What are your contrarian/"unpopular" beer opinions?

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I hate the idea that if you won't drink a Budweiser it makes you a beer snob. It's just a style like any other style. It's just one I don't care for. I enjoy probably 90% of all beer styles. That's one of the other 10%. I don't give anyone crap for liking it, so I'd appreciate the same consideration when I choose not to drink one. :)

If I'm at somebody's house for a social occasion and there are literally no other options, including wine, mixed drinks, etc, then I'll drink one to be polite, and I'd never make a derogatory comment about someone's taste in beer.
 
303Dan said:
I hate the idea that if you won't drink a Budweiser it makes you a beer snob. It's just a style like any other style. It's just one I don't care for. I enjoy probably 90% of all beer styles. That's one of the other 10%. I don't give anyone crap for liking it, so I'd appreciate the same consideration when I choose not to drink one. :)

If I'm at somebody's house for a social occasion and there are literally no other options, including wine, mixed drinks, etc, then I'll drink one to be polite, and I'd never make a derogatory comment about someone's taste in beer.
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THAT IS LITERALLY THE WORST OPINION I'VE EVER HEARD!!!


:tank:

lol just kidding.
 
I think there are american IPAs but not west coast and NE IPA. If NE IPA wernt cloudy i think one could pass for another most if not all of the time
 
pretzelb said:
Light lagers aren't that bad. There, I said it.
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Nope, as long as they don't have a metallic aftertaste (**** you Cass), are plenty cold and aren't "lite." In Korea Max is really quite acceptable, don't find it any worse than a lot of hefeweizens I've tried. But now that all the minimarts have continual sales on mass market imports I'm not freaking buying it when I can buy Pilsner Urquell for about the same price unless I buy one of the 1.6 liter bottles.

Just I have the palate of leather and I'm not going to really enjoy something unless it had enough flavor to penetrate my dulled senses.

Similarly I quite like sweet white wines as far as wines go (reds gotta be dry as a bone though) but I'd see why wine people would get pissed off if the vast vast majority of the wine that got stocked was nothing by white zinfandel.
 
Cavpilot2000 said:
4. Tired of Session IPAs - it's a damn American Pale Ale at that point

5. Tired of Triple chocolate bourbon barrel cherry vanilla chile java coconut stouts (and their ilk).

6. I think classic German lagers are amazing beers and not boring at all, unless your palate has been killed by "more-is-better" west coast IPAs or the aforementioned ridiculous stout.
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For 4 mostly agreed but I expect a session IPA to be a lot drier than an APA.

For 5 I couldn't agree more. I'm pretty experimental with my brewing but except for some sugar in styles that call for it I haven't used any adjuncts since the summer. There's so many ways to experiment with just malt, hops and yeast. For example I'm gearing up for wheatless wit with lots of pilsner malt and a small dry hop. Too many people chain themselves to artificial styles and then add waaaaay too many adjuncts to try to spice them up.

6 agreed in theory but a lot of German breweries have really been cutting corners to keep prices down and it really really shows. German beer is getting to be like French wine, if I see either for a low price it's the absolute last thing I'd ever think of buying.
 
Shawn0522 said:
I think there are american IPAs but not west coast and NE IPA. If NE IPA wernt cloudy i think one could pass for another most if not all of the time
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Not really - the big difference is that NEIPAs are very low on the bittering scale compared to West Coast, and tend toward more fruity hops varieties.
I know a lot of people haven't had enough samples of NEIPA and on this site you will get a lot of advice that doesn't fit what we see in most of them up here as far as hops additions.
Most of the better/ more "prototypical" examples of the style either don't include any boil hops at all, or don't boil hops for more than 15 minutes.
West Coast IPAs are usually all about bitterness - NEIPAs are softer, FAR less bitter, and the dry hop character (through hops choice) is quite different.

If you can't tell the difference (i.e. one could pass for the other), then the brewer smudged the lines between the styles. And as exemplars of the style, you should look to products from The Alchemist, Treehouse, and Hill.

In Massachusetts we have an embarrassment of riches when it comes to the style (unfortunately its getting hard to find beers that AREN'T dripping with Citra or Galaxy - my kingdom for a Munich Dunkel!!)
 
Redlantern said:
I drink heady out of a tulip glass
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Or Heady in general.
It's a good beer, really good, in fact, and its popularity kinda kicked off the whole NEIPA craze, but it's not THE GREATEST BEER EVAR! as some would have you think.
In fact, I can point to half a dozen NEIPAs that I would choose before Heady if they were all laid out before me.

Also I think its funny that you mention the glass, because even the brewer says drink it out of the can (printed on the can).
 
