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Comment by itronitron | Hacker News Reader

If you're feeling down on the US craft beer scene just visit Europe (after Covid runs it's course) and you may realize that US craft beer is quite strong by comparison.

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I started drinking in the mid-2000s. This was around when the American craft brew scene was really taking over the nation, but the jokes all my European colleagues told were about how American beer is piss-water. Imagine my surprise when I went to Europe, this fabled land of "real beer", and found that they had at most one or two taps at the bar, and asked if I wanted "dark" or "light". No brand names, no styles, no variety. Just a perfectly adequate, ho-hum ale, pint after pint. This is better than our huge, burgeoning, incredibly active and creative craft beer scene?

It seems like the "American piss-water" jokes have finally subsided today, but for a good decade there, I was real defensive about the American beer scene :)

[*] Note: This is a friendly, lighthearted anecdote about my personal experience 15 years ago. Please take it in the spirit it is intended. I miss you, Europe.

It's true, that reputation lasted for many decades. Here's Monty Python's classic "making love in a canoe" joke from 1979: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R8aPABF7nW4 [1]. Also this from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4336790:

The old brewer's joke which goes like this (I'll use your examples): A Budweiser salesman, a Coors salesman, and an Anchor Steam salesman meet in the hotel bar at a beer convention. The Budweiser man says, "I'll have a Budweiser." The Coors man says, "I'll have a Coors." The Anchor Steam man says, "Just water for me." The other two look at him and say "What? Just water?" "Well," he says, "since you guys aren't having beer I won't either."

The American craft beer Renaissance has been an amazing thing. Thank you Jimmy Carter! https://www.theatlantic.com/culture/archive/2010/08/how-jimm... ... err, maybe: https://www.theatlantic.com/politics/archive/2010/08/jimmy-c...

[1] One of the comments on that YouTube clip complains that it was originally a Canadian joke. The canoe makes me think that might be true.

Europe is far too big a geography to pin down beer, it's mostly concentrated in the UK, Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands, Germany and Czech where you find the right climate for the ingredients and hence the beer culture (of course you find beers in France, but they have a larger wine culture).

The differences between them are also huge with Irish dark stout, British pints without collar, German lager only made from basic ingredients, Belgian specialty beers, etc.

The effect of tradition and culture makes almost every beer in those regions taste perfectly decent and some very good, while in the US most are piss-water and some might indeed be very good.

With Bud Light still having the biggest market share, I believe the piss-water jokes still stand today.

In my experiences with German beer, most pubs will carry the locally-brewed brand and that's about it. Sometimes it's local pride, sometimes it's because the pub is sponsored by the brewery to do so, sometimes it's both. Beer seemed more about the Gemütlichkeit than the culinary experience.

I was there a few years ago in the UK, and I found it to be a mixed bag. While most brewpubs I went to all had very similar beers in the styles one would expect, I found a couple places that really stuck out to me. For example, I discovered Brew Dog (originally from Scotland) while I was there and while, and they have since expanded to the US and kept producing great beer. That discovery, in contrast with being able to taste "classic" English beers made for an interesting trip.

However, that's the UK. Elsewhere I think there is much higher representation of the styles of a particular country. Germany epitomizes this with their beer purity law...

I liked their beers but avoided ordering them after they got trigger happy with trademark lawsuits

https://www.theguardian.com/business/2017/mar/28/brewdog-law...

Unfortunately they’re known for several sketchy business behaviors. It’s a shame because when I lived in Europe they were one of the few pubs that had unique craft beers in my town.

I went to MBCC in Copenhagen last year. Was going to go this year but... we'll see. One thing that made it interesting was that seemingly half of the brewries were American, which was really nice for us. We were able to focus on the stuff that the locals weren't as interested in, and vice versa.

Anyway, had a ton of great conversations with Europeans about this. We were sad that it's really tough to get Mikkeller around here, and they were like "I cannot believe you say that while you live near Jester King."

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