Hi Folks, newsgroup newbie here. I was recently thinking of what I would consider to be my top ten favorite all time beers. Some folks might say that my tastes are "wierd" or "all over the map" I've listed my favorites below. I'd love to hear some others' favorite beers as I've found a retailer willing to import anything I want from areound the world.....
1)Alexander Keith's Canada
2)Guiness Ireland
3)Warfteiner Germany
4)Amstel Netherlands
5)Carlsburg Denmark
6)Alpine Lager Canada
7)Stella Artois Belgium
8)Heineken Netherlands
9)Bass Pale Ale UK (England)
10)Mckewans UK (Scotland)
You may also want to try Budweiser Budvar..(called Czechvar in the USA and it may be called that also in Canada, not sure.) I am not referring to the Budweiser from the Anheuser-Busch company.
Keith's was bought by Oland Breweries in the 1920's I think. Oland Breweries was then bought by Labatt's in 1971, which is now owned by Interbrew. All Keith's products are brewed in Halifax, Nova Scotia. A few years ago they renovated and re-started the original Keith's brewery, making it the oldest working brewery in North America. If you have the chance take the tour.
Some folks, like me, would say that the beers in your list are, in general, pretty pedestrian. In many cases, you've just listed international versions of Budweiser or Miller: the biggest-selling ordinary everyday pale lagers from Denmark, the Netherlands, and Belgium, as well as a couple of mass-produced uninteresting British beers that barely capture a fragment of what great British ales should taste like.
Once moderately interesting, now a dumbed-down bland beer from Labatt.
Probably the most characterful of the beers on this list, which isn't saying a lot. There are better Irish stouts.
That's an "s" there on that thar German label: "Warsteiner." Ordinary bog-standard German megapils, not a whole lot more distinctive than Beck's.
Heineken's other big lager brand. Ho hum.
Carlsberg? Denmark's biggest brewer. Their best beers aren't exported, like the superb porter. You have no idea what you're missing.
*yawn*
Belgium's largest brewing company produces Belgium's biggest lager brand. Competes with the likes of Heineken. Woopee.
Congrats. You've gotten the two biggest Dutch megalagers on your list.
Oh joy. You've got one of the UK's biggest and most dumbed down ales, and not even a UK-owned brewery any more.
Macewan's. Only the finest from Scottish & Newcastle, the UK's largest domestically-owned brewery. Well, not really the finest. Whatever.
You *really* need to expand your horizons. Also, you've found a retailer willing to import anything I want from areound the world? Amazing, since retailers don't do importing in the USA and Canada. Which particular miracle-working retailer is this?
Oh, yes, on to some other favorites. Your list above covers four out of a huge number of different styles of beer. You've got some mass-produced pale lagers (a majority of your selections), a couple of mass-produced bottled English pale ales, and a mass-produced Irish stout.
What you don't have: British bottle-conditioned ales of any kind, or British ales from brewers that actually make decent, flavorful beer. Suggestions: Fuller's, Young's, Hop Back, Nethergate, and anything else you can find that you don't recognize. You might want to seek out British porters, too; Fuller's London Porter is a good example.
You do Belgian beers a terrible disservice by listing the likes of boring old Stella Artois. No Trappists, abbey ales, strong golden ales, lambics, small-brewer specialty ales, saisons ... ? It's harder to find interesting Dutch beers, unfortunately, but they exist.
Similarly, you haven't even scratched the surface with respect to German beers. No Alts, Koelsches, wheat beers, dark lagers, strong Bocks and Doppelbocks, none of 'em.
You've also left out beers from the Czech Republic and Austria, not to mention the USA and Canada (and I'll brook none of this "but there aren't any good beers made in North America" crap, either).
So here, go find these:
Fuller's London Porter Fuller's 1845 Bottle-Conditioned Ale Victory Prima Pils Schneider Weisse Schneider Aventinus Paulaner Oktoberfest Maerzen Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock St-Georgen Kellerbier Chimay (Red cap) Duvel
And those are just for starters. You've got a long way to go.
The best thing about "all time favourite beers" lists is that they can change, dramatically, if one thinks outside of the box and then acts on that thinking.
The Nova Scotia Liquor Corporation in Nova Scotia, Canada will try to import any beverage alcohol product in the world through their Shop The World program. The minimum quantity is one case. However there are some suppliers who will not ship anything less than 54 cases of wines or spirits or 192 cases of beer.
Perhaps then you could explain how all draught Keith's in Ontario is dispensed from 58.7 litre proprietary Brewers Retail kegs when, according to the AGCO, none are shipped out of the province and no bulk beer (non-kegged/bottled) is shipped in.
Also, you've found a retailer willing to import anything I want from areound the world? Amazing, since retailers don't do importing in the USA and Canada. Which particular miracle-working retailer is this?
Pretty well all of the Provincially owned monopoly liqour stores in Canada. Usually a minimum of a case.
I want proof. I posted a list of beers, and I'll post the list again if you want. I want to see someone up there in the GWN do it. Until then, buuuuuullshit. If this is true, how come people in Canada aren't organizing import-beer clubs, ordering cases of all kinds of incredible stuff from Germany, Belgium, the Czech Republic, and so on, and bragging about the rare beers they're getting that we can't get in the USA? FTM, you'd be getting cases of great stuff from just across the border, in mass quantities. Instead, all I ever hear from Canadians is about the sucky selections they get in their various and sundry provincially-run monopoly liquor shops, and the privately-run (and duopoly-owned) Beer Stores in Ontario don't seem terribly inspiring, either.
I don't live in NS, and I won't be visiting there soon, if ever. You know someone who does, or do you? I want proof. I've posted a kick-ass list of excellent beers, none of which are imported into North America. I want *proof* that this can be done. I want to know why people in NS haven't formed beer-buying clubs to take advantage of what should be the world's best selection of imported beer, since NSLiquor can get anything in the world.
I don't live in NS but, I have three daughters who do and they have been kind enough to buy the airline tickets for Gerry and I to visit them in October (for my 69th birthday). I checked out the NSLC Shop The World site
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and, when I get down there I think I'll have one of the girls fill out the form with a few off your list and send it off. I won't hold my hand over my a** while I'm waiting for the beer to arrive so, instead, I'll just content myself with a visit to a couple of decent NS breweries. Propeller Brewing
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and Garrison Brewing
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I found John Allen at Propeller to be a great guy to talk with when I was down there three years ago and I'm looking forward to another good visit. As far as the Ontario Liquor Control Board is concerned, you can order any of the beers they currently have in their warehouse in Toronto and have them delivered to your local outlet. They may have had them there for a year or two and, the warehouse is not refrigerated but, they tell me their turn over is so fast that it doesn't have time to stale. When I confronted them with a best before date that was 2 years out of date, the excuse was "Oh, that stuff, nobody buys that."
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