Meanwhile, my radical-lib friend in DC is particularly fond of stout, the darker and more coffee-like or substantial, the better. She likes porter, too.

We already know you're sinister, and a Commie and a dirty hippy, too.

Good picture, by the way. It's water with beer color and flavor added but with nice advertising. Babes delighted as if on drugs always sells that so-called “beer.”

IPAs are the perfect in-between brews for me. Not watered down and not heavy like many more exotic ales and craft beers that fill me up.

Sierra Nevada makes a respectable off the shelf IPA while there are a half dozen craft brewers in my 'hood who fresh pour their own IPAs.

Now I'm really getting thirsty.

Mmmmm…Kirin in liter bottles….must have!!

Shaun, you raise a very interesting point about beer “imports”. I have wondered at their inferiority myself.

Try and find an honest pint in Manhattan, for god's sake. I recall cursing the popular American love for piss-water on one memorable occasion, as I trolled pseudo-Irish pub after pub serving shite. Even the “imports” were watered down.

A true beer-loving friend of mine remarked on that excursion: “We are in Hell!”

Some Japanese American friends of mine have been outraged for years by the fact they can no longer buy real imported Sapporo.

Instead, the Sapporo “import” in the US is imported from Canada, where it is brewed in Guelph Ontario.

As you say…they tell me the taste is “absolutely different”.

I blame globalization and the mass market.

Yes, perhaps on the topic of beer we are all communists.

We should all raise our pint glasses ( or Litre Bottles, in the case of Shaun , curse the megacorps, and sing the “Internationale”!!!

We have some particularly good dark beer breweries here in North Carolina. Duckrabbit and Big Boss…. mmmmmmm…

I also first drank Stella in Italy and acknowledge that my beer snobbery stems from my world travels. When I lived in Tokyo, a lad would deliver a case of Kirin in liter bottles and take away my empties. Import Kirin doesn't hold a candle to this home-grown variety, and that may also be true of Stella, which I will drink if there is nothing more interesting.

Somehow I can't see doing a “Bud” as becoming Yankee shorthand for lumping up the bride, but we'll see . . .

Personally, I have always liked Stella since discovering…during one v. hot summer in Florence in the 90s…I could buy big-ass bottles of it very very cheap.

That is the problem.

Doing a “Stella” is now slang in the UK for wife/girlfriend beating.

The beer is sold incredibly cheaply to undercut any competition. It has now become linked to the rise of chav culture in the UK.

Thus, comrades, do not rejoice at the fall of your corporate enemy. This could bring social disaster to the US as it has to the UK.

Only chav drink Stella.

Thus, I suppose I am labelling myself by my liking it hahaha…

Drunk, if you have enough of them. As for my, the only good belgians are imports, it's true, but we have a number of good local microbrews here in the northeast who make some good IPAs, whites and black & tans. I just don't care for the pisswater beers, including the non-American ones like that mexican crap with the lime in it… Corona? (sp?)

This just confirms what the world already knows. Lefites drink Euro beer. As for me I prefer Microbrews brewed at my local pub. What does that make me?

Worst yet, I'm left handed.

Good point. I have changed it to “HOPPED DOWN.” Cheers!