What's your favorite beer?
 

I did a search and pulled up a bunch of threads dealing with beer, but didn't see any asking the most basic question: What's your favorite?

My normal go-to beer is Stella Artois - light and crisp making it easy to have more than a few :D

On a recent trip I was turned on to Chimay. They were serving the Chimay Rouge at this bar and I loved it. Came back and placed a special order and Chimay Bleue is amazing, though a bit pricey I guess. The balance to that is since its 9% ABV you aren't drinking quite as much. Add to that the fact that the bottles are 750ml or 1.5L :eek: (they do have smaller bottles but I can't find them around here). Great stuff though ^

I've mentioned this before but it's worthy of repeat - in some parts of the UK Stella is known as a pint of wife-beater.

It depends on a few things: weather, mood, location, what's on tap? At home, bottles of Anchor Steam (nice to know what the Maytag family did with their money) or Sierra Nevada. At my local bar, they have Ommegang Ale (either Rare Vos or Hennepin) from upstate New York on tap, along with Chimay wheat for hot days. If I'm in the UK, an ESB on tap works, in Germany a Kolsch or something else local (Riegeler is my overall favorite, but not exactly easy to find outside Freiburg), etc.

So it all depends. There is no one best beer, except for the one you're drinking at the moment :-)

Bob

While sipping a delicious pint of Harp in Dublin the bartender leaned over the counter to inform me that Harp is referred to as Tinker's Piss by the locals. I took the hint and after finishing it off I went right back to Guinness! My all time favorite hands down.

Nothing could prepare for the derogatory term used by Australian’s when referring to XXXX. I think if I typed it out I would be banned from FlyerTalk.

lol

Like stated above, depends on if/what I'm eating, mood, weather, tap/bottle, etc:

Fat Tire
1554
Cutthroat Porter
90 Shilling
Laughing Lab
Negra Modolo
Toohey's Old
Guinness
Bass Pale Ale
Winter Warlock
Double Barrel Double Bock

I was with a friend at a bar in Sydney who got the same treatment after ordering a Foster's.

Mass market beer - Guinness - preferably in a pub in Ireland. They take much better care of it there.

Micro - Nut Brown Ale from the Bluegrass Brewing Co in Louisville.

Light mass produced cheap beer - Labatt Blue.

Any local lager bier in Germany
Leffe in French speaking parts of europe
Blue Moon in eastern to midwest US

I agree with tev9999 that Labatt Blue is a good utilitarian beer

Boulevard Unfiltered Wheat

Pyramid Hef

in no particular order

Yuengling Traditional Lager
Chimay Red
Duvel
Goose Island Harvest Ale
Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale

Great answer! Bukowski in Boston, my home tavern (or should I say my tavern home? :D) has at least 12 microbrews on tap and 1 on cask (all constantly changing based on season and availability) and 100+ varieties in the bottle, so I'm spoiled for choice. I'm constantly switching up as I roam through the beer universe, with preferences skewed toward ales, fuller but not overly hoppy lagers, and porters. I prefer pints from the tap, especially since the taps at Bukowski are scrupulously maintained and the chill and carbonation are just right for me.

But I would be willing to throw some faves out there, just for fun:

• Favorite Beer After Mowing the Lawn on a Hot Day: tossup between Rolling Rock ("the glass-lined tanks of Old" Latrobe, PA) and Bohemia (MX)
• Favorite Beach Beer: Leon (MX), unattainable in the US (y sin límon, por favor ;))
• Favorite Session Beer: Brooklyn Brewery Brown Ale (Brooklyn, NY)
• Favorite Beer to Drink While Contemplating the Universe and/or My Navel: Berkshire Brewing Co. Coffeehouse Porter (South Deerfield, MA)
• Favorite Beer at Any US Airport: Sam Adams Boston Lager (Boston, MA)
• Favorite 6-Pack to Go at the Gas Station: Yuengling Traditional Lager (Pottsville, PA) or Anchor Brewing Co. Anchor Steam Beer (San Francisco, CA)
  

Boddingtons
Piton Lager

You people are a bunch of elitist....