Cavpilot2000 said:
Also I think its funny that you mention the glass, because even the brewer says drink it out of the can (printed on the can).
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I like to smell it too. The can does not let me do that as well.

I figure there is so much going on with the hops that a little "hop oil damage" will not hurt anything. Why not expand the experience of a good NEIPA to the smell as well. Frankly, would rather have a Sip of Sunshine or Alter Ego when I can get it - but I drink those out of a glass as well. No warnings there...
 
Redlantern said:
I like to smell it too. The can does not let me do that as well.

I figure there is so much going on with the hops that a little "hop oil damage" will not hurt anything. Why not expand the experience of a good NEIPA to the smell as well. Frankly, would rather have a Sip of Sunshine or Alter Ego when I can get it - but I drink those out of a glass as well. No warnings there...
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Yeah, I drink it from a glass too, against The Alchemist's explicit instructions.
Breakin' the Law, Breakin' the law!!:rockin:

I usually use a SA Perfect Pint glass for most aromatic beers instead of a tulip.
 
Not sure what "Why do troll" means, but not trolling. Stating some facts and voicing my opinion.

Helles was 'invented' on March 21, 1894. Link.

Here's a contrarian opinion for you: I'd say over 95% of the operating breweries in the world don't do this LoDo nonsense, and they're turning out a lot of beer, some of it fantastic. The only end of low oxygen that needs careful attention is post-ferment as long as you're not splashing around the hotside like a lawn sprinkler. I haven't seen references to LoDo on the hot side anywhere but the Kunze bible you guys live by, and I'm not convinced it's worth the effort. I *have* tried it, so don't go there.

Now go preach to someone else, I don't do religion.
 
The_Bishop said:
Not trolling; voicing my opinion.

Now go preach to someone else, I don't do religion.
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No you were trolling. There was no opinion what-so-ever in your sole statement that LODO didn't exist in 1894. There was never any discussion about low oxygen brewing 100+ years ago. Further, you went back 4 days and took a quotation out of context to troll.

This post comes to mind for some reason though:

stpug said:
I've read a lot of posts about low oxygen brewing from folks on forums over the last year, and the most righteous posts come from folks who have not tried brewing a low oxygen beer (or taken a single, deliberate step in that direction). Interestingly enough, throughout the last year, many of those "vocal" folks - some who were so adamantly against the "LoDO" paper and the people behind it - have taken the opportunity to implement some/all of the methods outlined in the PDF document you referred to, and guess what?(Rhet.) If you have never experienced a homebrew-scale low oxygen beer then you simply cannot know the difference in flavor and aroma of said beer, and you won't until you've had the opportunity to experience one.
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EDIT: Looks like you did some heavy editing of your original post after i replied.

The largest modern breweries in the world nearly all operate low oxygen brew houses and packaging halls. They DO remove oxygen from mash water AND the water they add to beer before packaging (but not by boiling - there's a less energy intensive way to do it). They DO NOT have to add Na-MBS because of the physics of their scale. The ratio of surface area to volume is orders of magnitude different than in home brewing. They DO purge pipes with inert gas or steam. They DO vacuum and purge bottles and cans multiple times before filling, and after filling. This is all low oxygen and is widely practiced in the industry.

Does everyone do it? No. But not all beers have low oxygen qualities to them and that's fine.
 
I did *not* deliberately pick a post from four days ago for 'trolling' purposes; I was reading through the thread. Believe it or not, some of us can't spend all day reading every thread on HBT.

My exact quote was:
I'm pretty damned sure they weren't doing LODO in 1894.
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Since I wasn't present (or alive) back then, all I have is my opinion that they weren't doing LoDo back then.

In regards to your stpug quote? I *have* tried it. It made no discernible difference in the finished beer I've brewed several times before. Do I limit oxygen uptake? Yes, all I can... On the post-ferment side. I also don't splash hot wort around, but then again, I never have.

In an effort to keep this on-topic:
My contrarian opinion: I prefer to cold-crash and gelatin fine in the primary so I can transfer crystal clear beer into the keg, this way moving it doesn't stir up cloudy stuff and keg cleaning is much easier.
 
303Dan said:
I don't like beers served on nitro. At all. So many people seem to love them, but I haven't tried one that I didn't think wouldn't have been far better without it.
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Tried my fav stout - Old Rasputin - on nitro and it was completely different. Terrible!
 
Beer should only be served in a can, bottle or a pint glass
 
pretzelb said:
Light lagers aren't that bad. There, I said it.
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100%

I love original coors, tecate, Pacifico, Indio, Bohemia, Cruzcampo, San Miguel, sagres, kalik, labatts bleu, red stripe and I'm sure there's tons more I haven't tried yet.

