I know I write this every month, but for those of you who are new this is The Session. The Session is an idea whereby beer bloggers come together once a month and blog about a similar topic. This month the Session is being hosted by Ding of Ding’s Beer Blog, and he asks:
‘What the hell has America done to beer?‘, AKA, ‘USA versus Old World Beer Culture‘.
Now I must confess, my experience of American beers is pretty poor. I’ve tried Coors light, I didn’t like it. I’ve tried Budweiser, I didn’t like it much either. I tried Samuel Adam’s, which was alright, ditto Sierra Nevada. I’m sure there have been a few others but for the most part I don’t have access to anything very interesting from America. What I have tried , however, are lots of American style beers which British brewers are coming up with.
The American’s seem to have a mantra of taking an idea, in this case beer, and doubling everything (because bigger is always better) and claiming it must be better because there is more hops in it . Then the new idea catches on, eventually it becomes its own thing and now the world copies the American way of doing things. Now the American craft beer scene is permeating it’s way into the British industry and we’re slowly seeing more and more American inspired beers, which were originally inspired by old style beers in the first place. Brewdog’s Hardcore IPA (9.2%), Fuller’s Wild River (4.5) and Adnam’s Innovation (6.7%) are just a few which spring to mind.
This is not a bad thing, the new beers are great. The beer styles which were available before are still here and we can still go to the pub and enjoy them too, but on top of that is a new option.
To me it seems like it’s just the next step, moving on and experimenting with something different. The world changes every day in all sorts of different ways, why should beer stay the same? It just happens that this particular leap in the evolution of beer has happened to take place in America. So to sum up, what have the American’s done to beer? Nothing beer is still here, the old styles are still here and it can still be found being served in the old pubs that it always was. There just happens to also be another option as well.