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Beer Is Cheaper In the US Than Anywhere Else In the World
derekmead writes "It's frustrating to drop $7 on a pint of beer in New York City, as it turns out, Americans have the cheapest beer on Earth. International bank UBS gathered data about the median wages and average retail prices of a 500mL (pint) beer in 150 countries. Those data were compiled to figure out how many minutes of work it takes the average worker of a country to earn enough money to buy a beer. It's funny that UBS analysts are spending time looking at beer, but considering that beer is beloved and nigh essential everywhere, it offers an interesting comparison between commodities and wages. For example, India tops the least, with the median worker having to work nearly an hour to afford a pint thanks to extremely low wages. In the U.S. however, where wages are relatively high and the cost of the average beer is quite low (thanks to those super-massive macrobreweries out there), it takes the median worker about five minutes of labor to afford a retail (store-, not bar-bought) pint. That's the shortest amount of time in the world, which means that, relatively speaking, beer is cheaper here than anywhere else." OK, UBS: Now please repeat the research with coffee.
...it's also worse than anywhere else in the world. No joke, people.
a pint != 500mL
a pint == 568mL
How much time do I have to spend messing around on the Internet at work to be able to buy a decent microbrew at lunch?
"Here Lies Philip J. Fry, named for his uncle, to carry on his spirit"
It's fucking close to water.
Jesus was a compassionate social conservative who called individuals to sin no more.
It considers abominations like Bud Light to be beer.
I am officially gone from
Vodka is pointless.
The cause of, and solution to, all of life's problems.
Re: OK, UBS: Now please repeat the research with coffee.
I'd rather see it for bacon.
There is a big difference between a "40" of St Ides for 2 bucks, and a 5$ to 7$ pint of "micro-brew".
St. Louis produces millions of gallons of piss water alternatively known as "beer", but this doesn't mean that the rest of the world drinks this stuff and would classify it as "beer".
If you want news from today, you have to come back tomorrow.
Can anyone find a link to the study, rather than just the chart being tossed around? In particular, I wonder about countries not shown...
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
'Nuff said.
If I were to sell a house for 500k in San Francisco, it might be called cheap, where if were to try to sell the same house in BFN, California, it would be laughably overpriced... but they're still both 500k. You can't say one is "cheaper" than the other. This might be an interesting fact about the US that was determined, but the fact is definitely -not-, "beer is cheaper in the US than anywhere else in the world".
Also that first sentence was interesting, as it turns out, it is as a great example of something we call a "runon sentence", a remarkably unreadable one.
1. Make (high quality) beer for $15 per litre.
2. Add 20 litres of water per litre of beer.
3. Sell beer for $1 per litre.
4. Claim beer is cheapest in the world.
False, but you go on being ignorant.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
That's all this proves.
There's one purpose for alcohol, and Vodka tends to accomplish that faster and with less vomiting and hangovers. So I'll raise my glass, which is cheaper here than anywhere else, and toast Vodka's awesomeness.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
I'll save you the time: "American beer sucks, har har har".
Really? You *all* think you're clever for saying that?
Anyway -- it's not even true. That is, it's a meaningless statement. America has an enormous range of native beers, of every style, strength, and flavor. It's true that our tastes run toward weaker beers, but it's just stupid to say popular = "American".
Tom Geller
They have been doing something similar using the price to Big Macs in various countries to analyze exchange rates: http://www.economist.com/search/apachesolr_search/big%20mac%20index
I guess economists do have a sense of humor . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Its true that the most popular American beers are low quality. But damn, if they aren't cheap. Compared to my usual favorites they taste like lightly flavored soda. (Hense the nickname "Barley Pop") Sip a Budweiser after a good IPA and you'll swear you just took a drink of Mt. Dew. (Not even remotely kidding. Try it)
Even then, there are some very reasonably priced good quality (And somewhat mass produced) brews here and I've got a feeling we'd still be near the top of the list. Even if you like "American" beer (Which is called American style pilsner) you can pick up brews made with high quality ingredients that taste much better. (Budweiser tastes like plastic to me)
But, I strongly suspect that there is a correlation between the availability of inexpensive mood altering substances, like alcohol, and the amount of bullshit that the average working person will be willing to endure.
Look at the prohibition era in the US; crime and criminality were rampant, and so was outright civil disobedience. Activism by juries in courtrooms were at stellar highs.
Now, we have "the cheapest beer in the world" (pun intended), and our citizenry is reluctant to raise a finger against even clearly horrendous civil liberty violations, like the recent "indefinate detainment" legislation.
I would like to see research comparing effective availability of alcohol and other drugs with the rates of political activism.
Mind you, its just a hunch.
The day the US will give lessons on how to make decent beer is the day they'll be able to make decent coffee.
In other words, not a chance in hell.
Vodka is better than beer. It gives a nice warm kick and you don't need to go piss all the time. Many of the Russian vodkas all so have a nice little taste to them.
Beer is proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. Vodka is a proof that Satan wants you not to remember being happy under the table. Sincerely Yours, Ben Franklin
Ezekiel 23:20
Beer sales in the U.S. are $100 billion per year. It's the sort of thing financial people take notice of.
While I agree it is subjective, American beer generally is not well thought of. In WWII all the German beer brewers were run out of business in the US, after which locals had to pick up the slack and essentially start from scratch, so all the skill and knowledge was lost. We have started to catch up again now that we have cycled through a few generations but it was still a pretty serious fall.
It's a good thing beer is cheap. I need the money to pay for my iPhone.
i agree with you, but our placement on this list is definitely due at least partly to our low-quality beers.
the funny thing is i can buy 9% craft beer for less than 2.5x the unit price of a big-brand pisswater (3.5%) beer, and it tastes 10x better as well, but that doesn't show up on this chart. i bet we'd also be close to the top for consumer purchasing power of high-quality beer (however that's defined), but not #1.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
Not everyone likes distilled liquors such as Vodka. I have no stomach for it and do not enjoy it in the slightest.
Beer on the other hand I enjoy greatly. I stick to mainly micro and craft brews. I don't drink my beer to get drunk, I drink it because I enjoy the many many different flavor profiles possible with different types of beers and ingredients used. You sound like the typical youth of today, the only way to drink is in excess and the only reason to drink is to get drunk. Grow up and mature a bit, the world doesn't need more irresponsible alcoholics.
We don't buy beer sold in 11 packs (Metric beers short you 1/12). 12 fluid ounces or fuckoff. Most foreign brewers don't take us for fools. Steinlager is a notable exception, bad beer and 11 packs.
Also note: the US government doesn't do one of the true proper functions of government. We don't have pint cops checking bar glasses for capacity. Hence almost every pint glass served in the USA is a short pint.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Vodka is better than beer.
I'm surprised to hear you say that VodkaGuy...I had you pegged as more of a wine-drinking-guy.
The basic sleazeware produced in a drunken fury by a bunch of UCBerkeley grad students was still the core of BIND. --PV
But you'll go to prison for an awfully long time if you possess this dried flower, leaves from that plant, this fungus or that cactus.
Of course only one of these will put you in that lovely 'don't give a fuck' state you need to get over the fact that you just finished a 70 hour work week at your two jobs and are still only scrimping by.
It is true. While there are some excellent beers in this country, the fact is, the average quality is utterly abysmal due to the likes of Bud, Coors, Miller, etc.
Even though some of these are starting to put out higher-quality beers, the majority of their sales are low-cost low-quality crap.
As a result, the average quality of beers in this country matches the average price at best... more likely the average quality is below the average price.
Just because you CAN get high-quality beer at reasonable prices in this country doesn't mean that the majority of beer sold/consumed in this country is cheap crap.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
There's one purpose for alcohol, and Vodka tends to accomplish that faster and with less vomiting and hangovers. So I'll raise my glass, which is cheaper here than anywhere else, and toast Vodka's awesomeness.
There's only one kind of person who thinks there is but a single use for alcohol.
An alcoholic.
Have fun with your "less" vomiting and hangovers. I'll stick with no puking and more pleasure, or perhaps choose alternatives that don't cause a blatant poisoning effect on my body.
There's one purpose for alcohol, and Vodka tends to accomplish that faster and with less vomiting and hangovers. So I'll raise my glass, which is cheaper here than anywhere else, and toast Vodka's awesomeness.
There are at least three practical purposes. Add disinfectant to the list, also add fuel / fire starter when the proof gets above (80?). Obviously these are not the intended purposes but Vodka has been used in these ways when the circumstances warranted.
The following explanation has been attempted in many armies over many years:
"Sir, that is not a still. That is an apparatus creating field expedient disinfectant for the doctors/medics/corpsmen, sir."
You may find that you'll get beer at the Oktoberfest by the liter. And it costs nearly 10 Euros.
Prosit!
