A squaddie on our squadron boards got me to thinking about this so here is my mini rant.
I have had it with people trying to force these "high gravity" and "craft brews" on me. I can't stand 99% of the ones I have tasted and I like to think that I have tried beer in its various forms and flavors just to make an informed opinion. In these alleged good beers I find that all these micro-brewers and craft breweries tend to load up a beverage with so much hops that you can't get the rest of the flavors out of a beer that you should. Beer should have a nice refreshing, cooling, flavorful taste in your mouth and not make you feel like you just drank liquid horse crap; like 99% of the North American.....no USA brewers which overload beer with hops. They need to look at what makes the beers in Europe and many Canadian brews taste good...less hops and preservatives and greater flavors.
With that said I have found a couple that I can drink and like even though I still think they are loaded with more hops than they should have...at least compared to the similar style beverages I have had from Europe.
Brother Thelonious by North Coast Brewery, Dogfish Head Midas Touch, Leinenkugels Summer Shandy...heck just about anything that Leinenkugels brews and lastly the only Sam Adams I can tolerate Noble Pils.
You have to consider the style of craft beer that you are choosing to try and judge it by the brewers intent. Beer is typically judged by : Appearance, Flavor, Aroma, mouthfeel and the overall impression.
http://www.bjcp.org/index.phpIf it is an IPA, Pale Ale, English Bitter, etc it is going to biatch-slap you with hops in the entire flavor profile. From the bitter taste, the tangy-citrus flavor in the aftertaste and the hop aroma in the nose. If you are not a fan of hops, that is not your kind of beer. Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA is a great example of using the entire profile of the hops. It is hopped through the entire 60 minute boil. When they first started out, they used the old "vibrating" football game, filled it with all the hops, put it on a slant and let it buzz. (BTW, hops ARE preservatives) It takes a bit if getting used-to to appreciate an IPA and train your taste buds
Hacker-Pschoor, paulaner or any hefeweizen style beer, the hops are almost nonexistant. What you will taste, however is the yeast and the esters of the yeast which could have a flavor resembling a few things from banana to bubble-gum to cloves.
Most lager style beers will have a nice balance of malt AND hops with a crisp finish and no fruity esters of an ale. They are fermented at lower temperatures with diactyl rests and are aged longer (hence the German word lager meaning "to store"
Ales are more fruity in taste and fermented at higher temperatures.
Stouts (also an ale) get their flavor from roasted barley.
Bocks and dopplebocks (anything ending in "ator" such as Spaten Optimator) is all about the malt (and are typically lagers) and are full-bodied with a rich malt profile with usually only a bittering hop addition small enough from making the brew cloyingly sweet. They use a lot of dark Munich, Vienna or chocolate malts.
Real pilsners are supposed to come from the Pilsen region in the Czech republic which is famous for the properties of it's water.
Your typical Bud, Coors, Miller are all for drinking and refreshment. They are a light lager brewed with very pale pilsner malts (and lots of corn, rice or other adjuncts) which ferment more easily, leave less unfermentable sugars after the mashing process (which, in turn, leaves less calories in the finished product) and are much cheaper to purchase. It's actually quite difficult for a craft or home brewer to make these kinds of beer as any mistake in the recipe is grossly evident in the final product (too much hops, wrong yeast, too much malt, etc)
You were asked which beers you liked. You named breweries, not beers
I wouldn't make the blanket statement that craft beers in the USA suck. What would be more accurate, perhaps is that you are not trying beers in the style(s) that you prefer
That being said, there ARE some craft brews out there that suck.
Perhaps you can be the next one that gets the Jolly Rogers book that I got from Shifty. Although I'm not allowed to send beer in the mail, I could do for you what I did for TheBug and send you some live yeast cultures suspended in their native sub-strata
