where can a person find a descent ale in germany?

Germany is extremely provincial when it comes to beer. To the average German, the only good bier is that brewed within 10-20 miles of the place of their birth, and everything else is CRAP. This can be both a good thing and a bad thing. The good part of it is that you get true regional identity and variation in beer styles. The bad part of it is a lack of variety at any given locale. Your best option is to travel around the country and explore the regional variation. If you want hoppy ales, get thee to Duesseldorf.

No. In England your varitey is bitter, bitter, bitter and more bitter. I like bitter a lot, and it's interesting to explore what variation there is in the style, but if it's American-Style gross variation you want, England will be a disappointment.

Belgium is the *best* thing for sheer variety. Go there.

Because the varities you're missing generally were not brewed within

I disagree. American ale brewers play around a LOT with malt and hops, but their experience with yeast is generally pitiful. English ales are all about yeast character, which does not translate well in export. What do we get in America? The "Chico" yeast, clean as a whistle that practically power-washes a beer, and horror-stricken whining at the yeast-based character of Ringwood beers. Any amateur can throw more hops in the kettle, a hop-sack in the secondary. It takes some skill to work a yeast.

Now this part makes sense. Though I could find a rauchbier on par with Bamberg in the U.S.: DeGroen's Rauchbock is excellent. Been over there, drank that, been to Baltimore, drank that: damn good both places.

Even with the late blossoming of breweries in SD, it's not exactly a brewing hotspot, and it certainly is not a microcosm of the country. I don't know of any place that is, with the possible exception of Baltimore. Besides, your statement's irrelevant: I didn't say that the yeast strains were not AVAILABLE to American brewers. They just don't use them; MOST American brewers don't. They rely on the simpler, more predictable flavor components of malt and hops.

We've been around this subject before. Based on my exepriences with a whole buncha yeasts, there are only a few strains that take inordinate skill to work with. One may choose from dozens upon dozens of interesting yeast strains that don't go gaga if you look at the cross-eyed. And only one of them is the (crisp, clean) Chico strain.

I'd bet you can also find a US-brewed pilsner on par with some of the German pilsners.

-- Joel Plutchak Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"Resorting to personal harassment is a tactic of desperation."

There just might be some difference in scaling up to a commercial batch. Will you allow that? But I'll admit, the major problem is not the skill of the brewer: it's the consumer, or maybe the brewer/marketer's low opinion of the consumer. The Chico strain may be only one of them, but it's quite prevalent. I don't see any reason to change my basic premise: American brewers (for whatever reasons) tend to change their beers with (and get most of the beers flavor from) hops and malt, rather than yeast.

Tried making a Rauch once. We thought the best name would have been forest fire. A wee bit to much smokey grain. Had a real taste of the out doors.

kegwasher

I'm no expert on American beers, but I through in my thoughts anyway. Maybe part of the issue is the tendency of American brewers to produce a wide range of different beer styles. A British or German brewer will only produce a narrow range of styles and can therefore pick one yeast that best produces the flavours he or she wants in those beers. Using multiple yeasts in a commercial brewery is a major pain unless you have serious lab facilities, so American brewers are more likely tempted to use a relativly neutral yeast strain that can do an adequate job of a large range of different styles, than a more specialist strain that would do one style in all its glory. Just a thought.

That should, of course, have been "... I'll throw in my thoughts..."

Whoa, dude. Talk about your thread drift.

Trappist is a strictly controlled designation, and currently applies to six breweries, all run by Trappist monasteries in Belgium: Achel, Chimay, Orval, Rochefort, Westmalle, and Westvleteren. There used to be a seventh, Koningshoeven/La Trappe, in the Netherlands, but in spite if much hemming and hawing back and forth, it's not considered a Trappist brewery any more.

Abbey ales are beers brewed by secular breweries, in general, that take names with abbey-associated meanings, and the beers are meant to resemble those brewed by the likes of the Trappist breweries, but in general, have very little monastic association aside from the names - Leffe, Grimbergen, Affligem, Ciney, and the list goes on.

Some of the abbey ales are still brewed by relatively small regional breweries. Some, though, are brewed by multinationals; Leffe is the most obvious example, as it's part of Interbrew's family of brands.

Like which ones?

No. Trappist is a designation, abbey ales a broad range of styles that are based on some (not all - I doubt there's an abbey version of Orval) Trappist styles.

Not a bad thought. However, the original premise makes one accept as fact that the Chico strain is (over)used by the majority of brewers in the US. I don't accept that premise, as I don't have to go very far to find decent brewpub/brewery lager, Weizen, Koelsch-style ales, Belgian-style ales, etc. Surely none of those beers are brewed with a bland ale yeast.

-- Joel Plutchak Boneyard Union of Zymurgical Zealots

"Resorting to personal harassment is a tactic of desperation."

Pish. The original premise merely proposes that the Chico strain (and similar clean strains) is the workhorse of American small brewers. Sure, there are lagers (though there are STILL brewpubs making ale-yeast "lagers"), weizens, and Belgian-types out there, but all put together, they're probably fewer than the "clean" ales.

I don't know the current status, but at one point the Confederation of Belgian Brewers had a designation for "Historical Abbey Beers" which were given to beers that had once been brewed at a abbey and that the abbey still received some financial benefit (i.e. a license fee). It was not restricted to small brewers, as Leffe, Grimbergen and Maredsous were on the list. Also, not all were Trappist monastaries -- Benedictines, Norbertines, and Cistercians of common observance were included.

Fred Waltman Los Angeles, CA

I'm not getting into a pissing contest about your local breweries. Let's talk about the major point, to which you didn't reply: the most popular yeasts in American craft brewing are relatively clean ale yeasts. Discuss.

It's just silly to argue otherwise. Of course there are exceptions, and any beer geek worth his salt can name 20 of them without serious thought, but the neutral-profile ale yeast is definitely the workhorse of the American Craft Brewing industry. If one used sales as the yardstick, I would bet the farm that the *vast* majority of American made ales--80%? 90%? even higher?--were in this category.

You might like to try telling them why the Reinheitsgebot is a load of bullshit too.

No offence but....I could really care less about the technical aspects of fine brewing ie yeast strains; it's the final results/end product that either impress me or leave me wanting for more. So far, Stone's has given me a lot of joy and now I'll be giving Alesmith a chance to duplicate that success. Both are SD based MBs.

Thanks to the internet and on line shopping, I've had beers that ranged the entire gambit of styles, both original(from source country) and US interpretations. I feel blessed so...enough said.

Best regards, Bill

No offence taken (or offense, either, for you Americans), but the point is that with a wider range of yeasts you could be enjoying even more varieties of excellent ales. Instead, you get some American brewers making fun of Brit ales for being hop-less, while they miss the point that their own beers are ester-lazy.