20 minutes into the future
Living in Colorado where the food stinks BUT.... ;)
BUT there are many micro breweries that have good and tasting beers.
So it is even
In WWII all the German beer brewers were run out of business in the US, after which locals had to pick up the slack and essentially start from scratch, so all the skill and knowledge was lost.
Funny, I never heard this excuse as to why the beer sucked so bad in the US. So after which war did you run the french restaurants out of business to explain why the food is so bad in the US ? Yeah, flamebait, but having live 6 years in the US I still stand by it. But you now have great microbrews nowadays.
And back to the topic at hand, how many hours of stoning does it take to have a pint in Saudi Arabia ?
BTW, the cheapest brew is in my home: I brew my own. It's cheap and fun and good (small print: apart from the occasional screw up or too 'experimental' recipe).
Non-Linux Penguins ?
The question is not can you get swill cheaper in the States, but what does good real beer cost in each nation.
If it has a commercial on TV it is a bad beer.
This is a universal truth. Even applies in Germany.
20 minutes into the future
You need to get out more.
Both of America's neighbors make consistently worse beer then American can beer (which admittedly sucks). Canadian beer is just American can beer raised to 6% with corn sugar, Mexico's top selling beer is the worst single brew on the planet (Corona).
Don't get me started on Fosters, granted they only drink that piss in one Australian state. The piss they sell as Fosters in the US is made in Canada BTW. Even worse then the real thing.
Other notable disgusting beers: Red Stripe, Sing Ha (the Chinese one, Shanghai water sucks, the Thai malt liquor is pretty good), Watney's Red Barrel, Guinness (awful stout), Heineken, All English brown ales, yeast infected beer (Hefe).
I love Guinness (stout or drought) as well as English brown ales and hefeweizen such as erdinger. In my opinion American beers such as Bud, Miller, Hamms, Michelob are all in the same bucket with the other swill you mentioned (red stripe, fosters, corona, etc). Generally, if I'm at a restaurant and they only have the "normal" US brews, I pass.
What were the results when you multiply by the average percentage of alcohol found in native beers?
I'm guessing you live in the north east, or somewhere else with limited selection. America has the best tasting and widest variety of beer in the world. I'd say that no small part of the reason why it's cheaper here. Endless comptetion.
Same way I serve it at my house.
You should see the looks some guests have when I hand them a liter mass. I know I spelled it wrong, but slashdot surely would not accept the correct letter.
Perhaps you mean the the original classic Czech beer called 'Budweiser'. The one that the US brews on license and is famous for being of much lower quality. You should try the original, then you will know what a travesty that rancid 'sex in a canoe' swill that passes for beer in the US is.
No offense, but I love German beer and they have a high quality generally but.... the American beer scene has a lot more variety and a bigger willingness to be innovative. German beer, not so much.
We are in a better position now than anytime since Prohibition and probably before too.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
enjoying an Orval (2.5€ btw) while typing this message. Do you guys really pay more than $5 for beer?
Of course it's cheaper. I drink Pabst from time to time and it is acceptable, especially for the price. But in most other countries people would take exception to tasting corn in their beer.
No, American beers short you.
A proper beer is 500ml or 1L. A 330/335 is for children.
About half the cost of beer is taxes. And then a sales tax is applied to that price usually. So we tax tax. So the cost of beer minus taxes is incredibly reasonable.
Except for ending slavery, the Nazis, communism, & securing American independence, war has never solved anything.
So, what is typical permille in USA beer? 4.6% 2,9%? 1,2%?
See Beer Advocate. American beer isn't all crappy lager in cans... we have an incredibly vibrant craft beer and homebrewing scene. I drink the former and make the latter myself, and these lips shall never meet swill! Mostly because it's cheaper to brew up a quick ten gallon batch of pale ale than to buy a vomit-inducing Budweiser. I guess it speaks to the power of marketing that folks outside of (or even inside!) the US think so lowly of our beer.
HAL 7000, fewer features than the HAL 9000, but just as homicidal!
I believe he means the most popular beers in the USA. Which are piss water lagers, no craft beer is in the top 10.
Inferior US pint is 473ml and Proper Sized UK pint is 568ml.
There are lots of really good craft & micro brewers in the US.
Website Just Down For Me? Find out
Either an alcoholic, or a socially awkward borderline aspy, which a lot of us here are.
But I guess I was wrong, there's two purposes as far as I'm concerned: To pretend that you're just like everyone else, or to become inebriated enough that you don't care that you're not. I guess I have a low tolerance for beer because I can achieve less than the latter goal and still end up puking with a headache.
Charisma is the measure of someone's ability to lie with a straight face.
What happened is after prohibition they started adding corn and rice to beer and people were just glad to have any beer to drink even if it tasted like corn (which is cheap).
Most people aren't picky and it started a trend.
It is still pilsner. Which is all watery crap compared to real beers.
Find an Ale, or a bock, or anything that is not nearly clear.
Beer isn't a standard thing. Not even close.
And that is why economists prefer the McDonalds Big Mac for currency comparisons. :-)
Seriously, economists do have a Big Mac Index.
Ok fair enough, other countries have bad beer too. I live in Germany though so calling out fosters and corona (in New Zealand we had some pretty shocking ones too: ranfurly, nz lager) doesn't seem like much of an excuse. In Germany they have had a law since like the 1500's about how beer has to be brewed. They almost didn't join the EU because there were issues with it. 1/3 of all the breweries in the world are here and if you tried a new type of German beer every day it would take you 15 years to get though them all. It is fairly cheap too, 50c for a 500ml bottle at the supermarket.
But Standard American Lager is a recognized type of Beer, like IPA or Pilsner Although not the only type of beer produced in the US (and one I prefer not to drink), it is the style most commonly associated with US beer. Do all American beers suck? Defintally not. Does the beer type closely associated with the US, bears the name America, and the top 3 brands, BudLite, Budwiser, and CoorLite, which account for 50.1% of the US market, suck? Depends on your taste.
But like it or not, and I am guessing you do not, this popular(in the US) style of beer is what is meant by American beer.
BJCP Standards for judging American Standard Lagers
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_lager
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beer_in_the_United_States#Economy
It's all about what you consider to be beer.
In Germany it's ingredients are mandated by law, a very simple requirement the large US brewers could never meet for the present price.
But hey, when it in a free market makes the majority of drinkers happy, what's there to complain?
B.t.w, I'd rather have a Italian, Spanish, Chilean, South African or Australian wine, hmm, let's have a look in the cellar :)
"The likes of Facebook and WhatsApp are free to those whose privacy is of zero value."
Only if you're drinking Budweiser, Miller, and the like (aka the cheap ones). There is a huge (and growing) number of microbreweries with some pretty incredible beers in the US. Certainly, good beer is not easy to find in every part of the country. But I'm lucky enough to live in a state with lots of breweries. Consider a road trip if you're a beer fanatic.
A few stats: http://www.brewersassociation.org/pages/business-tools/craft-brewing-statistics/facts
Breweries per capita by state: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Craft_Breweries_Per_Capita_(US).png
That would eliminate all wheat beers and a great many really good beers.
Many breweries claim to comply, but really don't. I have even seen such claims on wheat beer bottles. Since Reinheitsgebot clearly only allows Water, Barley and Hops, they cannot comply. Yeast was added later as it was unknown at the time.
I'm not a drinker, but it seems to me that alcohol consumption is as much a social activity as anything. And how long does it take you to consume a shot of vodka? That's why people go out for a beer after work, not just drinking: they can hang out with their friends, complain about the boss, argue about sports, etc., while they sip their beers.
(I live in a town where beer is a key part of local culture. My being a teetotaler is one of two big reasons I feel like an outsider, the other being my lack of tatoos.)
And if you ask for a glass of draft beer in a bar, it will be a pint, though the exact meaning of the word varies.
If they're looking at average cost of beer, then, yeah, the cost and quality are both low.
This is because the US market is filled with cheap beer. Supergiant breweries flooded the market in a race to the bottom which also, happily for them, increases the barrier to entry. A public that's used to a certain price point for domestic beer, in general, scoffs at paying more for another domestic beer.
Things started to change when Carter legalized home brewing, and microbrews started becoming commercially viable. But, in terms of sheer volume, there's no contest.
More Twoson than Cupertino
I don't know where they got their figures for beer prices from. They say .5 l of beer in Germany is $ 1.9. That's a very high price for beer at convenience stores, maybe, but high quality beers go for at most € 0.7 ($ 0.9) around here, in supermarkets. There are brands going for as low as 23 Eurocents, some cans below even that. What do they mean by $ 1.9 retail?
There is no sig.
But is there a reason we should care?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
Yeast Infected?
Yeast makes beer moron. Hefe is probably the best beer on Earth.
Sounds like you like fancy versions of nearly piss.
So, what is typical permille in USA beer? 4.6% 2,9%? 1,2%?
