East Coasters don't know what beer is! Do they?

[Jenos Ridan]

A good friend of mine got back from a trip to Tennesee(sp?) and North Carolina, and he says that he couldn't find a store that sold anything other than the run-of-the-mill Bud, Miller, Coors, Steel Reserve, Michelob and other third-rate swill. Apparently, not even a high-end country club had anything decent. The two of us hail from the Pacific Northwest, the state of Washington to be somewhat percise. Here there is a great varity to select from; everything from imports like Beck's and Heineken to various local brews.

I just want so understanding here.

[dewey316]

Yeah, your lucky, the PNW is the beer capital of the US. Several years ago, Portland actualy took over, as the city with the most brewery's in the world. (it used to be Colonge, germany I think).

Being in WA, you get lucky, you get stuff like Mac & Jacs, that is really only availavle localy, being from Portland, I am in the same boat. Even when I travel to Cali, or other western states outside of the OR/WA section, you just can't get the high quality micro brews that you get in OR/WA.

Cheers!
John

[muy_thaiguy]

I live in a town that has 3 different campuses (after high school), 27 bars, hundreds of bored high school students that like to party, in a state that holds on to the cowboy tradition. So I think we have a few choices. Also, the 27 bars do NOT include liquor stores, of which would take to much time to count.

[tiberiusaquila]

au contraire, mon frere

[MeDeFe]

Beck's is something you fall back on when there's not much else around, granted there are far worse brands, but Beck's isn't really first choice.

[0ojakeo0]

umass amherst

[jonesthecurl]

As a Brit, I was expecting little from the US in terms of beer, and indeed in NJ that's what you get most of the time,(though the town next to mine has a decent microbrewery) - but when i've visited Philadelphia and (even more so) Baltimore there were a ton of bars with a huge choice.

So there is beer on this side of the States.

It's harder to get a good (alcoholic) cider here, as the word "cider" normally just means unfiltered apple juice (if I've got it right) in the US, and doesn't involve fermentation

[dewey316]

the word "cider" normally just means unfiltered apple juice (if I've got it right) in the US, and doesn't involve fermentation

You need to look for "Hard Cider", they are around, just not too many places making them. (shoot, it is very easy to make your own). The little small time micro brew by my house here, has a really good Pear Cider, I get that, topped with guiness all the time, like a sweet black and tan. yum.

[Neoteny]

Alcoholic cider... alcoholic cider... gin and juice?

[MeDeFe]

Alcoholic cider... alcoholic cider... gin and juice?

Not gin and juice, but heaven itself.

[spurgistan]

Alcoholic cider... alcoholic cider... gin and juice?

Rolling down the streets while smoking indo are all completely optional, yet oddly add to the hard cider experience.

But srsly.

Without bringing the beery wisdom of Iz Man into this debate, allow me to say that we "Easterners" (if we exist, anywhere) can be beer snobs the same as you out west, if not even more supercilious. The bar I go to definitely has beeahs for those of us who like beer that tastes like beer, and I live in a dump. So by extrapolation, I think your friend is wrong.

[tzor]

A good friend of mine got back from a trip to Tennesee(sp?) and North Carolina, ...

They are on the east coast? Oh yea the southern portion of it. Bah humbug, us Yankees on the east coast know good beer, drink good beer and make good beer. Here are a few from my neck of the east coast, Long Island.

Southampton Publick House
Brooklyn Brewery
Black Forest Brew Haus
Brick House Brewery

We on Long Island rock. We have superior beer. We have superior wine. (And if the idiots manage to build the largest indoor skiing facility in the world ... we will completely rule over the West Coast.) Long Island beer FTW!

[muy_thaiguy]

A good friend of mine got back from a trip to Tennesee(sp?) and North Carolina, and he says that he couldn't find a store that sold anything other than the run-of-the-mill Bud, Miller, Coors, Steel Reserve, Michelob and other third-rate swill. Apparently, not even a high-end country club had anything decent. The two of us hail from the Pacific Northwest, the state of Washington to be somewhat percise. Here there is a great varity to select from; everything from imports like Beck's and Heineken to various local brews.

