Posted on 06/07/2024 3:36:54 AM PDT by Libloather
The best beers in the world are easier to get than ever before. Forty years ago, customers strolling through grocery stores would only find endless variations on the easy-drinking domestic lager. Care for a Busch? Miller High Life? Bud Light? If you were lucky, you might find an imported Irish beer like Guinness, a beach-y Mexican beer such as Corona, or perhaps even Foster’s, that Australian beer sold in the oversized can.
Today’s hopheads can pick from tens of thousands of the best beers that deliver every conceivable flavor and alcohol level. Hazy double IPAs are now sold alongside zippy pickle beers, prickly pilsners, fruity sour ales, and smooth-drinking hefeweizens. Beers like Allagash's White, Russian River’s Pliny the Elder, and Bell’s Brewery’s Two Hearted have become beloved classics occupying permanent perches in fridges far and wide.
Craft beer is now so mainstream that excellent IPAs are sold most everywhere, from 7-Eleven to Applebee’s and even college football stadiums. Despite the ubiquity, the beer industry has had a rough couple years, facing fierce competition from hard teas and seltzers, canned cocktails, and newly legal cannabis beverages and edibles. In 2023, store sales of craft beer slid nearly one percent while volumes declined 4.4 percent according to data from Circana, a Chicago-based market research firm.
While some breweries have shuttered, many breweries are thriving and continuing to produce beers that, to rise above the competition, are better than ever. New trends include craft breweries embracing pilsners and easy-drinking lagers, revamping the cleanly bitter west coast IPA, and creating compelling nonalcoholic beers and sparkling hop waters.
But after plenty of research—and, uh, drinking—we’ve settled on a ranked list of the top 50 best beers that are readily available.
(Excerpt) Read more at mensjournal.com ...
Hard to beat Blatz, back in the day, for the price.
As to this list... not subjective and arbitrary, are we?
Now they're gone. Replaced by the standard Bud, Miller's, and Michelob, with the occasional Guinness thrown in.
I now stick to the wine (good selection there!)...
Good to see my favorites on the list, Guiness #1 and Black Butte Porter #26. I’m not really into IPAs but I just might give Sierra Nevada #2 a try.
I bought that beer while stationed at Ft. Bragg.
My favorite beer is Yuengling, an old classic PA beer.
The one quibble is best Christmas ale. There is another brewery from NE Ohio with a better one--Thirsty Dog.
Gennie Cream Ale? That brings back some memories and headaches.
Thanks for posting. I’ve got No Rules, Zombie Dust., 2-Hearted and Heady Topper in the fridge. Pliny the Elder I’ve had as well as Guinness, KBS and several others on the list. A whole lot of good beers. My favorite is Heady Topper. 2nd favorite is Pliny the Elder. I have an occasional beer once or twice a week. I don’t drink as many as I used to.
I consider independent craft brewing a great example of CAPITALISM.
It’s draft-brewed Blatz beer, wherever you go!
Smoother and fresher, less filling, that’s clear,
Blatz is Milwaukee’s finest beer.
When my sister lived in Milwaukee used to get Blatz fresh from the brewery in recycled bar bottles. I remember it very fondly.
My favorite hot weather beer was South Australia’s Black Swann Lager, sadly never available in the US and I believe they were scooped up by a conglomerate. Most of the great Aussie Beers never left the country and are only available as exports made at contracting breweries around the world. Miss things like XXXX, Black Swann, Southwick Bitter.
The US has come a long way in the past 40 years. In the 1980’s I was in college (drinking age 18 circa 1984) and the choices were big factory beers, or Imports. And the Imports were nothing more than European big factory beers.
But I was in college. My brand was “Cheap”.
I was shocked that Genny Cream made the list. One of the cheapest beer buzzes of my youth. Problem was always getting the Genny Squirts afterword.
Oh, man. A tumbler of a good bourbon will sooth the sole. Well, mine anyway. Also enjoy a good cold beer on a hot day.
Around 40 years ago, I could buy a case of Yuengling for a ridiculous price, don’t remember exactly how much, except it was half the price of Millers. Probably due to the brewery’s location, it was only an hour away. Nowadays I enjoy wheat beers.
....”..or perhaps even Foster’s, that Australian beer sold in the oversized can.”...
If I am not mistaken, Foster’s, while nominally an Australian beer, is now brewed in America....hardly any “Australian beer”.....
...boy, does it ever!!! grew up in Upstate New York and always enjoyed Gennie Cream Ale.....anybody remember Utica Club? that was popular as well....
In the Northwest, Beer was brewed by the General Brewing Company, makers of Lucky Lager, a fine cheap beer in its own right that also had rebus puzzles inside the caps.
The cheapest beer I remember was Bohemia, which I think was Blitz Weinhard’s budget brand, at $.39 a quart or $.89 a sixpack in the early ‘70s. The last $5.00 24-pack I got was Heidelberg, around 1983 or so.
I drank a lot of Rainier Ale in college in the 1980s. 6% alcohol, and cheaper than Bud.
Blatz was a Heileman’s beer brewed in LaCrosse WI back in the day along with Old Style and Special Export
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