I can get ales, made by american craft brewers up to 11.2% Depends how strong you want it. Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout is 9% ABV.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Weird opinion - the US is near the tops in terms of food quality in the world, based on my experience. And has a far superior amount of diversity in its high quality fine dining options to most countries I've visited in Europe and the Americas. Try eating your way around New York, San Francisco (and throughout the bay area), Napa and Sonoma Counties in California, Charleston in South Carolina, or any of the foodie meccas around the US.
False, as evidence I present Erdinger and Paulaner. The latter is the Hefe by which all Hefes are judged.
For absolute awesomeness you will have to go to Munich around nowish and steal a beer mug(or a dozen) in the Armbrustschuetzenzelt. Fill it up with Bud Light and tell your guests how once upon a time one of the best beers known to man had been contained in that mug and now it is filled with goat piss.
You might be hit by a meteor shower and a couple of gas giants for this heinous act. God allegedly hates blasphemy.
20 minutes into the future
There's one purpose for alcohol, and Vodka tends to accomplish that faster and with less vomiting and hangovers.
Not true. I buy the cheap vodka, and I use it for 2 things: cleaning and making beer. It's not really drinkable.
"Somebody has to do something. It's just incredibly pathetic it has to be us."
--- Jerry Garcia
As someone with a gluten allergy, Budweiser is my beer of choice, since it's made from rice and not wheat/barley. I know there are other alternatives (Red Bridge, a couple of imports as well) but for the price, they can't beat Budweiser.
I never have to go to a bar and wonder if they can cater to my odd allergy, since almost every bar in the US sells Bud, or Bud Lite. Now, most Bud drinkers don't give a hoot about what it is made out of, but that is something to consider.
I've been living in Denmark for quite some time, and I can tell you - no one beats the Danes when it comes to cheap shitty beer.
You can purchase a SUPER strong 8% beer in Denmark (Called Harboe) for half a dollar, 33cl.
And occasionally around Christmas, you can purchase a so called Christmas beer for 1 DKK (4-5 STRONG beers on ONE dollar), now tell me where in the world you can beat that.
I've been in USA a few months ago, your beer is tasty, but not super cheap. Drinking at the local bar in a SMALL town in Northern America set me back 8 USD per 50cl glass of beer, not exactly whoppingly cheap, it actually cost the same as drinking beer out in Copenhagen (which, is a relatively big city).
I bought a few brewskis at the gas-station near the motel I lived in the US, cost me 2-3 USD per bottle, not expensive, but still WAY more than even a luxury beer in Denmark.
What this world is coming to - is for you and me to decide.
Prefer the Augustinerzelt meself.
True but so is most the lager people in Europe drink. Beer is pretty good everywhere, but the most mass marketable and mass produceable is awful. and you're only going to see the beers that other countries produce in mass quantities and export. It's one of those rare cases where your lawn is always greener than your neighbor's.
There is no memory shortage. yes I have heard of XFCE. Go away.
Many beers use rice in their recipe. From http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Budweiser_(Anheuser-Busch) : It is made with up to 30% rice in addition to hops and barley malt
Do understand that this is not the only brewery doing this. Many of the large breweries do this. Stella Artois also does this. Also many brewers don't, but then in Belgium we use cherries in the beer making process for some.
When people talk about beer, many think of beer only being allowed to be brewed according to the Reinheitsgebot which is not true. Others just think of pilsner.
Don't fight for your country, if your country does not fight for you.
Don't even bother trying to drink any beer unless it is brewed to the Bavarian Purity Law standard of 1516. Lots of smaller breweries in the U.S. and Canada have beer that complies.
What a load of bullshit. The more people ignore this outdated law, the more interesting beers are created.
It doesn't mean much now, it's built for the future.
Try a good stout, 'Obsidian Oatmeal Stout' is a good choice.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
When I was in Ethiopia beer was 32cents a bottle. It was pretty good microbrew stuff to. Sadly the average wage in their capital city was something like $7/month.
Figure the one time set up cost for a home brew: ~250 bucks.
Hops kit required: ~50bucks
Result: 5 gallons of GOLD. As it's difficult to guess the breakdown on the startup costs per batch, let's ignore it for a moment and focus on simply the cost of the materials to make a batch. At 10bucks/gallon for whatever quality you want, that's pretty damn spiffy ( of course, I'm ignoring labor too. Because it's a labor of LOVE ).
Mod me down with all of your hatred and your journey towards the dark side will be complete!
Yuck. Anyway, I think the problem here is that they keep using the word "beer." I think the word does not mean what they think it means.
Its f*ing close to water!
*nod* at this point it is more reputation then reality, esp now that microbrews have caught on. But go back to the 60s or 70s and it was pretty bad.
Only if you drink Bud/Miller/Coors Light
I would argue that West Coast craft brews are the finest in the world
Especially the IPAs
Spoken like someone who does not like beer. Hefe is not sour, that would be a beer infected with brett like a berliner Weisse or a Lambic.
Generally they don't just leave it in, they add more at bottling.
If you do not like yeast you do not like beer.
you have to mix vodka with other things to make it tolerable.
No you don't. It's perfect with a few ice blocks to chill it. Only vodka and ice.
I suspect that the percentage of beer sold in the US that belongs to the sucky variety vindicates the joke.
I just buy the Paulaner October Fest cans that come with the Liter glasses.
I would never serve that kind of beer at my house.
What? There are numerous breweries with German heritage that started in the 1800's that are still around today. Prohibition closed more breweries than anything else and the art of brewing was not lost due to that either.
Anyone can tell you that if you cross the border to Mexico for some college trip thing or something like people always do, the drinks are under half the price. They obviously must have adjusted the beer price for average gross income of the country or something because Mexico has us beat. They don't just mark it down to attract customers from the US, it seriously is cheaper everywhere, even southern Mexico.
False, but you go on being ignorant.
I only know a handful of US beers but the ones I know are rather bad. At least in Germany it's very hard to even get US beers -- only in American restaurants or fast food chains.
Why would you add fruit? Wheat beer is far heavier than the piss beer you drink and is not sour. That is lambics and berliner weisse.
You don't even know what you are talking about for the style. Before you try to discredit something, actually learn about it, or drink it or maybe even brew it.
yeah, that's true (for now), but, almost by definition, craft beers aren't commodities in the modern sense of the term.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
I wonder if it's circular logic, that american beer sucks because american beer sucks and everyone says so. Or is some type of hipster sentiment "You like American beer? Bah! You don't know beer. My favorite beer? You've probably never heard of it, so I won't bother mentioning it."
569ml is the proper unit of measurement for beer =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
"Give my people plenty of beer, good beer and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them" - Queen Victoria
All I know is that unpure beer makes me feel bad. YMMV.
ipv6 is my vpn
Erdinger, while made of quality ingredients compared to the average American horsepiss, is still a lager.
And all lager is horsepiss.
Now, if I want bottled craft beer $2 is on the cheap side. But for fresh beer made in a big copper tank, I'll gladly pay two bucks a pint and enjoy its cheapness.
Occasionally living proof of the Ballmer peak.
You know, the kind that doesn't have to have a shitload of preservatives in it to make sure it's still "fresh" in 6 months.
In the UK, the Budweiser "Fresh Beer Tastes Better" adverts were banned by the Advertising Standards Agency, because "fresh" beer quite demonstrably does *not* taste better. Anyone who has made homebrew will tell you this...
No, in a bar it should be 1L :)
In a bottle 500ml.
Just because you CAN get high-quality beer at reasonable prices in this country doesn't mean that the majority of beer sold/consumed in this country is cheap crap.
You have it exactly backwards. I can get a wide selection of good beer at several places in my neighborhood, including one brewery. As long as the good stuff's available, why should I care what the majority drinks?
You buy a beer. They fill the glass, you pay the price. Don't need no cops for this. We don't order beer by the PINT here, or by 12oz. We buy it by a glass, and we know that glasses have different sizes. My favorite restaurant has 20oz glasses, which they fill nearly to the rim, and I pay them for it, and drink it an not care if it is 0.25 ounce over or under. I don't care.
Why does everything need to be a freaking federal case?
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
Better yet, just keep your vodka in the freezer and drink it straight.
This is really measuring the wealth of countries, not the cheapness of beer since it measures the number of minutes worked to pay for a beer. Even the major European economies have per capita GDP's 20%-30% lower than the US when measure via PPP (Purchasing power parity).
Scotch (or even a decent bourbon) does the same thing and actually has some complexity. Vodka is too sterile and lifeless for me... it's good in drinks but I can't imagine drinking it straight.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
And that's only because American wages are high
Which screws it up even worse, since the labor force participation rate is low and dropping fast. Soon, we'll be a minority of population working country.
Better to take median annual income than median wage, since only about sixty percent of the population currently has a job.