I just want so understanding here.

Probably needed to look more for the moonshine then bar bought liquor. Tends to be the case for the deep South more often then not.

[Neoteny]

A good friend of mine got back from a trip to Tennesee(sp?) and North Carolina, and he says that he couldn't find a store that sold anything other than the run-of-the-mill Bud, Miller, Coors, Steel Reserve, Michelob and other third-rate swill. Apparently, not even a high-end country club had anything decent. The two of us hail from the Pacific Northwest, the state of Washington to be somewhat percise. Here there is a great varity to select from; everything from imports like Beck's and Heineken to various local brews.

I just want so understanding here.

Probably needed to look more for the moonshine then bar bought liquor. Tends to be the case for the deep South more often then not.

Moonshine is pretty much all I drink on major holidays. I love the burn...

[JACKAZZTJM]

your friend was probly goin to gas stations and shit all he had to do was go to a beer distributor

[detlef]

A good friend of mine got back from a trip to Tennesee(sp?) and North Carolina, and he says that he couldn't find a store that sold anything other than the run-of-the-mill Bud, Miller, Coors, Steel Reserve, Michelob and other third-rate swill. Apparently, not even a high-end country club had anything decent. The two of us hail from the Pacific Northwest, the state of Washington to be somewhat percise. Here there is a great varity to select from; everything from imports like Beck's and Heineken to various local brews.

I just want so understanding here.

Odd that they had that experience in NC. I run a restaurant in the Raleigh/Durham/Chapel Hill area and have never lived in a place where the people are more crazy about craft brews. We do wine dinners and beer dinners and the beer dinners always sell out practically overnight. Tons of hop heads in these parts and I can think of dozens of places off the top of my head with massive tap selections of only good stuff. Becks? Heineken? We're talking Belgian Ales and small production American brews.

We have a bunch of stores dedicated to nothing but craft beers and tons more that carry them along with the usual suspects. Of course, you're not going to find much cool at Krogers, but I don't recall it being much worse than Safeway was out there in that regard. Was he only looking at Gas Stations?

Getting good beer at a Country Club? What the hell did he expect? Those places are so vanilla.

Oh, and I come from the SF Bay Area, so it's not like I'm comparing it to a beer podunk town.

[jonesthecurl]

Alcoholic cider... alcoholic cider... gin and juice?

No, Apples that have been fermented - not alcohol added to apple juice.

Oddly, there are I believe only three things which will form drinkable alcohol without adding yeast or waiting for an airborne spore (usually of the wrong sort) - these are grapes, apples and coconuts. Fermented apples (probably in the form of "mead", which has honey as a sweetener and as extra food for the yeast to bring the alcohol level up) predated beers and ales by a considerable amount.

[Iz Man]

How could I not respond to this post.

The easy answer is your friend just didn't look very hard.
The craft/microbrew explosion that has taken place over the past 10-15 years has produced a couple thousand small breweries across the country where only a couple dozen were prior.
It would be ridiculous to name quality east-coast breweries as there are just to many to list. The same for west coast and across "fly-over" country breweries.

I wouldn't label any state or region the "beer capital" of the U.S.
Do Oregon & Washington have an incredible beer "climate"? Absolutely.
Are they the "beer capital" of the U.S.? No more than Colorado, where the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) is held, the largest beer festival in the world (yes, bigger than Munich Oktoberfest). Or California, whose breweries own 17 gold medals from 2007's GABF. Oregon had 6 gold medals, same as the eastern state of Pennsylvania BTW.

Now I am personally no big fan of the "Big-3", Bud/Miller/Coors (BMC), but what these American breweries have contributed to the beer world is nothing short of astounding.
Do you know what is the top selling beer in the world? Budweiser.
Budweiser supplies 10% of all the world's beer consumption. That is a MASSIVE amount of beer, and to produce such a large amount and still maintain a consistent product is an amazing feat.

So there are plenty of quality breweries on the east coast, as there are across this great country.
Just raise a pint and cheer for the American brewing industry as a whole, and don't forget to celebrate on April 17th, the 75th anniversary of the repeal of prohibition.

