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So I'm out here in Spain on business. It's absolutely beautiful, but the work is pretty damn tough, at least when you have to work when you get back to the hotel to summarize the days events.

So after going out at like 8 or 9PM, when all the restaurants open up again, I try to get some Beer with the guys I'm here with.

Except they all drink Panda Piss, or rather, beer you can see through.

WTF? I thought Europe was the land of good Stout and dark beer. I guess Spain doesn't have the good stuff. Luckily I found an Irish Pub with Guinness and Murphy's that we're going to hit tomorrow. So much for finding a good local stout brewed close by.

Still, it's kind of sad that to get a Stout I have to go to the stuff I can get easily back home in the US. Maybe it'll be better here since it won't have to travel as far (hopefully).

Sad, I keep on trying at every bar: "Servesas Negras?" "No."

What's a beer drinker to do?

Spain and France are countries were you get some good wine. Franconia is were you get all the good stuff ^^.

I'm not educated in wine. I have no idea what all the different types represent. All I know is to have Red wine with meat and white with fish or pasta, and besides that it either tastes like fruit punch or it tastes great.

Beer is where it's at. Oh to find a good Stout. I need get our business development guys to sell something to Ireland.

(Disclaimer; I am not from Europe)

You're in the wrong part of Europe. France/Spain/Portugal/Greece/Italy etc are more wine and light (coloured) beer producers, for dark beers you want Germany, Denmark, Poland and places like that. You may be able to pick up Continental European dark beers in Spain, but you'd probably have to look for something German.

Hth,

Viperion

Nowhere outside of the British Isles knows how to brew a good dark beer. All of Europe is full of piss-drinking lager louts!

To get a flavourful beer that's a decent colour and best served at ambient temperatures you need to come over to the land of mist and fog!

(Qualify that to say that the Mexican "Dos Equis" isn't total piss, but pretty much everything in Mainland Europe is lager-related.)

If you want a decent beer in those parts of Europe where sunshine is overly prevalent, rather than on our rain-soaked shores, then hunt out a decent "Wheat" or "White" beer. They tend have a bit more flavour than the drippings of a donkey's pizzle you usually get served up in continental bars.

Whether you can find any in the land of sand, sun and sangria though beats me. I've never been there!

Germany, Britain and arguably Belgium are the premier beer producers of Europe.

Germany has a range of beers from traditional lagers to dunkel (dark) brews and the famous, light, wheat beer sometimes called the champagne of the north.

Belgium is famous for its variety of fruit flavoured beers.

The UK is best known for the range of milds, bitters and stouts as well as continental style lagers. British beer is traditionally more heavily hopped than continental brews.

The Czech Republic has become a major producer of foreign lagers for export, for example brewing Asahi. They have their own traditional pilsners which are most acceptable.

Mostly I drink ales from Britain or lagers from Eastern Europe. Sometimes I will buy German lager. My favourite atm is "Fursty Ferret". It's pretty weak at 4.5% but it tastes damn fine.

I can't stand beer or wine, however when I was on a vacation in Greece some of the places I went had lots of beers I never heard of, most of them were Belgian or Bavarian but there was one greek lager that a friend said was very good.. of course I can't remember the name. But mostly they just had Uzo.. that stuff tastes about as good as a bottle of Nyquil

lol here is a pretty good representation of my drinking habits. I used to drink a fair amount of vodka on weekend nights out but I generally stick to beer now. There's no sun through this North facing window at this time of year so they are perfectly safe here The stuff on the left is generic German stuff that I drink a bit of. It will of course have to be super chilled before it is acceptable for consumption. The stuff on the right is lager from the Czech rep. or somewhere similar. I've never had it before, but I imagine that it will taste very good when it's chilled, this type of stuff usually does. The two bottles in the middle are among my favourite varieties. I'll probably put them in the fridge for 15-30 minutes before I drink them.