There are countries with higher, and lower, labor force participation rates. Beer consumption is not limited to wage earners, in fact it tends toward non-wage earners, which has some secondary price forcing effect, in that if your consumers are unemployed and students and retired people, expensive good stuff isn't going to sell.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Mass produced beer has become increasingly bad all around the world. But also the beer culture has gone downhill. That is why people still buy bad beer. I haven't seen the chart of the top 10 most sold beers of the world but I wil hazard a guess I wouldn't drink it.
Let me explain how a beer garden in Germany(Munich area) works:
You go there on a sunny afternoon. Next to the place were they actually sell the beer you will find shelves of mugs. The 1 liter variety. You take a mug and go to a big basin filled with clear water were you rinse the mug. There will also be little brushes. Use them.
With your mug you go to the end of the queue. When it is your turn, tell them what you want. Don't be fancy, they only have two barrels. Say "Ein Helles, bitte". Pay in cash. No plastic. Don't rely on them having change. Find a nice bench under a chestnut tree and enjoy your beer.
And have a nice lunch.
You have brought lunch, have you?
If you go to a beer garden they only expect you to buy the beer there. You can bring your own food. Otherwise you might find everything to be a bit expensive.
Everything is trees and wood and wasps and rabbits frolicking on the green. There might even be fucking butterflies and flowers and shit.
Me and a couple of mates once went to the Hirschgarten on a Sunday morning and went home when they closed it. I drank 9 liters of beer, ate 2 chickens, a couple of those giant pretzels with a cartload of Obatzta(a Bavarian cheese specialty) and a Steckerlfisch(a mackerel). All in all I spent 200 Euros on food over the course of 12 hours and felt like I got my money's worth. Best Sunday ever. YMMV.
20 minutes into the future
... at least the big-name stuff is. The microbrew industry has normal strength beer. Canadians enjoy 5-6.5% in large-volume beer, and microbrews go up to 10% (@ Unibroue)... maybe higher. Tequilla, however, is far cheaper in (many parts of) the US than in Canada. No idea why. You also get Chimayo, which we don't >:(
They don't even make a lager as far as I know. They produce almost entirely wheat beers. I meant the WeiÃYbier.
Wiki says they produce the following of that maybe one is a lager:
WeiÃYbier - a golden cloudy beer (alc 5.3%, white/cream label, pictured)
Dunkel- a dark brown type (alc 5.6%, black label)
Kristallklar (crystal clear) - a filtered WeiÃYbier (alc 5.3%, silver label)
Pikantus (picaanthus) - a dark weizenbock beer (alc 7.3%)
Leicht (light) - a light beer (alc 2.9%)
SchneeweiÃYe (snow-white) - a seasonal beer brewed from November to February (alc 5.6%)
Erdinger Champ - a wheat beer that can be drunk straight from the bottle (alc 4.7%)
Alkoholfrei (alcohol free) - an alcohol free version (alc 0.4%, blue label)
Festbier (festive beer) - a seasonal brew for Erding's Herbstfestes (autumn festival, also known as Volksfest)
Whoosh.
Checking the size of beer glasses is far more useful then 99% of what the government actually does. Would you be upset if you found the 20oz glass only held 19oz's? When does it become a lie? 16oz?
Most restaurants short the steak weights too.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
You sound like the typical youth of today, the only way to drink is in excess and the only reason to drink is to get drunk. Grow up and mature a bit, the world doesn't need more irresponsible alcoholics.
63 year old Hank Williams, Jr. thanks you for that overreaching generalization. He has never felt more youthful, or more immature.
Who the hell cares about "average quality"? I live in rural Wisconsin and I have my choice of a dozen local and regional brews from the cooler at the village convenience store. Sure, they sell more Bud and Miller's than all the rest combined, but so what? Some people like it: why shouldn't they have it? They get what they want, I get New Glarus or Sand Creek.
"Quality" of beer is entirely a matter of opinion.
Warning: this article may contain humor, sarcasm, parody, and perhaps even irony. Read at your own risk.
the real conversion WTF is that they used US dollars as the common comparison factor. the chart should show the cost of beers in hours need to work needed to buy one. the way that this data is presented does not allow for an apples to apples comparison whatsoever
I stand corrected. I thought wheat beers were lagers. But in fact, they are top-fermented like ales.
Add Wheat Beer to the list of "horsepiss" along with lagers, then. :-)
Here on Slashdot, we should all be drinking rum since rum is what pirates drink and everyone knows nerds love pirates.
And ninjas. But sake is nasty, i'll stick to the rum myself.
Then I moved here and discovered that there's more to American beer than Coors Light and Budweiser (the latter now only American insofar as you consider the US-based arm of a Belgian company to be American.)
The truth is that there are dozens of smaller breweries and hundreds of microbreweries, none of which have superbowl-size advertising budgets, but offer plenty of world class American beer. But, to the extent that your primary lens on American culture is nationally syndicated television (as mine was), you'll continue to be out of touch with reality.
Hefe, means the yeast is still in suspension as the beer is not filtered. Yeast is selected for this behavior. Proper serving of a Hefe includes swirling the last few 10s of mls to get any settled yeast into the glass.
Again you show your ignorance. Beer cannot said to be infected by yeast, as it is integral to the process. The sour you claim is brett and that is not found in Hefes.
You are again wrong. They are not like ales they are ales.
They are proper ales and do not taste anything like horsepiss nor water. Nor are they sour as some idiots think, that is berliener weisse and lambics and similar brett infected beers.
I have never been to a place in the US where beer is as cheap as it is in Germany. I am not saying that the cheap stuff is the best quality, but their cheap beer is better than the average US beer, by far.
I didn't mean to imply wheat beers are not ales. But do mean to imply they taste horrendous (to me).
Personally, I strongly prefer an IPA any day.
You may not like the product that BMC puts out but it's not of low quality, every professional brewer I know is amazed at the quality control of the big three. The very pale, lightly hopped light lager that the big three produce as their mainstay is one of the most technically difficult beers to produce because ANY defect is instantly noticeable whereas with a big IPA you can screw all sorts of things up and it just gets masked by the overpowering bitterness. That isn't to say that there's no art to making a good IPA, just that it's a much more forgiving style when it comes to defects.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
If I wanted to taste nothing but hops I would just eat hops. IPA is a preservation method not a form of beer. :)
Even a borderline aspy can appreciate the evidence that moderate drinking is correlated with increased longevity. This may or may not be causative, but one or two drinks per day is unlikely to hurt.
And good beer is tasty too. Far better than the synthetically flavored highly acidic sugar water that so many people drink. To your health!
Give me Classic Slashdot or give me death!
And were will you get Bud Light in Munich? Is it even sold there? If so, why?
4-5% for the mass market lagers just like basically everywhere. You can find everything from 2-12% ABV in most well stocked specialty stores though the typical range is 4-9%. Some states have a limit on the maximum ABV allowed under the tax bracket for beer and so you won't typically be able to find anything above that statute limit.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Heh. To each his own. The more bitter, the better (to a point).
Yeah, hops was put into beer for preservation originally, but it stayed in there after air travel was invented because it's YUMMY. :)
Don't even bother trying to drink any beer unless it is brewed to the Bavarian Purity Law standard of 1516. Lots of smaller breweries in the U.S. and Canada have beer that complies.
That law was put in place to drive down the price of bread. In fact, it still allowed for brewing with wheat, but only for consumption by the aristocracy. Look at Belgium if you want to see good beer -- and they break all the rules when they make it.
I didn't know 1 euro converts to $2.48 these days.
Because in the Netherlands (fourth cheapest on the chart) the retail price, including VAT and alcohol taxes at one of the more expensive supermarkets of 500ml premium beer (Grolsch in this instance; also one of the more expensive 'normal' beers) is about € 1. That should be somewhere around $1.20-1.30... No way beer is on average twice that amount for half a liter!
Link to webshop of supermarket: http://webwinkel.ah.nl/process?search_parameter=grolsh&catacodestyle=AH&action=albert_noscript.modules.build
Minimum wage before state insurances and income tax in the Netherlands for everyone 23 and older is €1,456.20 on basis of a 40 hours week. This is about €1,230 after taxes.
http://www.rijksoverheid.nl/onderwerpen/minimumloon/vraag-en-antwoord/hoe-hoog-is-het-minimumloon.html
40 hours = 2400 minutes. 1,230/2400 = 51.25 €cents / minute. Which would make a Dutch person on minimum wage work 1 minute and 57 seconds for his beer.
Whoosh whoosh. No one here cares what # of oz the glass holds. The question is whether or not I'm getting enough beer for my purchase. I don't care if they lie to me; the amount of beer int he glass does not lie. If I am charged 7$ for something that is in a half-pint glass and isn't a Belgian beer, I will complain. The # of oz advertised or pored is irrelevant.
