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 ...
I had three on the list: Bell’s Two Hearted IPA, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale and the old grand pappy, the World Champ since 1840, Guiness!
Guinness is the only beer that tastes as good (better) from a can than the bottle. The can has the nitrogen release ball that actually works and makes a noticeable improvement.
Draught is still king.
According to Wikipedia, Pabst is currently brewing Rainier beer in Irwindale, CA, and shipped more in 2023 than any year since they bought Rainier in 1999.
I moved from Oregon to Arizona in 1985. I don’t know if Rainier is sold here, but I haven’t looked for it either. Maybe I will next time I go to the store.
I have 0 beers logged from this brewery. Shame on me, their brews are in my wheelhouse of favorites. Might have to make a road-trip to NC (NC is a center of good craft breweries). No distribution for Red Oak in the Keys.
Thanks!
Same, this is awesome https://www.weihenstephaner.de/en/our-beers/wheat-beer
Where are they shipping it to? I haven't seen a can of Rainier in a quarter century.
The brewery in question is near the intersection of the 605 and 210 freeways.
I like Genny , I mix it 1/2 and 1/2 with stout, very tasty! And inexpensive.
You know, they forgot to tell me. Careless of them.
We like the Sierra Nevada and we drink a lot of Guiness. We tried the left hand milk stout nitro but there are others far superior in our local liquor store.
There’s a cherry chocolate stout that’s incredible. But I can’t think of the name of it and an expresso stout that’s really tasty. We drink a lot of Blue Moon and Shock Top.
One thing you find out very quickly when you go to Ireland is that most people drink Murphy’s. We drank Business the first day and then Murphy’s the rest of the trip. Occasionally you can find it in the liquor stores.
I like a crisp IPA on the front porch after mowing the front acre on a hot summer’s day.
Yup! I remember those Pearl Beers redesigned as generic beer. I read an article that they were one and the same and after that I drank mainly Pearl (generic) beer.
Brahma Beer is not listed? It sounds like beer from India but in fact it is Brazilian beer. Very popular down there. You can get at at Brazilian Steakhouses here in the states. My wife and I both agreed that it is the BEST beer we’ve had in the past few years. And now I might go to a Brazilian market to pick up a case of Brahma.
Draft Guinness, in Ireland, is wonderful stuff. Guinness in this country, draft or canned, varies from OK to not very good. Guinness from Nigeria, which is, or was, actually a thing, is foul.
It sounds pretentious, but it is true — draft Guinness, drank in Dublin, or Belfast, is wonderful. Don’t judge it until you have had it there.
I’m not sure I even remember what a Genny tastes like, haven’t had on in about 40 years. I’ve become much more of a Lager and IPA fan over the years.
Generic light beer - $1.50. Pearl Light - $2.50. Saved an awful lot of dollars.
Took me through some mighty lean times.
The brand is also alluded to in Luis Valdez's play Los Vendidos in reference to the kinds of foods, drinks, and drugs on which the Mexican Johnny Pachuco model runs: "You can keep Johnny running on hamburgers, Taco Bell tacos, Lucky Lager beer, Thunderbird wine, yesca. . ." (Valdez)
Never heard of it until today.
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