's funny, it's never the brewers themselves that are overly snobbish, it's the fanboys that are.

And, buzzman, you really shouldn't wear your ignorance so proudly. First off, every beer's #1 ingredient is water, but I realize that's just splitting hairs. The large brewers in America do use adjuncts, but the #1 grain ingredient is still malted barley. I think regular Budweiser might be the only beer that's 100% rice as an adjunct, but they may have changed that. The rest of the major beers are now using liquid maltose and dextrose as adjuncts, which I would agree is a step down from rice grits and corn starch. No beer is nutritious by any stretch, and if you have some data that shows the difference in nutrition between a St. Pauli and a Budweiser, I'd like to see it. The only beers that might be slightly more nutritious would be bottle conditioned beers like Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and that would be due to the yeast in the bottle.

My own favorite day to day beer is Sierra Nevada Pale Ale, and I've been drinking that nearly as long as they've been brewing it. I'm not a big fan of the macro beers of Coors, Bud, or Miller, but they do have their place, and I don't hate them or think they're horrible, they're just not my preference. They're actually quite refreshing on a hot day. The only thing I really won't drink are beers in green or clear bottles. That sun-struck skunk is something I just can't get past. There are a few brewers that are making some nice high gravity beers, which is something that's taken a long time to get right. Stone is one, and I really like Gonzo Imperial Porter. Another surprise beer for me is Breckenridge Brewery's Vanilla Porter. The idea of it sounded bad, but when I had my first one I liked it.

I do not understand the 'wife-beater'... connontations.

Watch this.

The "Belgian Bud" bit is probably due to ubiquity and the fact that, like the Becks and the St Pauli Girl you like, it's imported in a green bottle, which lets in more light than brown and allows the bottled product to acquire a "skunky" flavor that many people don't like. On draught, Stella is quite good; less so in bottles. For me, though, it's way too expensive for the simple thirst quencher it is. Though I gotta say, like Bud, it's easy to order.

For what it's worth, I don't drink Bud because I get a toxic reaction to fermented rice. Other standard American beers aren't so bad. Also, if some sonofabitch called me out for wearing ignorance proudly or some such, I'd be hopping mad.

"Hey, Stella!"

eekacat, I work very, very hard everyday to obtain and maintain my level of idiocy and ignorance. Heck; lessers may even mock me for going so far as to wear it on my sleeve.

Sierra Nevada? I don't dislike it; it is just a formula oriented around warm weather storage and warm temperature drinking. The formula has been around for generations. Sierra Nevada started in 1980. Congrats on your 55th, keep it up. heh.

"May have" and "I think". Gosh. Sounds like phrasage from a Rumsfeld or Bush press conferance [sic]. Line #1 in domestic USA beer main market is RICE. Rice = cheap = hello typical consumer happy with low price.

eekacat, if you want to call me 'ignorant'; be an adult and send me an email. Please don't do a call out on your perceived visions.

I present my finest kind bod as proof of excellent beerage nutrition. Google it!

So, box, what is the definition of a "fake" microbrew? The fact that it's made by a large brewer? So Leinenkugels is no good anymore now that Miller has bought them, even though it's the same breweries that makes it? Samuel Adams is brewed largely by Miller, so that's crap too, right? Just want to make sure here.

Point taken, eek. But, for me personally anyway, a big part of the appeal of beer made by small and/or local companies is that it's made by small and/or local companies. It's not just beer--I'm like that with everything.

If you're saying that I'm a snobbish fanboy about beer, I'll have to respectfully disagree with you. I know what I like, but I don't begrudge anybody else their choices. If you're saying that I'm a snobbish fanboy about being anti-big-business and anti-stealth-marketing, well, I can live with that.

I like PBR. I hate Stella Artois.

Hey, eek, you got any more of those Sierra Nevadas?

- everybody needs a beer.