Re:Beer, is there anything it can't hurt?
by hey! (33014)

Actually, American versions of Pilsners, while evolving towards lightness, didn't become insipid until after Prohibition. When Prohibition was repealed, Americans were ready to drink anything. Only a few breweries left, which had survived selling malt for malted milk and root beer, provided a thirsty nation with beer that you could drink a lot of, very quickly.

I've done a bit of home brewing, and the funny thing is that an American style beer is actually an extremely difficult style of beer to make. Replacing much of the malt with rice means that you end up with a very light flavor. The tiniest off flavor is immediately detectable. Get anything wrong with the fermentation, or the water, or the storage and it tastes really bad.

In contrast, I've made Russian Imperial Stouts that have a starting specific gravity so dense the hydrometer wouldn't go into the wort, it just sat on top. Practically speaking, the wort was syrup. While the recipe is complicated in that it has lots of stuff in it, it's actually quite easy to succeed with. You could probably brew it with swamp water, and the three types of malt plus roasted buckwheat would beat the swamp muck taste into a mere "peaty overtone".

When I started homebrewing, wife was afraid I was going to turn into an alcoholic, but in fact there are easier ways to get drunk than spending a day mixing sticky ingredients in carefully sterilized equipment then nursing a yeast culture for weeks before you get something minimally drinkable. I got interested in brewing for its chemistry-set aspects; I'd been mucking around with sour dough and yogurt, and moved onto brewing as a logical next step.

The thing is, I still don't drink very much, and I give away most of what I make. For myself, I'd bottle my beer in six ounce bottles if I could, since I'm more interested in the flavor and feel of the beer than its effects. But I do know a lot more about what is a good beer and what is a bad beer than before. And American "Pilsners" are not bad beers, they're just uninteresting beers (and they certainly aren't the same thing as "real" Czech style pilsners). Since, when I am thirsty, I prefer water to beer, and when I am drinking beer, I prefer complex to simple, I don't bother with beers like Bud. But they have their place; I've heard them called "lawnmower beers".