The craft brew movement was great right up until it got a bit too successful. Now a bunch of the indies have been gobbled up. Anheuser-Busch InBev has bought up Goose Island, Elysian, Devils Backbone, and Karbach, just to name a few of note.
Sapporo famously bought up century-old Anchor Brewery during COVID, tried to convert their steam-beer brewing equipment into Japanese style production, failed, and ended up shuttering the plant.
Then you've got the Sam Adams and Coors success stories, which ultimately ended up becoming more of the same big labels. If you've ever actually been to Boston or Denver, you can still get the more traditionally made beers and they're miles ahead of the generic crap distributed nationally.
If you're drinking beer from hops that aren't from the US (or New Zealand but that's a way smaller market) then there's a very good chance your beer is average at best (unless it's a stout, wheat beer, bitter, sour etc. rather than a lager or pale ale, but those two are most likely)
That's why I said average at best - average beer is going to taste way better than bad beer and also perfectly acceptable, I don't mean it in a negative way, just that in the standard 3-7% golden beer fermented with only yeast category, Cascadian & New Zealand hops provide the best and widest array of tastes regardless of what you're after, as that's where the soil is best and where the breeding is generally done
Are there actual, scientific studies on this topic? Because it's hard for me to take your word for it when all my lived experience has been the opposite.
So there's obviously a split between objective fact and opinion and conjecture, but:
Outbreaks of powdery mildew in the early 20th century meant it became somewhat infeasible to grow most aromatic and flavoursome hops, leading to research and breeding programmes to produce disease resistant hops with other desired characteristics
Most of the mildew-resistant hops were wild and from the US and Canada
Hop breeding and research started in the UK but ended in the 2000s
Oregon State University has been breeding hops for almost 100 years
The USDA also has their hop research center in Oregon
The US is responsible for 40% of hop production, of which over 98% is in Oregon, Washington and Idaho
Cascade hops, from the USDA research center in Oregon, started the craft beer movement due to the combination of high flavour and disease tolerance
German hop research started in 1926, but only had any real success after the 1980s
So essentially, the US has just got very lucky when it comes to hop production with good soils and disease resistance, while German beermaking was set back leading other styles to become and remain popular, such as very lightly hopped wheat beers, sour beers where the acidity comes from the fermentation instead of hops, and more recently Belgian style beers that are stronger abv so the stronger alcohol taste substitutes for some of the strength of the hops
There probably are also studies, but they tend to look into mechanisms/variations whereas this is more of a series of coinciding factors which don't really need much research to make sense
Thank you for the explanation, I didn't know about a lot of that! But the jump from all of that information to "beer with hop outside US/NZ is only average" is too large and too subjective.
Try to avoid the popular exports (Leffe for example), there are a lot of breweries that make generally better beers :)
Plus if you got some recommendations for German beers I'm all ears
Most of my experience is with the southern regions, my favorite being Tegernseer Hell - I think I've seen that in Belgium, though that might have been at one of those "sells every kind of beer" kiosks in Brussels.
It's not dilluted so much as, this cheap cancer inducing chemical can flavor it strongly for not much money... But we know it's associated with cancer... Good thing we own the FDA too.
To all the people downvoting: plastering the political compass in contexts where it makes no fucking sense is a kind of ironic humor meant to highlight the reductive nature of judging political ideology by two axes. It's a shitpost, and a top-tier one at that.
The piss one would probably sell alot actually...
As shown by the fact that people buy beer made in the US
Spoken like someone that's never had U.S. beer that isn't one of the mass produced ones like Miller, Bud, etc.
The craft brew movement was great right up until it got a bit too successful. Now a bunch of the indies have been gobbled up. Anheuser-Busch InBev has bought up Goose Island, Elysian, Devils Backbone, and Karbach, just to name a few of note.
Sapporo famously bought up century-old Anchor Brewery during COVID, tried to convert their steam-beer brewing equipment into Japanese style production, failed, and ended up shuttering the plant.
Then you've got the Sam Adams and Coors success stories, which ultimately ended up becoming more of the same big labels. If you've ever actually been to Boston or Denver, you can still get the more traditionally made beers and they're miles ahead of the generic crap distributed nationally.
