Home Forums Hunting & Shooting Hunter's Campfire From whence cometh bad beer?

All I can say is thank goodness for Ayinger and Spaten -
If not for them I would not drink much beer.

IMO, Americans have only liked beer in the last 20 years. Before that, it was brewed to a neutral palate and served ice cold to avoid any hint of beer taste. All the breweries brewed to a virtually identical palate to compete for the mass market.

Where in Europe, and what precisely does warm mean?

Americans accustomed to mass market dreck think anything above 32 degrees F is warm. They want their taste buds anesthetized by the cold, it protects them from the flavor.

Garrett Oliver sees it as the fallout of Prohibition followed by the Great Depression.

Germany/Austria and warm means room temperature from Late spring to early fall.

I was there in late July and August this year and I didn't have a single warm beer, despite temps in the high 70's.

That would have been unheard of in Germany in the 1980's other than perhaps the larger cities where American tourists visited, such as Munich.

This was one of the biggest changes I saw since I lived there. Refrigeration has been embraced fully by the Germans in the past 25 years. You may have found cellar cooled beer or refrigerated beer/kegs in some large Brauhaus in Munich in the 1980's or some large restaurant that catered to tourists, but it was not the norm in the average Gasthaus or fest.

Same with Coca Cola, they've discovered refrigeration and ice!, but you no longer get a wedge of lemon in your Coke everywhere.

Hell, here's something you most definitely wouldn't have seen in Germany in 1985. Chilled singles in an American style display cooler in an Autobahn rest stop. You know, for when you need a beer before you finish driving 120mph from Frankfort to Munich.

Look up the history of the original India Pale Ale. It had to travel a bit.

Just glad that since Bert Grant (re)started the micro revolution in the early 80's we now have an amazing variety of great stuff.

Poor old Anchor Brewing Co never gets any respect - Fritz Maytag had a steam beer (from the 19th century), an IPA, a porter and a barley wine by 1975.

Poor old Anchor Brewing Co never gets any respect - Fritz Maytag had a steam beer (from the 19th century), an IPA, a porter and a barley wine by 1975.

And I love them all, especially the Porter but I have always thought of Anchor as a macro brewer and Bert started the modern Micro that had a whole lot less capital invested and enabled a lot of innovation.