CHEERS

[Neoteny]

Alcoholic cider... alcoholic cider... gin and juice?

No, Apples that have been fermented - not alcohol added to apple juice.

Oddly, there are I believe only three things which will form drinkable alcohol without adding yeast or waiting for an airborne spore (usually of the wrong sort) - these are grapes, apples and coconuts. Fermented apples (probably in the form of "mead", which has honey as a sweetener and as extra food for the yeast to bring the alcohol level up) predated beers and ales by a considerable amount.

I'm being facetious.

[Iz Man]

Fermented apples (probably in the form of "mead", which has honey as a sweetener and as extra food for the yeast to bring the alcohol level up) predated beers and ales by a considerable amount.

Fermented apples do make cider.
Mead is fermented honey, or honeywine. No apples involved. Honey is 100% fermentable and therefore would not "sweeten" a fermented beverage as all the sugars are "eaten".
Mead with fruit added (e.g. berries) is called "melomel".
Mead with cider is called "cyser".
Mead with spices is called "metheglin"
Mead with grapes is called "pyment".
Add some barley and hops to mead and you get "braggot".

[bedub1]

Whats the big deal with Cider's over there on the other side of the pond? Here in the states I would consider a cider to be part of the "Bitch Beer" category that includes wine coolers etc for people who can't handle the taste of beer or wine or liquor....usually young teenage girls.

[protectedbygold]

A good friend of mine got back from a trip to Tennesee(sp?) and North Carolina, and he says that he couldn't find a store that sold anything other than the run-of-the-mill Bud, Miller, Coors, Steel Reserve, Michelob and other third-rate swill. Apparently, not even a high-end country club had anything decent.

I don't know what to say. This is just so tragic I'm sorry he had to go through that experience.

[reminisco]

your friend was probly goin to gas stations and shit all he had to do was go to a beer distributor

yeah, your buddy couldn't possibly have seen an accurate sampling...

at the beer distributors in Pennsylvania or the liquor stores in Jersey, you can find beer from all over the world, including the local micro-breweries, like Flying Fish, Brooklyn, Yards, etc.

and that begs the question. can you get those beers in Washington state? what about Yuengling Lager? is that sold nationwide?

i'm curious... cause within the last few years, i've been seeing Yuengling in places where you'd never have seen it before, like in NYC, and even up in Connecticut or Taxachussetts.

[tzor]

Whats the big deal with Cider's over there on the other side of the pond? Here in the states I would consider a cider to be part of the "Bitch Beer" category that includes wine coolers etc for people who can't handle the taste of beer or wine or liquor....usually young teenage girls.

What? Did you know that Hard Apple Cider is as American as Apple Pie? Did you know that John Adams (unlike his older beer drinking cousin who never amounted to anything) drank Hard Apple Cider every day for breakfast? And he never got the gout like Ben Franklyn.

The only problem is that no one here makes the good stuff anymore, you have to get imports from across the pond. I'm going to have to speak to my friends upstate NY, because they obviously have the best apples in the universe so we should have the best hard apple cider.

(And hey we do, Doc's Hard Apple Ciders!!)

[Iz Man]

Did you know that John Adams (unlike his older beer drinking cousin who never amounted to anything) drank Hard Apple Cider every day for breakfast? And he never got the gout like Ben Franklyn.

Sam was an accomplished brewer & patriot. Hardly worthy of "accomplishing nothing".

I'm going to have to speak to my friends upstate NY, because they obviously have the best apples in the universe so we should have the best hard apple cider.

Good, quality hard cider is indeed hard to find; but that's just simply due to "demand side" economics. There simply isn't a large enough demand for it, hence the lack of a quality commercial product.
I can vouch for the apple quality in upstate NY, as I grew up in Syracuse & lived there for 20+ years. I'd be hard pressed (no pun intended) to find better apple crops in the world.
My uncle used to make his own hard cider. In the winter he would put one of his 5gal barrels outside and let it freeze. Tap out the center of the barrel and have some good, and potent applejack brandy.
Warm it up on the stove, throw a cinnamon stick in your glass and chill by the fire on a cold upstate NY February............... very nice........