"The Plot to Destroy America's Beer"

Americans can choose from--I don't the exact number; maybe 1.3 trillion?--beers, but Business Week sees evil afoot. 

Comments

[John Thacker]

My personal theory is that pale lagers like Beck's and Stella Artois never were that different from American pale lagers, they just had the import cache. There are plenty of interesting European beers-- but they're not the pale lagers that tend to be the most commonly imported and best selling brands, just as the same is true of American craft beers versus lagers.

[JorgXMckie]

Face it, most people, and certainly most Americans don't drink beer for the taste. They drink it for the alcohol. That's probably the reason for something I noticed back in the late '80s -- Miller Lite is the number one choice for sorority girls. They can go to bars where guys are, drink beer with little to no taste and not that much alcohol, on average, and still say, "I'm so-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o wasted!"

Once I found out that there was beer that actually tasted good [as opposed, I guess to tasting okay], I was hooked on taste. I haven't had a mass-produced beer more than a few times in the past couple of decades, and that was because nothing else was available and I wanted to 'fit in' where I was.

As for people noticing the difference in mass-produced beer, back in the '70s my ex-wife [a very fine person] used to drink only Schlitz. They brought in a new brewmaster and he changed the hops in the beer. She said it "tastes like soap" and quit drinking it. It seems that the hops used actually did cause some people to get a soapy taste. Pretty much killed the brand. Sales dropped like a rock as I remember.