Hey guys,

I'm fairly inexperienced with "good" beers (In college people drink to get wasted. lol?) So I'm coming to you guys, who probably know significantly more than I do about beers for help on deciding what to try next.

I don't know shit about what kind of beer is what, so like I don't know the difference between a lager or an ale, or a pale ale for that matter. So the most I can do to help you help me is to tell you what I've tried and what I think about them.

So far my favorite is Corona with lime, and then after that is Magic Hat #9 (they call it an almost pale ale.)
I've tried:
-Yuengling, and it's alright.
-Blue moon, I like this beer - very smooth.
-Lions head, not the best beer to sit back and relax with, but it'll get you drunk.
-Steel reserve, It'll get you drunk and tastes like malt liquor (not too great).
-Natural Light, tastes like pee, and will get you drunk.
-Miller light, this shit is nasty.
-Bud light, it's alright..not too great.

I'm looking to try anything that I can either sit back and relax with. Eat dinner and probably play some counterstrike. And money isn't an issue as long as it's not into like the triple digits.

Also, does anyone know where I could find Ice wine? I had some last night and I love it. It tastes of candy.

Thanks,
Hooker!

try blue moon with a oragnge in it ! its AWsome! and do you like wheat beer? thats is what i perfer if i wanna drink something that taste good, but otherwise i am drinking to get hammered then as long its got alchool in it i am not worried about the taste

Try out some Young's Double Chocolate Stout, it's the shiznit! http://www.wellsandyoungs.co.uk/wellsan ... -chocolate Woo!

Beer 101 with Gman:

Beer is generally made with 4 ingredients (and no, I'm not about to go all Reinhetsgebot on you): water, yeast, malted barley, and hops.

Hops are a flower that grows on a vine. They have an "astringent" taste to them due to their high levels of alpha-acids. They act as a natural preservative, and give balance to the beer. Beer without hops is going to taste so sweet it'd be like drinking Kool-Aid.

Barley is a grain; generally, 2-row barley is used for brewing because it tastes better than 6-row. The barley is harvested, soaked in water, and allowed to germinate. Basically, they trick the grain (which is a seed) into thinking it's going to grow. The natural germination process allows the starches in the grain to be converted into simpler sugars, which are easy for the yeast to gobble up during fermentation. Once the barley has been malted (tricked into germinating), they put it in an oven and dry it out to stop the process, then they roast it. The darker the roast, the darker the beer. It's kinda like coffee. A lot of folks think dark beer is "heavy" or has a lot of calories. That actually isn't true at all; it has to do with how long the malt has been roasted, not how much malt there is. Guinness is actually an extremely low-calorie beer (it has fewer calories than Miller Lite).

The yeast is what divides up the two big categories.... every beer can be classified as one of these: Lager and Ale.

Lagers are cold-fermented with bottom-fermenting yeast. What's that mean? Well, if you're not a brewer or a beer nerd, not much. Basically, lagers take longer to make because the yeast is slower at colder temperatures. Lagers generally have a more "crisp" taste to them, but there are always exceptions to that. The most popular sub-styles of lagers are probably: pilsner, bock, and dunkel.

Ales are room-temperature fermented with top-fermenting yeast. They are normally what homebrewers and craftbrewers make, as they're easier to make and require less equipment. Honestly, I prefer ales over lagers (and most beer nerds do too). Ales are much more versatile -- there are many more types of beer you can make from an ale yeast: stout, porter, red, brown, APA, IPA, kolsch, wheat, hefeweizen, belgian (and the thousand different sub categories of belgian), and many, many more.

The only ale in your list is Blue Moon. It's not a bad beer, but I personally don't buy it because it's owned by Coors brewing company, and Coors/Miller/Budweiser are the devil. They make a sub-par product by cutting corners to save costs (adding things like rice and corn to their beers) and use the political powers they've bought to F*CK over smaller breweries who make "real" beer. I don't drink any Coors/InBev/Miller products anymore because they don't deserve my money. I drink local 99% of the time, and when I can't, I drink nationally-distributed craft beer like Samuel Adams.

The largest American-owned brewery is the Boston Beer Company. They make the Samuel Adams line of beers. The Bostom Beer Company is largely responsible for bringing back the craft beer movement in the United States, and I respect that a lot. They make some delicious F*CKING beer, too. I can't think of a Samuel Adams beer I've had that I didn't like... except maybe their Imperial Pilsner, but my tastes have evolved since I've had it so I'd probably like that now too, if I could find it.

