Andrew Lih wrote:
On 4/27/05, Delirium delirium@hackish.org wrote:
Anthere wrote: The US is now among the world's largest producers of premium/specialty beers---just California alone produces more top-quality microbrews than most countries, and if current trends hold, the US will in not too long produce more Belgian beer than Belgium does.
As much as I love US microbrews, this is not quite a valid comparison. They've produced lots of good pale ales and stouts. However, Chimay, Duvel and other Trappist-style beers have a taste and appeal all their own that have no equivalent in the States.
There's actually quite a lot of quite good Trappist-style beers produced in the U.S., and it's one of the fastest-growing parts of the U.S. beer industry (since they're expensive beers that command high profit margins). Whether they are "equivalent" or not depends on your taste I suppose.... I've had very good and very bad Belgian-style beer in both the U.S. and in Belgium. Probably the easiest to find nationally are New Belgium Brewery's Abbey ales, but there are at least a dozen or so others. Some of Ommergang's beers are also fairly interesting blends of Belgian yeasts and techniques with American influences.
Err, I suppose this thread isn't about Sanger's memoirs anymore eh?
-Mark