O
Oberon
Guest
You're familiar with the three-letter beer designation IPA, right? It stands for India Pale Ale. Well, a friend of mine and I have coined a term for a uniquely American style of beer... APW.
It stands for American Piss Water, and thank Heaven it is a style that appears to be on the wane in the US. In the APW class you can find all the classic US "premium" lagers such as the archetypal Budweiser, Coors, Miller, Stroh's, Pabst, and so on... essentially anything marketed by Anheuser Busch, Miller Brewing, the Molson Coors Company, or any of their subsidiaries, to include "lite" beers, "ice" beers, malt liquors, and so on.
Thankfully, in the last decade Americans have rediscovered the kind of local brewing that was the rule rather than the exception back before Prohibition did away with all but the very largest of the regional brewers. The resurgence of local brewing gave rise to the brewpub (a pub where the beer is brewed on the premises and served in draft form) and the microbrew (a beer that is brewed and marketed on a very small scale).
The increasing popularity of microbrews has allowed certain local breweries to expand to the point where they can compete for national market share; an early example of this was the Samuel Adams company, whose Boston Lager still stands head and shoulders above its "premium" beer competition. Other breweries whose products are worthy of recognition are Sierra Nevada, Victory Brewing, Dogfish Head, and the Brooklyn Brewing Company.
At present the US brewing renaissance is well under way, with websites such as BeerAdvocate.com and ratebeer.com acting as clearing houses for information on new breweries and new products. It is arguable that the United States has one of the most exciting brewing scenes in the world, and is producing beers that rate the full equal of anything out of the time-hallowed breweries of Europe.
My personal favorite? Storm King Imperial Stout, by Victory. This is the kind of beer that one is enough, and it takes all evening to finish. There's more flavor in one Victory Storm King than in an entire six-pack of some lesser beers... and that's a good thing.
It stands for American Piss Water, and thank Heaven it is a style that appears to be on the wane in the US. In the APW class you can find all the classic US "premium" lagers such as the archetypal Budweiser, Coors, Miller, Stroh's, Pabst, and so on... essentially anything marketed by Anheuser Busch, Miller Brewing, the Molson Coors Company, or any of their subsidiaries, to include "lite" beers, "ice" beers, malt liquors, and so on.
Thankfully, in the last decade Americans have rediscovered the kind of local brewing that was the rule rather than the exception back before Prohibition did away with all but the very largest of the regional brewers. The resurgence of local brewing gave rise to the brewpub (a pub where the beer is brewed on the premises and served in draft form) and the microbrew (a beer that is brewed and marketed on a very small scale).
The increasing popularity of microbrews has allowed certain local breweries to expand to the point where they can compete for national market share; an early example of this was the Samuel Adams company, whose Boston Lager still stands head and shoulders above its "premium" beer competition. Other breweries whose products are worthy of recognition are Sierra Nevada, Victory Brewing, Dogfish Head, and the Brooklyn Brewing Company.
At present the US brewing renaissance is well under way, with websites such as BeerAdvocate.com and ratebeer.com acting as clearing houses for information on new breweries and new products. It is arguable that the United States has one of the most exciting brewing scenes in the world, and is producing beers that rate the full equal of anything out of the time-hallowed breweries of Europe.
My personal favorite? Storm King Imperial Stout, by Victory. This is the kind of beer that one is enough, and it takes all evening to finish. There's more flavor in one Victory Storm King than in an entire six-pack of some lesser beers... and that's a good thing.