If you're new to drinking good beer, go pick up a Sam Adams variety pack. You can get them in 6packs or 12packs, normally, and they vary based on the season. The winter seasonal pack has a few of my favorite Sam Adams beers in it: Old Fezziwig, Winter Lager, Cream Stout, Holiday Porter. They're all delicious. Start small, and take baby steps into drinking good beer. A lot of folks will get overwhelmed by the complexity of the craft beer world that they pull out too early and go right back into drinking terrible beer.

Dogfish Head Brewery is probably my favorite brewery outside of TX. They make some of the best beers on the planet. The owner of the brewery has spent a lot of time researching regional beer styles, and has even teamed up with archaeologists to remake some beers that haven't been made in thousands of years. They make a beer called "Midas Touch" which is somewhere between beer, wine, and mead. It's made from a recipe that was found in what is believed to be King Midas's tomb. They make a beer called Theobroma, which is based on the ancient Maya's alcoholic beverage containing chocolate and chili-peppers. I haven't been able to get my hands on that beer yet, but when I do... I'm going to have a F*CKING mangasm. Dogfish's beer is pretty expensive, though, so if you're trying to drink good beer on the cheap, I'd go with Sam Adams. Be warned, though, because generally you get what you pay for. Dogfish puts quality first, and that's something that the "big 3" can't say.

So, to sum this up, I've prepared a list of steps for you to take in order to start being a "beer nerd."

• Start drinking local. Don't buy Budweiser/Miller/Coors products. It'll suck at first, if you're used to it, but I've been on a craft beer kick for a while and, trust me, you'll move on to bigger and better things.
• If you have wine with dinner, replace it with beer. There are several awesome food/beer pairings you can make that are much, much better than wine. Do a little googling on what you're going to eat and find a beer style that matches it. Beer has thousands more identifiable flavors than wine. Remember, science has proven that beer is a much more complex and sophisticated beverage.
• Find your local bars that cater to people who drink good beer. Stop going to the place that only has three taps and they're red, blue, and silver.
• Find a local store that sells 100+ different types of beer. I live about 2 miles away from one, and I'm extremely glad I do. Talk to their beer purchaser. Find out what's new, what's interesting, and what's hot. Generally, their purchaser is going to be a huge beer nerd, and would love nothing more than to talk to you about beer and teach you about its glory.
• Every time you go to the store to buy beer, get something you haven't had before. If you don't like it, drink it anyway. One of two things will happen: 1) You'll actually appreciate the complexity of the beer and it'll grow on you, or 2) You'll learn a lot about what you don't like in a beer.
• Read the labels of craft beer. They say a lot of interesting things about the beer; a lot of them include what type of hops they have, or what sort of malt they're using. Use that information to help you select beers that fit your tastes. I know that I personally F*CKING LOVE cascade hops, so I drink a lot of beer with cascade hops. Good brewers generally provide enough reading material on their bottle for you to make an educated decision on what you want to drink.

Awesome primer, gman. I'm blessed to live in craft beer country and have a really nice walk-in cooler at my local grocery store full of it.

In my experience with beer I have come to the conclusion there are a few companies that will never dissapoint me. I have started a beer club with a small group of friends and we have been doing this for almost two years now. We pick up a variety of non-domesticated beers every Monday and swap our beers around to try new things. I have tasted ALOT of beer in the past two years. These companies have never really let me down in those beer moments.

1. Dogfish Head
2. Lagunitas
3. Rogue
4. Bells
5. Weyerbacher
6. Boston
7. Sam Smith
8. Stone
9. Left Hand
10. Sierra Nevada
11. Terrapin
12. Full Sail
13. Great Divide

In my passion and quest for beer I have come to the conlcusion that I am a hop head. Love the piny ass kicking flavor of a good super hopped Double Imperial IPA.

Recent IPA tries that I have loved.

1. Stone Double Bastard
2. Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere
3. Lagunitas Lil Lil Sumfin Extra

There are alot of choices in the beer world these days that are outside of the box of is it regular or light beer. You have lagers, porters, stouts, wheats, pale ales, india pale ales, and bocks. You just have to find the one type that characterizes your pallet. You may like the nice chocolate/coffee undertones compared to the super pine hops beers. Beer is a great thing. Enjoy it, love it, experiment with it, and never be afraid to try something new. You may just miss out on something amazing.

Nice beginner's guide Gman. I would like to get into less known beers but don't have any idea where to start. So far the extent of my project has been trying a new beer every time I go to a bar..haha. I think I'm gonna research some beer shit tonight.

