Beer (was Worst Jokes At Oshkosh)

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004, Mike Patterson wrote:

On Wed, 11 Aug 2004 15:50:27 GMT, "Jay Honeck"
wrote:

Seriously, it's because the beer actually tastes of something (all you
get with ice cold lager is the taste of the CO2 and alcohol and not much
else).

In a country that favors drinking the likes of "Bud Light" -- would you
expect anything else?

Shoot, if you were to warm a glass of Bud to room temperature you'd soon
realize what a skunky glass of swill you were drinking. Thus, it's best to
keep it really, REALLY cold.

;-)

And actually, on a really hot, sticky day, an ice cold glass of
Bud/Miller/Pabst/Grain Belt/Schlitz/Hamm's/Coors ain't bad. It just ain't
beer.

(BTW: Considering the hardships endured to fetch beer at OSH, we ended up
with a nice collection of mostly good microbrews at the rec.aviation party.
Good job, people!)

I've been to the UK for fairly long business trips 3 times, and was
astounded at how many people there drink Bud when there are so many
wonderful ales. Can't stand the stuff myself.

I was in the UK in 2000; and Foster's was the beer of choice... OK,
"Australia's Finest" is slightly better than Bud, but not by much, and
there're so many good local beers - why Fosters, for Dog's sake?

Yes, I'm a beer snob.

Brian.

"Brian Burger" wrote in message
.tc.ca...
I was in the UK in 2000; and Foster's was the beer of choice... OK,
"Australia's Finest" is slightly better than Bud, but not by much, and
there're so many good local beers - why Fosters, for Dog's sake?

People drink Fosters because it's pretty much the same as any
other lager and it's cheaper.

The UK has gone through a bit of a crisis a "real ale" over the past
few decades. It's still happening and getting worse. It's like how
someone described the large breweries taking over due to their
marketing in the US. A lot of the smaller breweries here have been
taken over by the big ones and either completely closed or their
most popular brews discontinued.

Young people now drink lager. Real ale has an image problem, it's
seen as the drink of old men sitting around in a near empty pub.

A lot of advertising is done by the lager producers and as a result,
pretty much all young people, and many older people drink either
Carlsburg or Stella Artois...traditional but "trendy" foreign lagers.
Stella, in particular, has a good advertising campaign where the
lager is portrayed to be very expensive and highly prized, coupled
with its Belgian heritage. You can see their latest ad here (which
brings this back on topic if you watch the ad!).
http://www.stellaartois.co.uk/ and click on "advertising".

As far as I can recall, the only television advertising I can remember
for "real beer" was for John Smiths and for Worthingtons but neither
are/were very consistent.

Guinness advertising is another matter entirely.

Paul

"Paul Sengupta" wrote in message
news:cfq3r6$lf1 As far as I can recall, the only television advertising I
can remember
for "real beer" was for John Smiths and for Worthingtons but neither
are/were very consistent.

Oh, and Boddingtons...

In article , Paul Sengupta wrote:
Young people now drink lager. Real ale has an image problem, it's
seen as the drink of old men sitting around in a near empty pub.

It depends. I've never been a fan of lager. My local (The Bay, Port
Erin) is a real ale pub.

I see plenty of teenagers/early 20s in there.
Drinking real ale.

Of course the pub itself caters to a young audience - there's live
bands, the staff themselves are all young. (There's plenty of old farts
in there too, it seems to have this magical thing that's attractive to
all ages).

Plenty still drink alcopops (which are evil) and lager (which doesn't
taste of anything but CO2), but that's up to them. Most seem to like
proper beer.

Of course, the Isle of Man isn't the UK, and Bushy's (IMHO the best
brewery out of the three we have, and it's not the biggest either) has
managed to project an image here that sells to the younger audience, and
have managed to get themselves strongly associated with the TT thanks to
their merchanidise (t-shirts and the like). It therefore doesn't have
the old-men-in-a-smoky-pub image. Somewhere like here, it's not too
expensive to market well to the locals. However, in the UK, how does
Archers of Swindon compete with the marketing muscle of Foster's? They
can't. But once you get someone drinking proper hand-pulled beer, they
often wonder why they ever drank lager. It's getting them that first
pint that's the trouble.

Most of our pubs have proper beer engines too, there aren't many places
(really just hotel bars and the like) that only do CO2-driven beer.
Chilled, fizzy bitter tastes like cat's ****, and if you're somewhere
where there aren't many pubs with proper beer engines, you'll wind up
drinking lager. There is no subsitute for hand-pulling proper beer.

The other problem with real beer is you have to keep it properly. Many
'non-real ale' pubs keep bitters improperly or don't know how to keep
them, and it tastes terrible as a consequence. Lager on the other hand
is difficult to screw up, so it's easy to get the same bland taste every
time and consistently.

--
Dylan Smith, Castletown, Isle of Man
Flying: http://www.dylansmith.net
Frontier Elite Universe: http://www.alioth.net
"Maintain thine airspeed, lest the ground come up and smite thee"