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Comment by lmm | Hacker News Reader

That industrialization of beer was a major step backwards; flavourless but cheap lager almost eliminated good traditional beer.

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Modern beer, even the industrial lager you despise is much better that what 99% of people drank in the past. There is almost no bad beer, the standards for water quality and hygiene are high, the process and technology is well understood and we can replicate the same beer batch after batch, year after year.

Then why is an organisation based on opposition to that industrial lager, and improvement of beer quality more generally, probably the most major/successful/historically important single-issue consumer organisation, to the point that most other ones have modelled themselves on it?

Because, honestly, beer and wine and spirits tend to attract elite level snobs.

I have had no trouble finding wonderful beers produced by industry. I think filtering, pasteurization, and the use of grains like rice, are the main sources of the lack of flavor.

That said, anecdotally, I did see a drop in quality of Pilsner Urquell when they moved from their traditional brewery (which had quite the ecosystem in the ceiling) to the newer one. Lots of folks like to say that the crazy stuff going on over the vats affects the flavor.

When did it move?

The best beer I ever had was draught Pilsner Urquell, sat outside the brewery in Plzeň circa 2000.

Whatever they were doing inside... oh man, Perfection. I'll never forget.

I’m not sure about the loss of flavor, but we have definitely seen waves of homogenization with macro beer producers. From what I’ve seen, this led to an explosion in regional and local microbreweries. There are lots of eclectic options out there nowadays.

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