I'm not a huge fan of wheat beers, but they taste nothing like lager. They have very distinctive (some would say pungent) flavour (which is why I don't like them, as an English ale drinker).
Reserve your scorn for deserving targets like lager, and leave the real drinks like ale and wheat beer well alone!
The US has more breweries than Germany (~2,000 versus ~1,300) so if you're right about Germany have more than 1/3 then between us we have over 70% of all breweries worldwide =)
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
The dirt cheap beer they're talking about in this article certainly is...
I like hops fine. But beyond 50-75 IBU it is just too much.
You could make all the 'wheat beer' you wanted. You just couldn't call it beer.
It was never about the price of bread. Some Baptist made that up.
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
Here is one economic achievement that people of any political persuasion can applaud. Nobody can say the U.S. economy is a complete dud when its citizens have the most beer buying power in the world!
Except that none of these good native beers that you speak of would be cheap enough to classify as cheapest in the world.
American beer classifies as cheapest in the world because a large portion of your population are will to actually purchase the incredibly cheap, watered down crap that many of your big breweries do produce.
Troll is not a replacement for I disagree.
No, because of the name clash between Budweiser (Anheuser-Busch) and Budweiser (Budvar), Anheuser-Busch is not allowed to sell a beer called "Budweiser" in Germany (and in some other european countries).
And the prices for Germany are messed up to. They put it at an average of $1.90 in Germany, but in reality the average is closer to $1.25. Maybe they falsely included the refund you get if you return the empty bottle or can to the store.
Beer tastes like crap. There is just a lot of group think behind it.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Sigh. So that brew pub down the street from me that makes beer with fresh organic ingredients, works with the local farmers during purchase only 60 miles away, and serves on tap at all the local pubs is lower then any where in the world? Not to mention the other 100 or so breweries doing the same thing within 60 miles of that one? Sorry pal, I been around the world, and this is the best beer you can get, particularly in terms of quality.
Weird opinion - the US is near the tops in terms of food quality in the world, based on my experience.
He, have you really stepped out of the US ?!?
Try eating your way around New York
Every time I mention food being bad in the US, americans always go "but you have to try it in NY!". Why ? NY is only a tiny subset of the US and also variety != quality. And for your information I've been in NY and the crappy 25$ burgers were just as bad as ANY other burger. If you go to a random unassuming restaurant in Italy [for instance], chances are you'll find the antipasti and the pizza and the pasta delicious. And for less than 20$/Euro. If you do the same anywhere in the US, chances are you'll shit that fast food in your pants if you can't find a toilet fast enough. Travel, and see for yourself.
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I forgot to mention something important. Probably what you are thinking of is the mass produced crap beers, mostly attributed to America.
However, they aren't American. Coors is Canadian, Miller is UK, Bud is Belgian/Brazilian and so on.
True American beers are small operations, and they are the ones that count. Washington, Oregon, California, Colorado have the best beer in the world, bar none.
The quality of beer in the US is lower than anywhere else in the world.
Well I sure didn't see that comment coming when I decided to read this story.
I am not a crackpot.
People were brewing with it for thousands of years before that. It was however not known as anything separate, they just mixed old beer with new to start fermentation. Yeast was discovered by Van Leeuwenhoek in 1719.
The brewery you chose is not even particularly old, Weihenstephaner has been brewing since 1040.
I don't drink my beer to get drunk, I drink it because I enjoy the many many different flavor profiles possible with different types of beers and ingredients used.
Indeed; if you're drinking vodka or whiskey you're doing it only to get drunk. If you're drinking beer, it's most likely because you like beer (yep, that's me).
Free Martian Whores!
1. Make (high quality) beer for $15 per litre.
2. Add 20 litres of water per litre of beer.
3. Sell beer for $1 per litre.
4. Claim beer is cheapest in the world.
You missed
5: Profit!!
"The greatest lesson in life is to know that even fools are right sometimes" - Winston Churchill
So fraud's fine as long as the buyer doesn't notice?
On A trip to the U.S. a few years ago, I was suprised to find a local New Zealand Beer (Steinlager) for sale in the supermarket a few dollars cheaper than I could buy it here.
. .
I love Budvar. (they call it Czechvar in the states for the same reason Anheuser-Busch can't call their shit "Budweiser" in Europe) Unfortunately, it's become impossible to find Czechvar lately... I haven't seen any for at least a year. Awhile back, I heard rumor that Anheuser-Bush was going to start importing Czechvar... maybe that's why I haven't seen any lately! Fortunately Sam Adam's Noble Pils is just as good.
"It is a denial of justice not to stretch out a helping hand to the fallen; that is the common right of humanity."
We also had grain rationing, so rice was used as a filler. This also made the beer easier to drink and increased popularity among women as I read it.
And if you ask for a glass of draft beer in a bar, it will be a pint, though the exact meaning of the word varies.
Not here in Springfield, if you go to D'Arcy's for a Guiness, you get a pint of draft, but anywhere else you get nine ounces of whatever. Usually on Wednesdays I'll drink bottled at Felbers, because they only charge $1.50 for a 12 oz bottle on that day, which is the same price as a $1.25 9 oz draft.
Free Martian Whores!
Sam Adams certainly advertizes on TV and they have good beers.
Dogfish head had a TV show a while back on the discovery channel essentially a 20 minute commerical they have very good beers.
Commercialization does not make something bad it typically means they have had success, I know the hipster in you hates when everybody starts liking something you liked first and that there is no way the masses could ever have as sophisticated tastes as you.
Knowledge = Power
P= W/t
t=Money
Money = Work/Knowledge so the less you know the more you make
He he, its easy you just take your 5 gallon batch of pale ale and cut it with 15 gallons of water.
Then you have bud light..
That said, I've heard the same thing, the descriptions of what Bud/etc do to maintain their yeast strain borders on the impossible/insane.
Exactly what kind of mucking foron does it take to summarily claim that US food is uniformly bad? Food in the USA is the world's food. People of all nations brought it here, and besides recent immigrants we have second, third, and fourth generations maintaining the craft. If you can't find good food here, you won't find it anywhere.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
No, it isn't. Quality isn't at all about how good a beer tastes. That's completly subjective. Quality is brewing a product that comes out just the way you wanted it to, and then brew it again, and again. It's about controll over all the parameters during milling, mashing, lautering, boiling, whirlpooling, cooling, aeration, fermentation, lagering, conditioning, filtration, storage, filling and alot of steps I missed. If a customer thinks a beer doesn't taste good, that's not a sign of bad quality. If a customer drinks a beer that's been infected by bacteria or wild yeast, or damaged by oxygen or light, that's a sign of bad quality.
Steinlager bad? Not accordng to the judging panels.
(from http://www.steinlager.com/Our-History/Awards)
Steinlager won the Les Amis Du Vin competition four years in a row from 1977 to 1980, after which the organisers politely asked if it could refrain from entering "to give the others a chance".
In 1985 at the Brewers' International Exhibition in London, Steinlager was judged the 'World's Best Lager'.
In 1998 Steinlager was awarded two Le Monde Selection gold medals in Belgium.
In 2005 Steinlager again won gold at the Le Monde awards.
More recently Steinlager won a gold medal and 'Best in Class' in the lager division at the 2006 Australian International Beer Awards.
. .
Thus proving the fallacy of "Argumentum ad ignorantum" of which you were accused.
Gamingmuseum.com: Give your 3D accelerator a rest.
Reinheitsgebot aka Bavarian Purity Law.
Reinheitsgebot was introduced in part to prevent price competition with bakers for wheat and rye. The restriction of grains to barley was meant to ensure the availability of sufficient amounts of affordable bread, as the more valuable wheat and rye were reserved for use by bakers. Today many Bavarian beers are again brewed using wheat and are thus no longer compliant with the Reinheitsgebot.
Do not try and pass off that chilled gnat's piss as beer, because it is not.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
"Give my people plenty of beer, good beer and cheap beer, and you will have no revolution among them" - Queen Victoria
Thus proving the fallacy of "Argumentum ad ignorantum" of which you were accused.
I were accused of nothing. You confuse me of someone else.
Exactly what kind of mucking foron does it take to summarily claim that US food is uniformly bad?
I've heard a very good excuse for that: immigrants who came to the US couldn't find the basic ingredients they were used to, so they improvised with whatever was available, usually with much less success. And in many cases it stuck, impoverishing the recipes in the process.
PS: a more direct answer to your question whould be: "one who has lived there".
Non-Linux Penguins ?
We may drink a large quantity of piss beer here in America (bud light, coors light, etc.) but the fact of the matter is that you can easily find excellent beer, either from around the world or U.S. microbreweries, with basically zero effort.
Example #1: my local Ralph's (the biggest grocery chain in southern California) sells Franziskaner, Fin du Monde, and Rogue brewery beers, among many more.
