Favorite beer

  1. Krombacher Radler: When its hot outside, who doesn’t love lemonade mixed with wheat beer? Too bad nobody imports it.

  2. Augustiner Helles: Have I mentioned that most good beer is brewed in Bavaria?

  3. Guinness: Wish could just get it on tap out west without it being skunky.

  4. Great Lakes Black Out Stout: The name says it all. Don’t know if they still make it, but when you’re in Cleveland, at least see what people do during the winter by drinking two four packs of this.

  5. Fat Tire: Problem with this beer is you feel like you ate a tire after drinking it. But it tastes SCRUMPTUOUS!

Cheapest beer or whatever is left over from the girls that can’t finish the beer they buy.

Hoegarden

[QUOTE=cakewalk5;178985]5. Fat Tire: Problem with this beer is you feel like you ate a tire after drinking it. But it tastes SCRUMPTUOUS![/QUOTE]

Fat Tire made my list too. I often drink it at altitudes of over 7000 feet, so it’s hard to tell if it’s the altitude or the beer that causes that feeling.

Schlitz and unlike other posters, this is no joke.

I do brew my own and have had great success. I had a case of blind beginner’s luck and would have put my first batch up against the best amber ales on the market.

All of the horror stories that I have heard are a result of people not following directions or cutting corners. You have to sanitize everything from the utensils to the bottles or your beer will be skunked by bacteria and/or wild yeast. You also have to leave an inch of “head” or space in the top of the bottle to allow the beer to expand from a brief final fermentation in the bottle (creates carbonation). If you fill to the top, you will have a mess in your basement or closet.

The follwing address is a place I stumbled into on a sub-freezing night in Portsmouth, NH when I was trying to dodge out of the cold. I had always toyed with the idea of brewing my own and the owner convinced me it was easy and he could sell me an equipment kit, ingredient pack and instruction/recipe book for about $70. The only other things that you need are three cases of longneck non-screwtop bottles, a very big canning or lobster pot for cooking the mash (wort) and one of those kitchen splatter guard screens with a handle (I use it to filter the beer through to remove the hops when pouring mash into the fermenting bucket (it clogs quickly so you need a second set of hands to keep the sterilized screen clear of hops with a sterilized spatula).

http://www.stoutbillys.com/

Better Brew Equipment Kit $41.95 Each
Tugboat Amber Ale $20.45 Each

One ingredient kit makes 9 to 10 six-packs of premium beer, so if you do the math ($6.99 to $7.99 a six in CT), the whole rig pays for itself very quickly. Stout Billy’s kits come with explicit instructions and enough caps to bottle all of the beer.

You don’t have to go with Stout Billy’s and you may have a local shop that could use your business. They just do it right and think of everything. There are a lot of bad beer kits in a can that should be avoided. SB’s kits include separate malts, yeasts, hops (sometimes multiple varieties for bitterness, flavor and aroma depending on the complexity of the kit) caps, priming sugar (for final fermentation in the bottle), and special ingredients such as water softening crystals, Irish Moss, and grain packs for the more complex kits.

Forgive my ramblings but the topic exites me.

A few final tips.

Get three cases of Anheuser Busch longneck bar bottles from your local bar for each beer kit you plan to make, if you can. They come in a hard cardboard case with a hinged top that will last forever and these bottles have water soluble glue that lets the labels fall off in hot water so that the bottle can be refilled at the bottling plant. Store bought bottles almost never come clean.

Don’t rush. Take the time to sanitize every item that touches beer throughout the process. It takes about two hours to prep, brew the mash, start the fermentation
and clean up. Do it on a day when you can open the windows as the mash can be pretty wicked for some people.

Cover the whole stove top with foil if you do not have a ceramic top. Use a really big pot that is twice what you think you will need. The mash can rise and fall like crazy in the pot until you get the temperature right and a typical 4-5 quart stock pot or dutch oven will boil over for sure and cover your stove with mash. Plan to stay at the stove for the hour it takes to add all the ingredients and cook them properly.

When the hour of cooking is up, have a clean sink that you can immerse the pot in and turn on the cold water to cool the pot down in a hurry. If it cooks as much as a minute too long with some recipes, you can lose the flavor and aroma of the final one or two hops and turn the beer extra bitter.

Don’t rush the fermenting. The recipe will tell you how to judge when it is ready. The second fermenting in the bottle is very brief but the beer is not ready to drink for about a month. Don’t cheat here or you will be disappointed with the results. The beer has to age in the bottle.

Invest in a bottle washing spiggot that screws onto your kitchen tap if the head of your faucet screws off. My newest sink unfortunately does not. It lets you push a bottle, opening downward, on the top of the faucet to activate a jet of hot water to rinse the inside of the bottle and simultaneously drain into the sink. You still have to sanitize the bottles afterward. I stack them upside down after washing and sanitizing (two steps) in an open dishwasher that has been run empty and sealed until used. Use the bottles immediately. I also boil the caps prior to capping.

Split the cost of everything with a friend and share the experience and beer. Capping works best with a two-person assembly line and an extra set of hands in the beginning will also be much appreciated.

Find a cool dark place to store the bottles until you are ready to drink. Your beer will not be pasteurized and will eventually spoil in a few months so don’t get too carried away making multiple kits unless you are a fish.

