The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #93390 Message #1797049
Posted By: alanabit
30-Jul-06 - 02:24 PM
Thread Name: Real Ale v Lager
Subject: RE: Real Ale v Lager
I am definitely a real ale drinker, but I want to add to what Ron said earlier.
The original Budweiser comes from Ceske Budejovice in Bohemia. I can't recall whether it is in the Czech Republic or in Slovakia nowadays. At any rate, it is slightly to the east of Bayreuth and to the north of Upper Austria. The German name for the city is Budweis -hence the name. I recall saying to a German that I really liked orginal Budweiser, which you can occasionally get in cask form in Germany. I said it was one of the best Pils I had ever tasted. I was quickly corrected and told that it was a lager. Up to then, I had never thought of lager as being the tasty, mature drink, which Budweiser, for example, is. (All beer drinkers will quickly realise that I am not talking about the mass produced American product.)
I would rather not drink anything at all than the sugary, plastic tasting "lagers" in the UK. If you drop into Köln though, I will happily take you down to Schwejk in the Altstadt for a glass of a prince among beers. Good beer is good beer. I won't drink rubbish German beers and I won't drink English rubbish either. Making beer is like anything else. You can do it badly or you can do it well. No country has a monopoly on good beer, any more than it has a monopoly on good music.