Comment by m0zg | Hacker News Reader

Comment by m0zg | Hacker News Reader

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As an immigrant from deep inside the Vodka belt (Russia), it's not a class thing. Over there this is just how you hang out with friends, whether you like it or not. Not drinking vodka invites ridicule and jokes about you being in poor health (the only acceptable excuse to not drink vodka). Moreover, if you're a businessman, your business will often require you to get blackout drunk with partners. Like it or not, nobody gives a shit. "We drank vodka together" carries the same weight as "we broke bread together" might elsewhere as far as closeness, trust, and friendship is concerned.

Here in the US I haven't had vodka in years. The US right now has such great beer that drinking any other alcoholic beverage should be illegal. Possibly the very best anywhere in the world. Not even Germany/Austria/England come anywhere close to what you can buy on the US West Coast.

Even in Russia though the attitudes are changing. Anecdotally, meeting with my university friends a year ago we drank only beer, and they said they mostly drink wine (beer in Russia is pretty bad still, although the situation is improving).

My absolute favorite beers are Belgian Trappist style beers. I love good German beers too. But I’ve been preaching for years if you compare country to country, the US military super power is dwarfed by the beer super power that it has become. It’s not that other countries are bad or anything, but in the US there are just so many awesome breweries making world-class beer without batting an eye. I don’t like sours, but everything from sours, to IPAs (no other country is even remotely on the radar, not even the same universe), to stouts and Belgian triples the US has it all. If I go to a bar in Germany I expect great German brews, but if I go to a random bar in the US I get legit top-caliber IPAs, lagers, and stouts easy. It’s just too good here.

I'm not sure why Germany has the reputation as making great beers, it doesn't really. I live there and the range and quality are both poor. You'll do better immediately in the Czech Republic, Belgium or even the Netherlands. The UK and Ireland also have strong craft beer cultures now, though the US certainly has had a big head start over them.

I just came back from the UK and Ireland. The craft beers were pretty average compared to what I get in the US but I’m sure they’ll continue to improve. It’s honestly just average craft beer in the US. It’s been a few years since I was in the Netherlands so I don’t remember much but I don’t remember any good beers. Maybe they’re make good ones now but I didn’t have any when I was there.

Germany gets a good reputation because they make a certain type of beer extremely well, like Belgium makes Belgians extremely well.

> I'm not sure why Germany has the reputation as making great beers.

German brewers of mass-produced beer still stuck to the requirements of the German beer purity law when elsewhere, such as in the USA, brewers were putting rice and maize into their beer to cut costs.

As a brewer myself, it's not always to cut costs. Some of the best IPAs available legitimately require oatmeal in the mash (mash is the grain combined with hot water at a precise temperature to allow enzymes to extract and convert the sugars). In this case it's not done to cut cost, it improves the beer. Mass produced stuff like Budweiser isn't really beer IMO. It's something else entirely.

You are right of course that some added ingredients beyond barley, hops, yeast, and water can lead to good beers. The German beer purity law is too restrictive in that no added sugar is permitted, while this is a major part of the Belgian tradition. However, rice and maize are not those kind of ingredients.

And not only that, but those IPAs are _different_ every day in some of the bars I go to. And nearly all of them are way better than what you'd commonly be able to buy in e.g. England, where this style of beer originated. Most people don't quite realize yet how amazing the US beer scene has gotten over the past decade or so. And other countries are starting to notice. I saw some Oregon IPAs on tap in a regular London pub when I was there about a year ago.

It's not only left coast, you can get an incredible variety of great beer pretty much everywhere. Most of the breweries just keep small enough (e.g. New Glarus) that you can't really get them anywhere else. Sometimes it's even great nbeer, not that overhopped IPA crap :) (in case you didn't notice, I strongly dislike IPAs)

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