In the Midwest there's still lots of local breweries that are good
Oh American beer is piss, haven't heard that tired joke before. You should try different beer that isn't Coors or miller sometime
If you're drinking beer from hops that aren't from the US (or New Zealand but that's a way smaller market) then there's a very good chance your beer is average at best (unless it's a stout, wheat beer, bitter, sour etc. rather than a lager or pale ale, but those two are most likely)
Weird, all the Americans I've drank German beer (from German hops) with called it far better than what they were used to
That's why I said average at best - average beer is going to taste way better than bad beer and also perfectly acceptable, I don't mean it in a negative way, just that in the standard 3-7% golden beer fermented with only yeast category, Cascadian & New Zealand hops provide the best and widest array of tastes regardless of what you're after, as that's where the soil is best and where the breeding is generally done
Are there actual, scientific studies on this topic? Because it's hard for me to take your word for it when all my lived experience has been the opposite.
So there's obviously a split between objective fact and opinion and conjecture, but:
So essentially, the US has just got very lucky when it comes to hop production with good soils and disease resistance, while German beermaking was set back leading other styles to become and remain popular, such as very lightly hopped wheat beers, sour beers where the acidity comes from the fermentation instead of hops, and more recently Belgian style beers that are stronger abv so the stronger alcohol taste substitutes for some of the strength of the hops
There probably are also studies, but they tend to look into mechanisms/variations whereas this is more of a series of coinciding factors which don't really need much research to make sense
Thank you for the explanation, I didn't know about a lot of that! But the jump from all of that information to "beer with hop outside US/NZ is only average" is too large and too subjective.
Weird, all the Germans I've drank Belgian beer with called it far better than what they were used to
/jk, couldn't resist trying to assert the beer superiority of my tiny country :)
I haven't had much Belgian beer, but the ones I had were great!
Try to avoid the popular exports (Leffe for example), there are a lot of breweries that make generally better beers :)
Plus if you got some recommendations for German beers I'm all ears
Thanks for the tip, I'll try to keep a look out!
Most of my experience is with the southern regions, my favorite being Tegernseer Hell - I think I've seen that in Belgium, though that might have been at one of those "sells every kind of beer" kiosks in Brussels.
Do they do factory tours?
As long as you called it Trump Piss.
where's the lemonade stand that has a side hustle of nuclear/chemical waste disposal?
This is completely absurd, why would they want to make the straws last longer?
Use paper straws for greenwashing, people complain that they're shit, they add in the chemicals
Because then you'd really have to suck to enjoy capitalist cost cutting lemonade.
It's not dilluted so much as, this cheap cancer inducing chemical can flavor it strongly for not much money... But we know it's associated with cancer... Good thing we own the FDA too.
.... and then they make a lot of money.
There should be a third panel with text from this HB comment:
that "original" is translated from somewhere as well. did this meme go full circle?!
I believe the English one is the original. The "original" one (the one in Chinese) was probably translated from English.
Reminds me of that "how much sawdust can you put in rice krispies before someone notices" thing.
The piss and pink hair make reference to Belle Delphine's bath water sale, right?
It had just been long enough that I forgot about that shit. Now you had to go and remind me.
I return the favor.
THE GAME
I couldn't help myself...
Edit - probably should have left "Reality:" in. See revised meme below.
To all the people downvoting: plastering the political compass in contexts where it makes no fucking sense is a kind of ironic humor meant to highlight the reductive nature of judging political ideology by two axes. It's a shitpost, and a top-tier one at that.
- Immanuel Kant, Critic of the political compass shitposts
I think it's more like
Red: State owned brewery is best
Blue: I diluted mine for more profit
Green: mine is just piss (horny)
Yellow: mine is just piss (no sanitation laws)
Authentic horseco piss or the imitation shit
Honestly, there's some HFCS bullshit, but mostly storebought lemonade seems to be just lemon juice and cane sugar.
Because of food safety regulations
Food safety regulations don't ban dilution.
I don't wanna get into a fight over this, but they do regulate dilution. At least where I'm from.
It can only be called "juice" if it has got at least x% of juice in it. If it's made from concentrate, it says so on the front.
Companies mustn't lie about the percentage of juice content and all ingredients are listed on the back in order of content.
In the UK, there's a sugar tax, so that's another form of regulation.
Customers may decide whether they want to buy 25% or 100% juice, but this competition only works because of the rules I listed.
Lemonade in particular is very low % juice. Dunno exactly but probably above 10% it starts tasting too strong.