Coors Light

and that's all I have to say about that.

Sam Adams All the Way!
 

My favorite beer without question is Sam Adams. For my bday this year, Im making a beer and points run---staying at Marriott in Boston and visiting the Sam Adams brewery.

Kilkenny.

My favorite beer is Baltika syem or 7.
A close second is Baltika 9

Being that these are hard to find in the US, I usually settle for a Heineken.
Hard to beat that taste.

Best Heineken ever was at the brewery in Amsterdam. Tasted so fresh^

Hey bro, Coors is kewl but there's a whole world of beer out there...switch out sometime and enjoy. Heck, if I'd stuck to the brew of my people it would have been PBR (Pabst Blue Ribbon for the uninitiated) or Schlitz or Miller, but I've just been curious all my life, and it's served me well. And with the proliferation of microbrews in the USA and good stuff elsewhere (like in MX), there are a lotta beers to try :D

If I'm outside in the summer all day, Coors Light is perfect. Well, any of those watered down light American beers (Bud light, coors light, miller light, etc.).

1) Heineken
2) Carlsberg
3) Guinness
4) Hinano (means I'm in Tahiti!)
5) San Miguel (means I'm in Ibiza...ahhh.) :D

Saying that some beer is better and some is worse is as nonsensical as classifying women according to the color of the hair: some men like blondes, some like brunettes and some like redheads.

However if I must choose, I will take a brunette and a Budvar from the Czech Republic now available in the U.S. under the Czechvar label.;)

Chimay Bleu is my standard favourite. Please note that the big bottles with blue labels (at least the ones I've seen!) don't contain Chimay Bleu, but Chimay Grand Reserve, which has a taste similarly complex to the Bleu but a bit more refined. I also drink some other trappist beers (e.g. La Trappe, Le Fruit Defendu)

Outside of Chimay, I like wheat beers and especially the divine beverage called Kronenbourg Blanc. Wetherspoons is the biggest pub chain in the UK and many of its outlets stock it on tap, complete with a "perfectly chilled guarantee" (temperature is closely monitored and has to stay within the 1-3 C range) and at a very reasonable price to boot!
Bocks are also nice (Amstel Bock is the only one I've had recently). Ales and stouts taste completely wrong to me; feels like a cheap, watered-down poison. Much as I like the Czech Republic, I am not a fan of pilsener (I can have one with lunch but that's it), while lagers are only good when it's REALLY hot (30C and up), and even then a good wheat beer is preferable!

Haven't heard Laughing Lab mentioned in ages.... I really like Bristol Brewing's Mass Transit.

Over all, I have been quite impressed with the quality of many of the beers in the Caribbean, as has my husband. In May I was in Tahiti and had a few microbrews and all I can say is if their industry is going in that direction, then I can't wait to go back.

Leinenkugel's (or Leinie's) from Chippewa Falls, Wisconsin. A nice variety to choose from - Creamy Dark, Red, Oktoberfest, and an interesting Berry Weiss.

Favorite is Kolsch - I like Paffgen (on tap only) and Reissdorf (tap & bottled)

Fuller's London Pride and Marston's Burton Bitter as an all to frequent memory of student days (and nights) in London.

Ebisu and Sapporo with Japanese food.

And Weihenstephan Weizen in summertime.

Root. :)

1. Gambrinus
2. Stella Artois
3. Amstel Light
4. Asahi

McEwan's
Leffe (Beligan beer that I can find at my local liquor store)

McEwan's is very good but it is a malt ale. Very heavy and quite potent. I drink 2 at one sitting at the most, or I risk a nasty hangover. Needs to be at cellar temp - so my balcony for 2/3 of the year works nicely.

Leffe - very tasty Belgian beer. Although in Belgium, pretty much any local beer I had - from the lighest ales to the darkest/strongest monastery brew - was superb.

