- Americans don’t really get exposed to good lagers and pilseners. We get Bud[1], not Budvar. So there’s no expectation that beers in those categories could possibly be “good”. IPAs don’t have the same baggage.
- For the same reason, it’s easier to differentiate from the big brands on a supermarket shelf. You get to be your own category, not just the more expensive version of what people think of as regular beer.
- Maximalist American food culture. It’s like when bacon became a meme and suddenly everything was covered in bacon. Fatty ramen became a trend for the same reason: it’s a simple, super-saturated flavor that’s easy to crank up to 11.
- Like you mention, it’s easier to brew.
The worst is when you’re given a menu of 40 indistinguishable IPAs all called like “HOPULATOR 9000” or whatever. Sometimes I just want to go out for a brewski, why did that have to get complicated?
[1]You know what? Bud on draft is fine. It’s not the best, but I like it, and I’ll certainly take a $3 pint of bud over a $9 snifter of “gnarly Steve’s surfs up mango hop smasher” or whatever.
Oh man, was with you till the very end. Most places will have something on tap that qualifies as real beer. PBR, Yuengling, Stella, and Pilsner Urquell are all great lagers. Confronted with 40 taps of HOPULUS PRIME (or whatever), I'll happily swill them all day in a non-ironic, non-cheapskate, non-hipster fashion. But rice adjuncts? No thank you.
I also enjoy all of those more than bud (except maybe PBR), but it’s worth pointing out that they’re all brewed with corn. There’s nothing wrong with that, but it’s not any better than using rice. It’s still a grain sugar that isn’t barley.
For what it's worth, the defining characteristic of that style of beer (american pilsner) is being brewed with corn or rice. There's absolutely nothing wrong with using rice/corn in beer, anymore than there being something wrong with using wheat in beer. Corn gives it a distinct flavor. Try a kentucky common sometime. It's basically an amber brewed with a significant percentage of corn.
I think bud actually only uses rice and 6-row (i.e. old-style, harder to convert) barley. I could be mistaken about that, though.
At any rate, the adjunct grains used in US "megabrews" aren't just there because they're cheaper than barley. They're very much a part of the flavor profile, and a big part of the style. Whether or not you consider that a positive is personal preference, but they're not bad beers at all.
Well, "old style" isn't quite the right term, but 6-row is generally produces a bit lower percentage of fermentable sugars and has more proteins. It's not something you typically brew a beer with unless you're using adjunct grains or some two row in addition.
On the flavor part, I agree. I prefer Miller if we're going with the big breweries. Doesn't make it a bad beer, though, just a lighter profile.
> Fatty ramen became a trend for the same reason: it’s a simple, super-saturated flavor that’s easy to crank up to 11.
Ehhh, I wouldn't necessarily put "fatty" ramen in that position.
Legitimate ramen from Japan's original, basic purpose was food that could be eaten quickly by salarymen late at night/on their way home after work/drinking.
There's huge variety in ramen, and I think the fattier ones were made for a purpose too. Not just flavor, though that definitely is a result as well, but also because of the kind of environment there was in Japan, where the people there wanted something a bit heavier in flavor in a hot bowl on cold nights.
> Americans don’t really get exposed to good lagers and pilseners. We get Bud[1], not Budvar. So there’s no expectation that beers in those categories could possibly be “good”. IPAs don’t have the same baggage.
Pretty much every major craft brewery nowadays has a high-quality pale session beer. Sometimes it's a pilsner (both Euro style and American pre-Prohibition style), sometimes it's a golden ale, and sometimes it's a Kölsch, and hell I've even seen one brewery with a Dortmund-style lager, but regardless of which it is, they're typically among the brewery's top sellers.
They're not the sexy beers that grab headlines, but they're actually the ones doing a lot of the heavy lifting for the brewery's bottom line.
Ten years ago, you would have been absolutely right, but pale session beers have come back in a huge way, and we now have no shortage of them. They exist, they're high-quality, and they sell, but you don't see people talking about them much because there's just not much to talk about. It's the beer you order multiples of when you're hanging out with your friends and don't want to get too full or too drunk too fast, and there's nothing particularly _interesting_ about that.
- Americans don’t really get exposed to good lagers and pilseners. We get Bud[1], not Budvar. So there’s no expectation that beers in those categories could possibly be “good”. IPAs don’t have the same baggage.
- For the same reason, it’s easier to differentiate from the big brands on a supermarket shelf. You get to be your own category, not just the more expensive version of what people think of as regular beer.
- Maximalist American food culture. It’s like when bacon became a meme and suddenly everything was covered in bacon. Fatty ramen became a trend for the same reason: it’s a simple, super-saturated flavor that’s easy to crank up to 11.
- Like you mention, it’s easier to brew.
The worst is when you’re given a menu of 40 indistinguishable IPAs all called like “HOPULATOR 9000” or whatever. Sometimes I just want to go out for a brewski, why did that have to get complicated?
[1]You know what? Bud on draft is fine. It’s not the best, but I like it, and I’ll certainly take a $3 pint of bud over a $9 snifter of “gnarly Steve’s surfs up mango hop smasher” or whatever.