Best American beer I ever had, bar none, was Alaskan Chinook. Name has been changed since, probably somebody figuring putting the name of a strong-smelling fish on a beer was not a good idea. Of course, it's a dark beer.

I don't know if Miller Highlife still counts as an American beer, but for crisp clean taste and pure refreshment on a hot summers day you can't beat the maid in the moon.

PBR is a fine brew, as is Genesee Cream Ale, or even Golden Koch's Anaversy Beer.

For those of us who have made a habit of frequenting the oft forgotten beers of America, you will find that often the more obscure canned (as opposed to bottled) varieties hold some of the most interesting tastes.

Working men's beers, in cans, mass produced for a local constituancy invariably hold up against the over priced "micros" often more interested in image than flavor time and time again.

If your looking for a Damn fine american beer, you need look no further than those beers that time forgot, and even the ocasional macro brew for the working class.

I know it's ever so hip to drink PBR, Black Lable, and Stroh's now adays, but for all the hipness, one should never overlook the fact that these brews were our fathers brews for the fact that they were good beers.

They cooled you off, hoped you up, and got your right verschnickered when taken in adequate quantities, and that my friends is the halmark of a fine American beer.

Has anyone ever noticed the Great American Beer Festival logo on PBR, Kock's Golden Anaversary, and Genesse Cream Ale?

It's an odd logo, only given to inexpensive canned beers, but uniformly a mark of greatness among these rough hewn customers.

I've never seen a "fancy beer" given this title, and I've often wondered if the fix was in among the working mens beers to create a claim a title all their own.

Most of your fancy beers are over done, too hoppy, or too dark, made more to whallop it's drinkers with the notion that it is a "good" beer than actually being a good beer.

Beer is a breakfast drink (originally), it should neither offend nor repulse on first blush, but should give one a jolt of good feeling, and the necessary calories for a hard days labor in the fields (hopefully growing more beer ingredients).

Wine is a drink to debated and coddeled and aged, beer is the drink of a man who concerns himself not with image or puffery. Served fresh, served cold, and served often, and enjoyed not during a self concious discussion of the beer itself but in place where the mind is free to wander other much more important topics.

That is the glory of beer.

As a native Marylander, I'm proud to endorse the Yuengling Lagers and the Black and Tans of our northern neighbors (there's a Premium brew too?!?). Simply awesome beer, and the taste to price ratio really can't be beat. Had a couple after the O's game last night, in fact.

Never understood the whole fascination with PBR. But as with most issues involving taste, it's a personal thing. To each his/her own.

If you live in the Midwest, you've recently started seeing Mountain Creek can six-packs appearing for less than $4.

It's easily compares in quality to Bud, Miller, PBR, Old Style, etc. for cheapness, light flavor, binge drinking potential, AND it's bottled in the good ol' US of A.

Check out the bio for the owner, Ravinder Minhas: he's in his early 20's, has an engineering degree, and a resume that reads like if a young Bill Gates chose booze over computers. I could be wrong, I'm just sayin'...

"Good beer" is the brand that the respective letter writer(s) drinks.

Having been on the stuff for going on 45 years, and having processed endless kegs of American lagers into piss over the years, I am quite happy to be drinking good, super hoppy ales in Portland, Oregon. If some find that effete, arrogant, or being a dupe of sophisticated marketing, so be it. Enjoy your swill.

And yes, I DO drink it for breakfast.

quite often.

And lots of it. I'm not sure if distributors are buying it out of state or what, but it's certainly available. Yuengling is right behind Sam Adams (if you don't count Pabst) as the top selling American-owned brew, with Sierra Nevada in third.

Problem with Sam Adams and other crafts, though, is that it doesn't come in a can. Mind you, I'm not going to sit at home and drink a can of beer, but when you're doing up Mardi Gras or the beach, well, by law you cannot drink out of a bottle.

"Gimme a six of Shaefer!"

It is pretty funny that supposedly "hip" people care more about where a beer is manufactured and what other people drink it that what it tastes like. The meaning of hip has changed; it used to mean "in the know" and now it seems to mean "sheeplike, stupid, easily led." This was always the selling point of the major square beers like Budweiser and Coors, both of which taste like diluted cat piss: they were good old American beers, drunk by truck drivers. (Coors even had racist cachet.) To observe the young drinking similar crap because they think it means they're "hip" is hilarious. I guess television kills one's taste buds as surely as it destroys the higher mental functions.

Whatever happened to Rolling Rock, by the way? Not so many years ago it was to be found at every rock concert, possibly because it was cheap and watery. I don't recall anyone caring where it was made, though.

Is it yellow Alka-Seltzer, or ginger ale without sugar?

... since everybody this season seems to be voting in all the wrong-which-ways ... i will offer up a few Classics for the thread's judges & connisewers to ruminate over.

1) "TREE-FROG BEER"

[cactus country - circa 1968-71: Robert Crumb; brewer]

2) "BILLY BEER"

[dixie - circa 1977-79: Billy Carter; brewer]

3) "BACKWASH"

[off-campus housing - 1976: Senor Soup & The Buds; brewers]

While "TREE-FROG" was reputedly the No. One Greatest Thing to have been spawned out of The Sixties .... few of the debauched lemmings who combed & scoured every saloon & truck-stop liquor shop in the American Southwest were reportedly ever able to crack one open.

The notorious yet short-lived "BILLY BEER", on the other hand, could be found in all 50 States --- including a palace & few dens of inequity in northern africa, where it had to be smuggled in on account of alcohol & fun-in-general being frowned upon by the zygotian rumblings of Soon-to-Be Jihadists.

I stored 3 cases of "BILLY BEER" in a series of garages over a nearly a 2 decade span of time; sensing that beer-scientists in the 21st & 22nd centuries would one day marvel over the beveridge that once raised high-browed eyebrows & embellished the rosewood mantels of the very finest pubs in all of Georgetown. But alas, as a Carolina Senator might say; ... "While the Spirit is Willing, the Flesh is Weak" - - and - - in time - - like sodden clumps of Sand in a Glass -- the Waters passed on along and, one can imagine, made their way back out to Sea ... all drunk up ... with nothing left to survive but ... a Legend.

With regard to the lesser famed, & shorter-lived "BACKWASH" brand of nativist homemade brew .... well ... the aroma somewhat exceeded the quality of its flat-body. But one needs to remember, some blokes prefer such to the headiness of a full-bodied specimin. The most redeeming aspect of Backwash-brand was the eye-catching label which sported a thick-tongued, lapping, salivating Great Pyranees with its name "FIDO" painted across its neck-caskette.

KAMPAI !!!