Hey beetle, back to your original subject, American brews are on the rebound. Note the word "rebound". We were quite lucky in the US when, in the early 1900s, our brewing industry got a boost from the immigration of Europeans, including Germans, who brought their beer recipes with them. Not that we were slouches before about beer, but it was more of a cottage industry.
American beer, if it can be called that being based on European recipes, was quite on par with anything in the world. I know, in all my previous lives I was a beer conissuer. But American beer suffered four devistating blows that we are only now overcoming:
1) Popular backlash against anything German during WWI
2) Prohibition soon put many of the smaller breweries out of business
3) During WWII, the beer companies caterered more to women clientelle (the men were overseas) who wanted a lighter, less full-bodied beer
4) The rampant capitalism during the 50s, 60s, and 70s led to cheaper industry processes for more profit (more rice, carbonation, tins).
We are now well on the way to producing world class beers that can compete with the venerable Belgian and German brews. We still need the demand for barley grain that will make it more cost-effective to use instead of dry malt. But at least the major breweries are seeing their profits go to microbrews and are responding in kind.
I don't know how it is in England, my last previous life over there was during the 1740s
, but I hope good beer is the rule and not the exception.
One last thing:
(pasteurisation is fine for milk but not for beer)
Milk pateurisation is good because milk contains a multitude of microbes and bacteria, not all of it healthy. But beer should contain only one type of yeast, if brewed right, that isn't harmful and, when it dies, carries lots of vitamins with it down into the sediment. By pateurising beer, you eliminate the vitamins and destroy the natural carbonation - forcing the addition of CO2 to regain the fizz.
-sudz