I wish you could get your hands on some beer from Quebec. There's some pretty good beer brewed up here!

L1ve, have you tried Stone Ruination IPA? That's a F*CKING RIDICULOUS pale. Sierra Nevada's Anniversary Ale this year was also a really good pale -- I don't know if you can still find it in stores, though.

I've always been a malt guy, until about 6 months or so ago. I've started drinking a lot more pales. F*CKIN' love those cascades.

Also, do you homebrew? If not, you should seriously get into it.

I haven't tried either of those..don't even think I've seen them here before! I'm gonna look into those though , thanks.

You know, I thought about homebrewing, but didn't know where to start. Seems like a HUGE learning curve, am I right?

I been supporting my local beers which taste way better than the craps like Bud light, Miller, etc. I also find that you get better values with your money when you're buying local beers because you would usually get it in huge mug compare to the bottles.

It helps if you know someone who lives nearby who brews... that way you can have 'em walk you through the process a few times (basically help 'em out with the whole thing) and then you can get your own ingredients to make your own batch on their equipment, and then get your own equipment and start doing it by yourself.

I have actually been spinning the idea of brewing in my head. There are two guys I work with who are really my co-partners in crime for this beer club and I that are interested in starting to brew some beer. We have the location, the tools for supplies, and someone with some knowledge. Shit we even came up a name for our company if we got it off the ground. If you ever stumble across a company called "The bearded Brothers" then you know its going to be good.

On the Ruination and Anniversary Ale. Yes to both. Ruination was one of the first Stone beers we tried along with the Smoked Porter and Russian Imperial Stout. The Anniversary we actually picked up a couple weeks ago for a beer night. I drank the last one of those floating in the collection tonite.

If your looking for some bone cracking pales and you thought those were both decent I would try a Dogfish Head 120 Minute IPA, Sierra Nevada Southern Hemisphere, Bells HopSlam, and Stones Double Bastard Imperial IPA. You wont be dissapointed.

L1ve, if you ever want to have a brew day and feel like spending the night here, grab your buddies and head for Ft Myers, FL. I've got a good inventory of brew here, bottling equipment, kegging equipment, all-grain equipment, etc. so we could have a class here in brewing and make a batch or two.

Personally, I'm into stouts these days big time. Store items I like include:
Old Rasputin Imperial Stout
Young's Double Chocolate Stout
Left Hand Brewing Milk Stout
Samuel Smith's Oatmeal Stout
Guiness, of course
We have a place here called "Total Wine" that has a shitload of beers to choose from. Great for experimenting because they have a "create a 6 pack" option for sampling stuff.

In house homebrews:
Hefeweizen and Dunkelweizen on tap in the pool room right now.

Apple wine kegged, aged 9 months, carbonated, and ready to be bottled.

Cranberry mead - in the secondary fermenter for several months now. Ready to be bottled.

10 gallons of oatmeal creame stout ready to be kegged.

Last night I ordered ingredient kits for a blueberry chocolate stout and a milk chocolate stout.

If any of you ever get to SW Florida (and you're legal age to drink) send me a PM and we'll have a cold one.

my brother works at this brewery in denver :)

Victory Stormking.



That's right, bitches.

I made mead one time. I didn't like it overly much...

When it comes to beer, though, me and Corpse have something in common. I LOVE stouts and dark beers. Dark beers just have that thickness, flavor and fullness that I'm looking for in beer.

My top 3:

Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale/ Oatmeal Stout
Smithwick's
Yeungling Black and Tan

I've never tried a milk stout, but I like dairy in anything. I cant stand Hefewiezen and other wheat-heavy beers and pale ales (with the exception of spiced ones that pass my taste test). They just taste overly thin, bitter and unpleasant. All American beers with the exception of Yeungling's Black and Tan are just carbonated hops water, IMHO.

Damn, I could go on all night about this...

Give me three years and I'll probably take you up on that.

I may just take you up on that offer Corpse. I enjoy a good educational field trip that involves a few good tasty brews. Sounds to me you have a pretty good stock of different things going on. I like what you have in your mix for production pieces. Your stout selections are all very tasty as well. Old Rasputin was a killer when I first had it and the Milk Stout was so good I contemplated putting it into a bowl of chocolate flavored cereal one morning for breakfast instead of milk.

LOL A friend of mine actually ate a bowl of Frosted Flakes with a 40oz of Schlitz instead of milk on a dare.

i heard pabst was a good beer

Edit: Trolling aside, I hear the hottest new thing in beer is...well, SPACE BEER!!

http://www.physorg.com/news179390061.html