Tuesday September 15 2020 07:56, from Ward Dossche -> Charles Pierson:
WD> As for the American breweries ... ny first experience was 1972 as a WD> 22yr old and I was appaled at what Americans called bee... bee,.. WD> bee,,, <damn, it happens again> ... the last years however those small WD> local outlets with mainly local output are closing the gap in taste WD> and quality. What I like is those small taster-glasses in case you are WD> treading on unknown territory and do not want to be unhappily WD> surprized.
Lemme jump in and tell my story then. I'll start from far. We used to have Fidonet SysOp-drinking at public places gatherings pretty often back in 90th in Russia (aka R50). More precisely, there were actually two types of them, like SysOp-drinking (aka SysOp'ka) and point-drinking (aka point'ovka) which is the node (boss) and its points outing. If I were to compare the Fidonet potluck in Z1 to SysOp'ka in R50, they are similar in term of reasoning and way more different in implementation. Usually, those were IT young professionals in their 20th and early 30th. Lacking of a private backyard as majority of Russians were (and still are) living in apartments, let no choice but going out for drinks. And yes, bucking stereotype of Russians drinking vodka (bears, vodka, balalaika), the most popular drink for SysOp gathering was/is beer. It was considered either expensive or mauveton to drink out in a bar, so we were drinking in public from a can or "cocktail" from a plastic cup.
I got into BBS's and later on joined as a Fidonet point and node when I still technically was a kid, so no legal drinking, though there was no age restriction for alcohol back in 90th in Russia. I didn't like the beer taste and I substituted it with other flavored alcohol like Gin&Tonic, Pina Colada, and cheap screwdriver cocktail in a can. The first time I really liked the beer taste was during my business trip to Lubeck, Germany in mid 2000s where I tried unfiltered wheat beer in a bar. I tried some Russian beer brands later but none of them tasted great to me.
I continued my journey of exploring my beer preferences while I was living and working in different countries. At some point to my shame, I landed on some crap like Budweiser, Sapporo, Molson Canadian, etc. until a friend of mine introduced me to a few breweries in Quebec which I really liked but those were more IPA hoppy flavor I enjoyed most. In the States all pilsners and lagers taste like pee to me, so I ended up to drinking IPA/APA which have way more taste at least. I always order flights in breweries to try them all and usually continue with one of pale ale. I've heard that you can find good beer in the States from local breweries and they produce in small batches with noticeable variance in taste. While I was living and working in the Netherlands, I got used to more like pilsners and lagers again. From Eindhoven we biked to Trappist beer brewery in Belgium.