Example #2: nearly every bar, even the most generic hole of a sports bar, has *some* kind of microbrew, be it Sierra Nevada, Fat Tire (New Belgium), Pyramid, or Shiner.
Note: the overwhelming majority of piss beer is now imported or manufactured by foreign-pwned companies such as InBev. The largest U.S.-owned breweries are now Yeunglings and Sam Adams. Sam Adams brews almost every type of ale or lager you'd want, some of which are pretty decent.
I just found the box to change my sig. Um.... [timeless witticism].
The inexpensive American "beer" that is used in this calculation uses maize and rice instead of barley as the main ingredient, grasses that happen to be heavily subsidised here and hardly used to make beer anywhere else. If you want to drink beer that is made of the same base ingredients as the real stuff then it will cost about 2x as much in the supermarket here as it does at a bar in Amsterdam. There are a lot of breweries in the US that make some really good beer, especially ones founded in the last two decades, but that stuff ain't cheap, at least not yet.
Ok, you were with me for awhile, and the criticisim of Guinness can be overlooked but what the hell are you talking about a Chinese beer called Sing Ha? Singha is only a Thai beer, a Chinese version does not exist.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
"American" lager (not the same as "made in the USA" lager) is a very light style of lager with adjuncts like corn and rice. Save the barley and hops, use lots of government subsidized cheap corn and you can make cheap beer. Check out Trader Joe's "Name Tag" lager - 6-pack/$2.99. http://www.traderjoes.com/fearless-flyer/article.asp?article_id=165 Website says "all-malt beer, with no rice, no corn – no fillers of any kind", but it reeks of corn.
In WWII all the German beer brewers were run out of business in the US
Except for Anheiser-Busch, Yeungling, Adolphus Coors, and ...
Actually, there was fairly little WWII-era anti-German sentiment in the highly German areas, like Milwaukee and Central PA, where the major breweries were located, compared to during WWI (Victory Cabbage for Sauerkraut, frex, and German pulled from high school curiculae even in German-American towns). The problem was that the really big brewers found ways to guarantee a certain level of quality at a fairly cheap price, while the regional breweries were producing beer that was more hit or miss at higher prices, and they could no more compete than small butchers and green grocers could against the chain grocery stores like A&P, a generation or two before. Imagine what would happen if your favorite microbrew had to compete against Miller, Bud, or A-B purely on price. As a result, the regionals gradually were bought up by majors and/or went out of business. At this point, the majors were competing essentially on volume alone, and consumers became used to brews with little or no hops content (cheaper for the brewers, and better suited to the non-food way that beer was being consumed after Prohibition).
As to losing skills, that is nonsense. The brewmasters were and are able to produce great beers (and more cheaply than during the Post-Prohibition period) when they were given good recipes to make (local example: Sam Adams was once produced by the same brewery as was Iron City, renting Pgh Brewing's excess capacity). The problem was that the recipes were gradually stripped of the strong flavor agents, particularly hops, as time went on.
So, in the US you'd probably need to purchase ~1 2/5 cans of regular swill to get 500ml, considering that the cheapest and most common beer comes in 355ml cans.
Actually, most major brands are also available in 16 oz. (473ml) "tall boy" cans, and they're often marginally cheaper in that package than in 12 oz. containers. (Probably because it's positioned as being a slightly "lower class" product.)
Okay, finally, someone else said it. I can't stand the taste of hops.
---
ECHELON is a government program to find words like bomb, jihad, plutonium, assassinate, and anarchy.
I like to sip on a couple fingers of whiskey, scotch, bourbon or rum with my cigars. Not doing it to get drunk, but enjoy the flavors just like with beer.
I don't know anyone that does that with Vodka, though...
but it's just stupid to say popular = "American".
Fine!! But... if one would be to say "American" = unpopular, would it be correct then?
Questions raise, answers kill. Raise questions to stay alive.
This is true about most things where the taste "has to grow on you".
Spooooon!!!!!
Sounds wonderful! But I hear that things are not as idyllic during Octoberfest. Apparently the beer vendors are setting their prices at ever increasing heights (based, no doubt, on how much the tourists are willing to pay). Needless to say, the locals are not happy because they like to drink their beer at a reasonable price. Personally, I can't wait until the U.S. pulls out its head and starts selling liters instead of those silly little pints.
I think that you're just bad at picking restaurants.
I've been to Australia (Victoria and the NT), and I've been to Argentina (Buenos Aires and Mar del Plata), Canada (Ontario, New Brunswick and PEI), and I'm from the US, where I've visited (NY, ME, NH, MA, RI, CT, NJ, PA, DE, MD, WV, VA, NC, SC, TN, GA, FL, AL, MS, LA, TX, NM, CO, UT, AZ, CA, NV, OR, WA, ID, MT, WY, NE, IA, IL, IN, and OH).
I've had a good meal in practically every city I've been to. Smaller towns are a bit more hit-or-miss. If it's a hamlet or smaller with just one restaurant, then maybe you'll get lucky.
However, as a rule of thumb, it is best to stay away from a place that has an expensive menu (such as a $25 burger), but is empty. Instead, look for the seedy-looking place that has a line coming round the back and where the waiters make you point at the menu because they can't understand you.
Reinheitsgebot, which means you can't piss in a barrel and call it beer.
I don't drink beer myself, but I thought that was partly due to percentage of alcohol the big breweries used.
Might not apply anymore, but there's an old joke that goes, "What do American beer and making love in a canoe have in common? They're both fucking close to water."
Me and a couple of mates once went to the Hirschgarten on a Sunday morning and went home when they closed it. I drank 9 liters of beer, ate 2 chickens, a couple of those giant pretzels with a cartload of Obatzta(a Bavarian cheese specialty) and a Steckerlfisch(a mackerel). All in all I spent 200 Euros on food over the course of 12 hours and felt like I got my money's worth. Best Sunday ever. YMMV.
Um, are you sure you didn't just drink one or two beers too many and imagined all the rest? Because I can't even begin to imagine how all that could fit inside a single person.
But then again, I consider half a chicken to be a perfectly adequate meal. And I'm not even anorexic, quite the opposite in fact...
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
Actually, he isn't. When they calculated the price of american beer, they averaged the various prices weighted by the consumption. So when you calculate quality, you should do the same. So on average, when we take consumption into account, american beer is very bad, despite of amricans having some of the best beers in the world.
AccountKiller
That matches my experience too. While not as extensively traveled, I have spent time in maybe half a dozen countries and quite a few states within the US, and have mostly found it a matter of finding the good restaurants. Perhaps the poster is simply skiled (or has the local knowledge) at finding good places in Itally. I know here figuring out which Chinese and Indian restaurants is a skill unto itself.
Oddly enough, that is something I really love about cooking in the US..... while it would turn out different, I would argue that most of the time the improvised recipes turned out just as good as what they were based off of.
I've never had trouble finding good beer in the northeast. I find it hard to believe there's anywhere left in the country where good local beer is hard to find.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
No, beer is utterly delicious, you just don't like it.
Oh, unless you mean mainstream American beer, which I agree, does taste like crap and is justifiably the cheapest in the world.
Read Pynchon.
There's one purpose for alcohol, and Vodka tends to accomplish that faster and with less vomiting and hangovers. So I'll raise my glass, which is cheaper here than anywhere else, and toast Vodka's awesomeness.
Beer tastes good (well, not Budweiser - but real beers), you have to mix vodka with other things to make it tolerable.
You simply haven't had good Vodka.
Vodka is like whiskey, good whiskey does not need to be mixed, crap whiskey should never be drunk straight. I think this is true for most spirits.
That cheap arse bottle of Smirnoff is not good vodka. Neither is Absolut.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
Scotch (or even a decent bourbon) does the same thing and actually has some complexity. Vodka is too sterile and lifeless for me... it's good in drinks but I can't imagine drinking it straight.
I agree with you on Scotch and Bourbon, but not with Vodka. If you're experience is only with the cheap arse Smirnoff vodka I can imagine why you feel that way but just like Scotch a decent vodka is great to drink straght. A good straight liquor doesn't burn on the way down, good vodka is like this and has more a more subtle flavour than Scotch it can be easily mixed with other flavours such as fruits, coffee, and butterscotch to name a few.
Living in Western Australia there are a few specialty distillers around here that produce some very good quality vodkas that is a crime to mix.
Calling someone a "hater" only means you can not rationally rebut their argument.
...and that's fine.
I'm sure that you probably don't like the taste of coffee or chocolate, either. If you partake in either of those, you probably load it up with milk, sugar and/or other flavourings to disguise the taste of the bean.
Personally, I don't mind, and can appreciate the subtleties in, good quality bitter foods. This doesn't make me superior to you in any way. "I don't like it" or "I can't stand it" is not the same thing as "anyone who likes it is the victim of groupthink".