Baltika - Russian beer, with various numbers. Liked it when I was in Russia, but difficult (and expensive) to find in my area.

I had a McEwan's Scottish Ale in Bermuda almost 30 years ago, and it was awesome---my first non-US beer, and it spoiled me forever in making me favor ales over lagers. A true beer epiphany :D

First requirement for a vacation spot: must have good beer available! And finding good local beers is a plus for any spot. I'd love to see more folks comment on venues they've visited and the locally produced brews that made them memorable.

What was your favorite Baltika?

If you are in LA i know of a place where you can get it

I am surprised no one has mentioned Newcastle Brown Ale - my favorite since 1990!

Thank God for Microbrews and imports...Not being snobby, just respecting my taste buds... ;)

My favorite style overall is Pale Ale, which explains my top 2:

1) Sierra Nevada
2) Red Hook
3) Chimay Grand Reserve
4) Any local beer while in Germany
5) Bohemia - The best Mexican beer IMHO
6) Baltika no. 7 (used to find it in So Cal, now I can't)
7) Quilmes
8) Tiger
9) Pilsner Urquel
10) Labatts Blue

Westveleteren 12: the smallest of the trappist breweries and many beer snobs favorite. I've only seen it once in the U.S. It was $17 for an 11 ounce bottle at a package store in Florida. I paid 7 Euros for one at the Gollum in Amsterdam, worth every cent. They do not have a distributor and the only way to get it is to go to the brewery in Watou. There is a 2 case limit and it's around 1.5 Euro per bottle there.
The abbey version made from the same recipe is the St. Bernardus Abt 12. It's priced around $8 for the 750 ml in the U.S.; so good I named a German Shepherd after it.

From what I understand the Chimay Grand Reserve is the Chimay Bleu that has been bottle-conditioned. i.e. there is live yeast added to the bottle. Notice the residue at the bottom of the Grand Reserve.

"Ales and stouts taste completely wrong to me; feels like a cheap, watered-down poison."

I hate to tell you but Chimay and La Trappe are ales. :D

Stealing An Answer from Fred Eckhardt
 

"What's your favorite beer" is as unanswerable as "what's your favorite food" would be. Just as I'd hate to eat only one thing for every meal, so would I refuse to restrict myself to a single brand or style of beer. As others have also noted, what beer I order will depend on where I am, what I might be ordering to eat, and simply by what I feel like drinking at that particular moment. (I mean, with apologies to the vegetarians, aren't there times you want seafood and other times when you crave red meat?)

So I'll answer your question by quoting the dean of U.S. beer journalists, Fred Eckhardt of Portland, Oregon. I'm lucky enough to know the man -- Fred is in his 80s, hasn't slowed down a bit and is still a marvelous drinking buddy who, after leaving the USMC, has devoted more than half a century to fine beverages, good food and beautiful women. I don't know any writer on the beer beat who doesn't want to grow up to be Fred Eckhardt.

But, with his reputation and background, he's regularly asked, "what's the best beer" or "what's your favorite beer". And I've never heard a better answer to either question than Fred's...

"The one in front of me."

Bootleg Westvleteren 12 in Virginia's Tidewater
 

It's available -- but not on the menu -- at The Bier Garden in Portsmouth, Virginia. I think their price is something above $20 per bottle.

HOWEVER, if they don't know you or somebody in your group, the bartender may deny they have any.

That's because it's very illegal to sell that beer in the United States. Nobody has any import or distribution agreement with the brewery so by definition it's bootleg and (most important to the government types) nobody has paid any state or federal taxes on it.

I'm not sure who originated the following saying. I've seen it attributed to Groucho Marx, but it may be someone else. At any rate, it follows in the same vein:

"I'd rather have a free bottle in front of me than a pre-frontal lobotomy"
:-)

Certainly, beer that is free is also often a "favorite beer"!

Ah, yes! I had read it somewhere but forgot it later

"Ales and stouts taste completely wrong to me; feels like a cheap, watered-down poison."

You're right. I was referring to English/Irish ones :D