Belgium has, by far, much better beer than any other country I have ever spent time in (basically all of Old Europe, UK, Ireland, US, Aus, Mexico). The variety is dumdfounding and the flavor almost universally great yet unique. Of course it is my personal opinion, but Grimbergen, Leffe (Blonde and Bruin) and Hoegaarten are all great yet different from each other. You can find them all in the US as well if you go to a specialty beer shop (most bigger cities have several).

hehe .. bored at work and had to do some googleing.. here's that greek beer. Mythos. It wasn't bad I guess, but I'm far from a beer connoisseur, most of it all tastes the same to me...

http://www.mythosbrewery.gr/index.asp?c=37

Necros wrote:hehe .. bored at work and had to do some googleing.. here's that greek beer. Mythos. It wasn't bad I guess, but I'm far from a beer connoisseur, most of it all tastes the same to me...

http://www.mythosbrewery.gr/index.asp?c=37

Haha...Mythos. I drank a lot of Mythos on my honeymoon in Greece. It's nothing special, really...pretty similar to Heineken, IIRC. But it comes in big bottles and is fairly inexpensive. And quantity has its own quality.

Hard to go wrong with Belgian and Czech beers, I think.

I have to pipe up in defense of the beers of my current adopted homeland, the Pacific Northwest of the United States. We have an absurd number of small brewers here. I haven't tasted anything quite as good as what you can get in the British Isles, but our perpetually overcast, rainy weather seems to be doing us some good.

I dunno why some guys got such a knowledge how donkey piss tastes.

There are some very good micro beers from the USA, it's the larger breweries who mainly produce "cooking" lager in industrial quantities.

Britain scores with a good variety of decent sized independent regional breweries such as Shepherd's Neame, Fullers, Youngs and Greene King. There are of course a number of large companies, most of them probably owned by Interbrew or another mega-corp; not all the beers these companies produce are rubbish since some of them are ex-micro brews that have sold out (e.g. Old Peculier.)

Many British pubs still keep proper cellars and hand-pump their pints. This makes a big difference to the taste and texture. There is also a very good variety of bottled beers. You will find the same beer is quite different from the cask to the bottle.

Fyi Mr Jazz, Carlsberg isn't German, but Danish, and hardly a generic brand, but rather a very good Danish beer. I can recommend Tuborg Green, as another mighty fine Danish beer. It has a slightly lower alcohol percentage, which IMHO rather enhances the full bodied taste.

I can concur that Leffe is a splendid example of the Belgian Abbey Beer. If you can get hold of it, Mr Voodo, I strongly recommend you to try it. Since you seem to be into darker beer, I guess that you will enjoy it. All in all, both the Abbey beers, and the Trappist Beers from Belgium, and the single Dutch one, are very characteristic.

Furthermore, if you manage to find a pub dedicated to selling premium imported beer, you should be able to find all sorts of dark berr, not only from the British Isles. For example, there is the Bavarian Dunkel, from Germany, the name simply meaning Bavarian Dark. Both Germany and Austria have "Märtzen" which is dark, although not as dark as stout. It is a strong rumbustious beer, usually timed to be fully matured to the Octoberfest in Munich, Germany. Also, there are Schwarzbier (Böack beer) and you really should try Porter, even though it isn't a dark beer in the traditional sense.

I would like to advertise the Chech Pilsner as well. It very much epitomises the Chiechian type of beer. You shouldn't have any trouble finding a decent pilsner at a well sorted pub. It is a lager, but very aromatic and quite hoppy, with a dry finish. And do buy the Chech pilsner, and not the German kinds. Germany has so much other great beer, that they shouldn't really have to try to make pilsner as well.

Cheers!

Symbio Joe wrote:I dunno why some guys got such a knowledge how donkey piss tastes.

Panda piss. They don't call it liquid gold for nothing, you know!

Kilkrazy wrote:

Britain scores with a good variety of decent sized independent regional breweries such as Shepherd's Neame, Fullers, Youngs and Greene King. There are of course a number of large companies, most of them probably owned by Interbrew or another mega-corp; not all the beers these companies produce are rubbish since some of them are ex-micro brews that have sold out (e.g. Old Peculier.)

Many British pubs still keep proper cellars and hand-pump their pints. This makes a big difference to the taste and texture. There is also a very good variety of bottled beers. You will find the same beer is quite different from the cask to the bottle.

I quite like Old Peculiar. The list of the Ales I buy is as long as your arm, but definately sometimes Old Peculiar. You're right about cask though. There's a good bar in Newcastle called Bacchus or something (Greek God of drink?) that sells a lot of nice ones from the tap. It's awesome, I wish I could live above it.