Yeah, megaswill lager is awful stuff. Especially the American stuff. Which, incidentally, is a lasting side-effect of prohibition. Most of the breweries shut down, and when prohibition was lifted, only a few remained. The lack of competition resulted in a cheaper, inferior product, and the rest is history. Tying it into TFA, that is almost certainly one of the reasons why beer is so cheap.
FWIW, I can't stand the taste of strawberries. Go figure.
sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f(q{sub f{($f)=@_;print"$f(q{$f});";}f});
we don't mean less expensive.
"I believe in Karma. That means I can do bad things to people all day long and I assume they deserve it." : Dogbert
http://www.economist.com/blogs/graphicdetail/2012/01/daily-chart-3 clearly norway is high on the big mac index...
Yes there is good American beer. But I disagree with the funny statistics:
the three runner ups were Czech Republic, Germany, and the Netherlands. I don't know about income to beer price in the Czech Republic. But at least in the Netherlands and Germany you can buy a half way decent beer for about the price of cheap beer in the US. And that's what counts for me when I look for a decent beer, not the average beer price
READ the submission before posting. If it doesn't make sense, add/remove/modify words until it does, ok?
The first sentence probably needs to start with the word "While."
India tops the LIST.
Consciousness is a myth. Trust me.
Knee jerk anti-Americanism is pretty popular on the Internet these days. Much easier to look at the US as one big country rather than a union of fifty states, thousands of counties, and tens of thousands of towns and cities. Only in Europe can two towns five hundred miles away from each other be different and unique. Contrast that with the US where Hoboken is identical to Raleigh is identical to Chicago in the mind of a non-American..
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Ah, New Glarus is a treat. I went to a wedding outside Madison, and spent most of the weekend trying every flavor of New Glarus I could get my hands on. Tried 7 or 8 over all -- good stuff!
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i see your point now. yes, the price of american piss-water beer benefits from our cheap (and government subsidized) commodities. good beers benefit too, but proportionally less, since specialty ingredients comprise more of the mash.
"They were pure niggers." – Noam Chomsky
If you do not like yeast you do not like beer.
I know what you're getting at here, but the yeast itself does have a stronger and different flavor than the actual beer. A sip from the bottom of a bottle of homebrew, with many times the normal yeast, is not going to taste the same as a sip from the top which has minimal yeast. And I do find the yeasty components to be generally less pleasant.
But I'll back you any day on the claim that just because a cloudy wheat beer like a hefe may have more yeast floating in it, there's nothing at all wrong with it. In fact, a good hefe is quite sublime.
Note: The person you're replying to is invisible to me, so I can't see the specifics of whatever is being said. Just elaborating on a favorite personal topic.
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The prices between 'cheap' and 'craft microbrew' aren't that large. Around here even the cheap stuff averages out to more than $1/can for a 12-pack, while many of the craft microbrews are only $8 for a six-pack. The difference between $1.10 and $1.33 is not that huge.
The Quirkz Handbook of Self-Improvement for People Who Are Already Pretty Okay
Knee jerk anti-Americanism is pretty popular on the Internet these days. Much easier to look at the US as one big country rather than a union of fifty states, thousands of counties, and tens of thousands of towns and cities. Only in Europe can two towns five hundred miles away from each other be different and unique. Contrast that with the US where Hoboken is identical to Raleigh is identical to Chicago in the mind of a non-American..
Well, Americans invented the restaurant chains for a reason, no ?
Non-Linux Penguins ?
I think Budvar can't be called Budweiser since the Budweiser trademark is older. This dispute has been going on for ages and won't be settled anytime soon.
In the meantime Annheuser-Busch has diluted the trademark so much one could argue that it isn't a badge of quality anymore.
20 minutes into the future
I'm sure you can. I never saw it since because why would I look for it? There was a beer retailer in my block and they sold Augustiner. There. Job done. Splendid.
20 minutes into the future
They've been constantly raising the prices and this has been subject of endless arguments. Remember: there were beer riots over the beer prices in Bavaria not too long ago.
Now the riots still happen in form of angry letters to the yellow press. And politicians who are up for reelection greedily scoop the issue up.
The current price is around 9 Euro 50 cents. Plus deposit for the mug.
20 minutes into the future
You do not want to get drunk on whiskey. The stuff that gives it its flavour is also that wich will make you feel hungover.
And you might look like a complete arse if you simply quaffed it.
20 minutes into the future
If you want to go to the Oktoberfest, go around 11am. On a weekday. That's when the locals go. It starts dumbing down(even more) in the afternoon and you might be puked on in the evening.
Also if you have to go there on a weekend don't go on the middle weekend. This is when the European tourists turn up. They sleep in their cars and won't have had a shower for a couple of days. Hotel prices become silly in that season so this isn't as surprising as it sounds.
If you like the idea of the Oktoberfest, visit Munich in July(preferably a sunny one) and find one of the thousands of beer gardens and go there. You might even want to go skinny dipping at the Flaucher which I wouldn't recommend near the end of September.
20 minutes into the future
That was over the course of 12 hours and being a bachelor I only had a cold pizza the day before. We played football and I read a complete Terry Pratchett book. Funny thing is I felt definitely tipsy but not drunk.
20 minutes into the future
I prefer Schneiderweisse.
You should take the time to explain Bock. I've never seen it outside of Germany and it is a fascinating beer. It's very thick and it feels quite nourishing while getting you very, very drunk. If the name of the beer ends on -or you'd better know what you are getting yourself into.
20 minutes into the future
Tin cans? You know that beer in tin cans is effectively dead? The canning process involves more heat than beer is supposed to survive. Don't do that. Pasteurization is bad for beer.
In fact if you drink tin-canned beer in Germany people will immediately consider you base, low-brow, uneducated, unemployed, desitute and possibly of dubious body hygiene. Unless of course you are a punk. In which case tin-cans are absolutely acceptable.
20 minutes into the future
It's just that the beer that you actually get for your five minutes of work is not what you're talking about. Then again, there's also cheap and very shitty German beer! If you ever come here, don't drink Warsteiner or Löwenbräu, you might confuse it with Miller's or some other American tasteless piss.
I guess the US and Germany have that in common: you have to know which beer is good and which isn't, then you're set. Here in Germany, you'll want beer from private breweries, much like your Microbreweries: Augustiner, Irrseer, Kloster Scheyern, Hirschbräu or the most tasty Ayinger.
If a train station is a place where a train stops, what's a workstation?
Well, Americans invented the restaurant chains for a reason, no ?
They seem to do fairly well in Asia and Europe, no?
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
Meh, Warsteiner is not half bad; at least it has a bit of a bite in the taste. Since I know that the general German taste tends to the really strong Bohemian hops, I realise that to a German 'a bit of a bite' equals 'love in a canoe', but my material for comparison in mass market beers is Heineken or Amstel, which tend to use the blandest hops they can get while still getting away with calling their beer Pilsener.
"I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
When Budvar registered the Budweiser brand in the Austro-Hungarian Empire in 1895, they were the first to do so. And Budvar is incorporated in Budweis (as it was called then), and thus they had a natural right to describe their beer as being "from Budweis" or "being Budweiser". Anheuser-Busch didn't intervene, though they had the Budweiser brand registered in the U.S. since 1860. No one even thought in 1895, that this could lead to any problems, Anheuser-Busch selling their beer in North America, and Budvar serving the European market. It wasn't until the 1920ies before Anheuser-Busch Budweiser even reached Europe.
Even today, it's still possible to have the same trademark for the same product class registered to different entities in different countries.
Seems you can take a lot then. Around here (not that far away, btw), that would be 18 beers. I don't think I could walk a straight line after that, even if consumed over 12 hours. Much less read a book or play football. Though trying to hit the ball in that state could be fun. :-)
Proud member of the Ferengi Socialist Party.
I also usually "choose alternatives that don't cause a blatant poisoning effect on my body." Like water, soft drinks, and so on.
Unless of course I want the effects of alcohol on my system, relaxing with a beer or a drink, some verbal lubrication and so on.
Arguing that the only distinguishable difference between a non-alcoholic option and an alcoholic option is alcohol sounds like a pretty solid argument to me. Alcoholic drinks does not TASTE better, they are just more pleasant to drink due to the effects. You can argue differently if you wish,. but since taste is subjective and alcoholic drinks much like coffee and cigarettes and other poisons are an acquired taste, you would be arguing from a pretty weak position.
And feel free to call me an alcoholic - I drink alcohol of any kind maybe twice a year on average, so if that makes an alcoholic I'm quite comfortable being one.
True, it's way better to put vodka in the trap on top of the fermentation bottle than water. Water can let bacteria and fungi through alive, vodka kills them. Some people in my guild use water with a bit of disinfectant (machine washing up powder), but I don't want to risk spilling it into my beer when I remove the trap. At times I can be very clumsy and a beer with a soapy taste to it would suck.