Pour your beer VERY slowly and leave the bottom 1/4 to 1/2 inch in the bottle as there will be a gray layer of yeast at the bottom of every bottle.

I know this all sounds like a pain in the ass but it is only a three hour total investment in time for one person (less for two) and the satisfaction of drinking a full-bodied quality beer that you and your buddy made yourselves is worth it. For me, it ranks second in satisfaction to seeing a trout leap out of the Farmington River to grab a fly in mid-air that I hand-tied and effectively cast. Once you’ve tried a few of the simple kits like the one I suggested above, you can take on one of the trickier kits like an octoberfest or porter.

When I don’t have time to brew my own, I prefer the following.

  1. Bass Ale
  2. New Castle Brown Ale
  3. John Courage
  4. Flying Dog Old Scratch Amber (notice a theme here)
  5. Yuengling Traditional Lager

I’m not a hophead so I shy away from the IPAs, but I don’t like mass-appeal horse piss either. I obviously tend towards the smooth ambers.

Pabst Blue Ribbon.

I like Yengling a lot.

Here’s the one beer I can’t stand: Tequiza. It’s friggin aweful. It’s like fermented sprite mixed with carbonated water. I don’t even know why it’s called beer. If anyone on this board likes it, I recommend the mods ban you.

  1. Newcastle
  2. Schneider Weiss
  3. Xingu
  4. Dos Equis
  5. Red Oak Amber
  6. Fullers London Porter
  7. Anchor Steam

Worst beer ever: Rolling Rock. I’ve never drank horse piss but if I had to guess what it taste like, I’m thinking Rolling Rock is pretty close. Behind that is Budweiser and the obvious cheap malts.

[QUOTE=49erWhit;178987]Hoegarden[/QUOTE]

This would be my #1

I think we witnessed one of the greatest posts ever. I think you should all pause and reflect on it for a while.

I brewed a few batches back when I was at UNCC… There is a nice brew shop in southend that has all the stuff you need. If your planning on making a hobby of it i’d recomend investing in a kegging system… its a pain in the ass to clean, sanitize and fill 3 cases of beer. Also I’d go with the “all grain” style brewing rather than the “DME” Dry Malt Extract… much better quality but does require some bigger equipment.

I’d have to say my favorite beers are in no particular order:

  • Fat Tire - avaliable only in 7 western states (brewed in Colorado)
  • Sam Adams Boston Lager
  • Shipyard IPA (Portland Maine)
  • Endo IPA (Boone)
  • Arogant Bastard (IPA from California- about 10% Alc. by volume)
  • Kona- Firerock Ale (Hawaii—This is some good $hit…nice fruity flowery taste)
  • Carl Strass (San Diego)
  • Sierra Nevada (California)

Harps
Redhook Winterbrew
Redhook ESP
Dos Equis
Any of the brewery Ambers

the new coors is good

  1. Sam Adams (too many different ones to list…but NEARLY all are good)
  2. Guiness (provided it’s NOT served ice cold)
  3. Sierra Nevada Pale Ale
  4. Bass Ale
  5. Budweiser (on tap)…never really believed the “Born On Date” propogada, but after sampling fresh Bud at the brewery & doing my own testing of the “Born On Date”, I’ve found it be much better if I consume it within 45 days of its birth…anything longer & the quality degrades quickly.

Honorable mention - Yengling…respectable (not great, but drinkable) beer for the price at a ballpark in the summer.

Additional notes:

Highland Gaelic Ale- not a favorite, but it was one of the few highlights of my last trip to Asheville.

I’ve homebrewed (been a few years) but you need to be patient and not cut any corners in the process.

Phalers choice is obvious

  1. Zima…clear, crisp, bold
  2. Near Beer…all about the flava
  3. Milwaukee’s Best Lite Ice…the “Cadillac” of Beer

True story, was in a small convenience store in Tsim Sha Tsui, Hong Kong a couple weeks ago looking for some fizzy refreshments…my choices were limited but here’s what I had to choose from.
Tsing Tao - for a chinese beer it’s not too bad
Tiger - i wouldn’t if i were you…
San Miguel - phillipino and perhaps one of the best beers i’ve ever had

and here’s the interesting one…

Pabst Blue Ribbon.

All the beer being sold was in liter form (no 6-packs over there, just a bunch of little asians walking around with 40’s)

My list:

  1. Guinness - luckily on draft in HK!!
  2. Yuengling - I’m going to miss this stuff
  3. San Miguel - This will almost make up for the Yuengling
  4. Sam Adams Spring Ale - have to time trips back
  5. Bud Light - not so much for the taste, but for the sheer fact that this is one of the things that will remind me of home.

[QUOTE=Threemire09;178986]Cheapest beer or whatever is left over from the girls that can’t finish the beer they buy.[/QUOTE]

lol best reply yet. well, besides all the others who chose Yummyling as their number one

My old stand is Carolina Pale Ale (CPA) brewed by the Carolina Brewing Co. in Holly Springs. Its in about every bar/restaurant in the RDU area.

Other good ones… Fat Tire, Mac&Jacks(Seattle area), Alaskan Amber (West coast), Pyramid Heifweizen (perhaps just because of the beer garden at the brewery across the st form Safeco Field on gamedays)

Anyone care for that Palmetto Amber down in SC? It didnt work for me.