Tyfe wrote:Fyi Mr Jazz, Carlsberg isn't German, but Danish, and hardly a generic brand, but rather a very good Danish beer. I can recommend Tuborg Green, as another mighty fine Danish beer. It has a slightly lower alcohol percentage, which IMHO rather enhances the full bodied taste.

Ah well, I wouldn't go as far as to say "very good", but different tastes for different people. It's the beer I probably drink most consistently though, it's definately a good beer to buy in crates.

All of those fancy beers are a waste of money, IMHO. The only beer for a real man is XXX Bitter, sold here in Brisbane Aus.

As soon as I run into a real man i will give you his opinion. lol

I like Old Peculier as well. It is a decent beer. In the early 80s it was from an independent brewer and they sold out to Scottish and Newcastle or someone big. Fortunately, the big brewer seems to have kept up the quality and character of the beer. (Not much point buying it otherwise, unless you just want to close it down.)

We have alot of bitters in Australia with VB and XXXX being the most popular.

I prefer coronas as they are widely available and very light on the stomach whereas the bitters really leave you feeling bloated.

When I was in the US I sampled a range of brews and my favorite, far and away was Coors light, refreshing and tasted great.

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:When I was in the US I sampled a range of brews and my favorite, far and away was Coors light, refreshing and tasted great.

Really? Or are you being sarcastic?

gorgon wrote:

Waaagh_Gonads wrote:When I was in the US I sampled a range of brews and my favorite, far and away was Coors light, refreshing and tasted great.

Really? Or are you being sarcastic?

I agree. Light beers are for gheys. Surely this is a joke on the part of Gonads.

Well, it's obvious that someone is drinking Coors Light, as a hulluva lot of it gets drunk per annum, right? It's definitely below my preferred quality threshold, though.

Pariah Press wrote: Well, it's obvious that someone is drinking Coors Light, as a hulluva lot of it gets drunk per annum, right? It's definitely below my preferred quality threshold, though.

Yeah, but 51% of people have breasts. They all drink Coors light, that's why it's so popular.

On my couple of trips to the US I drank mainly wine and cocktails (or tequila) so my experience of American beers is limited to the bottled variety available on so-called import. (That is to say, brewed under licence in the Czech Republic these days.)

Coors, Michelob and Budweiser are all inoffensive, refreshing if served cold but somewhat lacking in flavour in my opinion. is probably my favourite of those. Anchor from San Francisco has more to recommend it.

Now, on to a brief criticism of Japanese beer.

Everyone probably knows Asahi Superdry and Sapporo Black Label. Kirin is also available in the UK -- all these are brewed under licence in Czech these days. My favourite of these is Black Label, which is quite a German style lager with some hopping while the other two are basically filtered beers and as near tasteless as you can get especially when served chilled.

In Japan the big brewers put out a range of beers including dark and "red" varieties which are interesting. Dark is generally a light porter style or perhaps similar to German Dunkel beer. Red is pretty strange, I don't know how they make it red but basically tastes like a strong lager. There are also varieties with special hopping ("Hops!" all malt (Malts!) (no maize or rice in the mash) and some white beers. None of them are really distinctive. All tend to go well with salty foods and hot weather.

Beer is very cheap in supermarkets but usually expensive in restaurants and bars and they have no concept of the "full measure". In fact it is considered stylish to put a deep foam head on it. The Japanese often drink beer out of quite small glasses containing about 200ml, refilled from a large bottle. I rather like that style.

I think you're all nuts.

I've tasted quite a few different beers in my life... and every one made me want to vomit.

Then again, consider the source... my preferred drink is tequila without the wussy lime and salt.



Eric

MagickalMemories wrote:
Then again, consider the source... my preferred drink is tequila without the wussy lime and salt.



Eric

Pffft, Tequila is a woman's drink. Real men drink Mezcal.

But do you eat the Worm???

Dice Monkey wrote:Pffft, Tequila is a woman's drink. Real men drink Mezcal.

As a matter of fact, that's what I cut my Tequila teeth on.

See, I RARELY ever drink anymore (once or twice a YEAR)... and only a fraction of THOSE times do I have access to Mezcal.


...but that's what I started on... at Potter's Pub in Richmond, VA about 12 years ago... when it was closer to being a real pub.

...and, Sorry. I do not "do" worms.
I draw the line there.

I'll never eat the worm unless I'm on Survivor... and, unfortunately, I don't think that'll be the same thing.


LOL


Eric