Well, I might have a way, but it only works on a semi spherical planet in a vacuum.
Beers are sold in larger glasses when anticipating shitty service. 1 litre is too large - by the time you finish it, it's warm.
Perhaps the reason that they're so cheap is that the US is serving short measure?
... and today's pet project has
Its far less strict than the 1936 purity laws.
Too soon?
That really depends on style. A barley-wine or an imperial stout, definitely. An IPA, fresh is much better. The hop character fades with time. In fact, Stone Brewing just released "Drink By IPA" - bottles will be removed from shelves if not sold by the deadline. Of course, there is so much hype around the drink by that it wont sit on the shelf anyway, but the fact remains.
Which is rather unfortunate. The only beers we seem to export are the cheap crap ones you know of, the best ones tend to only be available locally or regionally. I have had some very good German, Belgian, and Austrian style beers that are on par with ones I have had in those countries. These tend to be craft beers or micro breweries, some even being available only at the restaurant, so they are difficult to impossible to find in my home state.
Time to offend someone
Here on Slashdot, we should all be drinking rum since rum is what pirates drink and everyone knows nerds love pirates.
And ninjas. But sake is nasty, i'll stick to the rum myself.
Looking forward to "Drink Like a Pirate" day.
I am anarch of all I survey.
In the USA we have several ranging from sad imitations to quite good representations of the style. Even the yeungling one is not terrible.
You know that I am just trying to get the glasses the cheapest way possible?
The beer is just something that goes in the fridge for whoever wants it. Generally I am serving beer I made, which I of course do not pasteurize.
Why when I am in Germany would I ever drink canned beer? I am going into bars and ordering by style only. I want the local beer in that case. In the states though almost all beer is sadly pasteurized.
Not so the Ale across the room/house/town/ocean is always better than the yellow lager in hand. Besides good beer does not need to be ice cold.
Beer should not be ice cold anyway. If it takes you that long to drink a beer maybe you should stick to tea and crumpets, Nancy.
When I was in Estonia about 14 years ago, you could buy 3 beers, recycle the 3 bottles and have enough to buy a 4th.
Lol! That's funny, but so true. Last time I was in Germany (Frankfurt am main) I ordered 3 things off a Chinese food menu that cost me ~10 euro. What I wasn't expecting to receive was enough rice to feed a small American town, half a pig, and so much beef and broccoli that i could of lived off of it for a week. I had forgotten that over in Germany, one doesn't need to spend an arm and a leg to eat hearty. OMG there was so much food!!! I still miss the doner kabab's :(
Why did I ever come back to the USA
The "20oz." glass holds "approximately" 20 ounces when full. I trust that the glass maker makes a proper 20 ounce glass, and that the bar fills it to logical capacity. IF anyone is to blame for selling 19 oz beers in "20 oz" glasses, it should be the people making the glasses, not the guy at the tap.
If you want to be a dick about things, why not simply require a fill marker on the edge of the glass marking the "full measured serving size" of the glass. But again, government policing of beer glasses is not my idea of "proper role" for government.
What eventually will happen, is that the glasses will be of "unspecified" capacity, and you'll buy a beer, and it if is too little for your money, you'll stop going there.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
By northeast, I guess I'm limited that to the tri-state area. But it's in how they sell beer there. If you want a decent beer, you have to drive 30+ minutes to a specialty beverage store as opposed to a quick 5 minute trip to any liquor store. I've just come to accept that when I visit NY, my choice is pretty much limited to Sam Adams.
Real men keep their vodka in the freezer (in Russia, in the outer coat pocket) and don't dilute it with lumps of ice.
Birds are not dinosaur descendants;birds are dinosaurs, for all useful meanings of "birds", "are" and "dinosaurs"
Because the whole point of TFA is talking about what the majority, averaged across the entire country, drinks in comparison to the average incomes.
retrorocket.o not found, launch anyway?
I used to live in western Mass and south-east Conn, and had plenty of great options in both of those places. I guess YMMV.
We hope your rules and wisdom choke you / Now we are one in everlasting peace
America being the cheapest place to get beer in my experience is because the beer is...well...cheap. I hated beer when I was in the USA. After I tried beer from England, Ireland, Germany, France and especially Belgium, it occurred to me that I hated American beer because it was bad (and cheap) beer. I also wonder if this is contributing to Americans being so overweight compared to the rest of the world...hmm....
"Imagination is more important than knowledge" - Einstein
Those beers are popular worldwide.
Beer is better everywhere else as well, only fair it cost a little more.
I want to live in the world where crap tastes like that...
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The only beer taste that has to grow on you are American "major" brews such as budweiser, coors, and a couple of others. It's just a way for people to accept it's bad flavor and dumb it down in their brain.
Aside from that, I've tasted beers that taste better than food itself!
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Nice passive aggressive way to try and "prove" beer doesn't taste good.
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Talk about generalization.
That's like a bicyclist saying they use a bike to enjoy the weather and get to work, where if you drive a car you just want to kill people.
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(insert rhetorical rebuttal in reverse of what was just said, yet a very personal choice but spoken as a global truth)
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In America, it is illegal to call anything beer that has a reasonable percentage of alcohol.
This line says it all, and the bolded out part indeed. "reasonable" is a word that is of perspective alone. If you're going to attempt to make fun of something, at least use amounts, instead of personal perspectives.
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You're on the right track, but lost it halfway through.
The more detail you take in the preparation, maintenance and temperature control, the better the product.
That is why the brews by the monasteries do taste better. If it's not made by a monastery, then it's made by a company that puts OCD style maintenance into the creation of it because it's damned good. I know good taste, and it's a punch-you-in-the-face difference, not subtle.
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hey.. hey .. hey *taps shoulder, laughing* hey.. hey..
why is an american beer like making sex stuff in a canoe? it's fucking close to water! haha
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Sounds like you need better food.
Find a child that has never tasted beer, give them a sip of the best, most wonderful tasting beer you have ever had without telling them that it is beer or that it is a "cool" drink. I guarantee you that they will spit it out immediately because it has a taste closer to that of rancid deer piss then what they would think of as a nice refreshing beverage.
Spooooon!!!!!
International bank UBS gathered data about the median wages and average retail prices of a 500mL (pint) beer in 150 countries mua ban xe oto
Quite.
I don't drink beer myself but I'm rather fond of letting the market sort it out.
Isn't that a good thing we like to call "competition"?
True but so is most the lager people in Europe drink. Beer is pretty good everywhere, but the most mass marketable and mass produceable is awful. and you're only going to see the beers that other countries produce in mass quantities and export. It's one of those rare cases where your lawn is always greener than your neighbor's.
It's also a matter of what you get used to. I grew up in New Zealand and spent significant time in Australia. Both have pretty poor quality beer in general (just like the US, one can find good microbreweries; but the general popular stuff is pretty bad). When I lived there, I considered Beck's to be a pretty decent drink.
Then, I moved to Germany.
Now, there's no way in hell I'd touch Beck's other than to move it out the way to get at something decent. Yet, Beck's is still very popular here and sells well. So, I could use my CURRENT viewpoint and say "bleh, everyone drinks the mass produced crap"; or I could use my OLD viewpoint and say "everyone drinks a pretty good beer".
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Other notable disgusting beers: Red Stripe, Sing Ha (the Chinese one, Shanghai water sucks, the Thai malt liquor is pretty good), Watney's Red Barrel, Guinness (awful stout), Heineken, All English brown ales, yeast infected beer (Hefe).
There are those of us who LOVE the taste of a good Hefeweizen. Personally, I like the somewhat thicker or heavier ones like Franziskaner and Weihenstephaner (arguably the oldest brewery still operating; at just under 1000 years). The somewhat "thinner" tasting ones like Paulaner, Erdinger and so on aren't what I'd recommend to someone trying Hefeweizen for the first time.
The important thing with Hefeweizen is to think of it as something "different" to beer. If you've spent your whole life drinking Pilseners and Lagers then compare it to those, you'll likely find it strange and unusual. If you go in thinking of it as something totally different however, you may find that you really enjoy it.
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I love Guinness (stout or drought) as well as English brown ales and hefeweizen such as erdinger.
Out of interest, have you tried other Hefeweizen beers? I ask simply because Erdinger is about my LEAST favourite. It's drinkable, but compared to Franziskaner or Weihenstephaner, it's leagues behind (for me).
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False, as evidence I present Erdinger and Paulaner. The latter is the Hefe by which all Hefes are judged.
Paulaner isn't bad, but if you're going to say it's the Hefe by which all Hefes are judged, I'll only agree if you call it the mid-point. Purely from my own personal tastes: If Paulaner is a zero; Erdinger is a negative five (for being too watery); Weihenstephaner is a positive four and Franziskaner is a positive five.
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