I don't like Bud, molson, coors light, I used to really like millers, but not anymore, new Narraganset (but loved the original narraganset (it's the first beer I have a memory of tasting)), pbr

So go figure...
 
The_Bishop said:
I did *not* deliberately pick a post from four days ago for 'trolling' purposes; I was reading through the thread. Believe it or not, some of us can't spend all day reading every thread on HBT.

My exact quote was:


Since I wasn't present (or alive) back then, all I have is my opinion that they weren't doing LoDo back then.

In regards to your stpug quote? I *have* tried it. It made no discernible difference in the finished beer I've brewed several times before. Do I limit oxygen uptake? Yes, all I can... On the post-ferment side. I also don't splash hot wort around, but then again, I never have.

In an effort to keep this on-topic:
My contrarian opinion: I prefer to cold-crash and gelatin fine in the primary so I can transfer crystal clear beer into the keg, this way moving it doesn't stir up cloudy stuff and keg cleaning is much easier.
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You know, back in 1894 most helles was probably a semi-sour beer. The first pure cultures of brewing yeast were isolated only a couple years before that. For thousands of years, every beer ever made was a sour beer. We didn't have non-sour beer until about 100 years ago.

Interestingly, the reaction of the public to beer made with pure yeast cultures was very similar to the reaction that people are having towards low oxygen brewing today:

hur293.jpg


Oh, and here's a publication from 1905 discussing the widespread use of sulfite in the mash, the "bleaching" effect it has on the color, and the "greater stability" it imparts on the final beer:

http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/j.2050-0416.1905.tb02143.x/pdf

Back then, they preboiled their water in Munich as a means of removing alkalinity when brewing pale beer. They added slaked lime to do that (is that RHG compliant?!?). Maybe they added some sulfite too? Haha. So maybe they were brewing LoDO in 1894...? Who knows! They were certainly LoDO on the cold side, racking to lagering barrels with active yeast and some remaining sugar in order to produce natural carbonation.

It's a fact that all of the commercial examples made by the famous Bavarian breweries nowadays are brewed in low oxygen brewhouses, though. You may be right that 95% of breweries around the world today aren't low oxygen, because there are a lot more small craft breweries than macro breweries. In the spirit of this thread, I'll offer my contrarian opinion: I wouldn't drink beer from >95% of the world's breweries, and probably >99% of homebrewers, if you paid me money :D The most wonderful thing about this hobby, though, is that we all get to brew for ourselves! :mug:
 
techbrau said:
I'll offer my contrarian opinion: I wouldn't drink beer from >95% of the world's breweries, and probably >99% of homebrewers, if you paid me money :D The most wonderful thing about this hobby, though, is that we all get to brew for ourselves! :mug:
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And... That sort of high-horse crap is why I'll never take you lodo types seriously.
 
The_Bishop said:
And... That sort of high-horse crap is why I'll never take you lodo types seriously.
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Come on, it's not like I'm the first person in this thread to have said something to the same effect. If you don't want to read controversial opinions, don't read this thread.

Funny that you completely ignore the rest of my post and just latch on to that quote.
 
The problem is as I age my body becomes less alcohol tolerant and therefore prefer not to waste the limited space on subpar beers. You know like life is too short for slow cars, ugly women and ****ty beer. Thankfully I can afford to fix one of the three.
 
schematix said:
The largest modern breweries in the world nearly all operate low oxygen brew houses and packaging halls.
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But in general, their is beer is kinda 'meh'. I mean who really GAF about german helles? I lived there for 6 years and drank alot of it, but not once did i think 'oh man, this beer is so awesome'. I did think that alot about doppelbock and various hefeweizens however, and some czech beers when I visited there.

I'll hold out to taste a better quality beer made in this manner before I mock it very much, however.
 
It all depends on your tastes.

I used to like craft beer, but now I can't stand to drink 99.9% of it. OTOH, really well made macro lagers on draft like Peroni or Kirin make my mouth water just thinking about them. And Bavarian Helles is like my ambrosia.

To my palate, those beers capture the taste and aroma of fresh, pale barley. To me, they are actually incredibly full of rich malt flavor. But to other people, they drink like water.

The average craft brewed IPA, to my individual taste, comes across as old, stale, oxidized, diluted LME paired with grapefruit, pine, and a fusel alcohol burn covered up by an overwhelming bitterness. It is literally one of the most unpleasant things on earth for me to think about putting in my body, and I'm not exaggerating when I tell you that thinking about drinking one triggers my gag reflex.

I don't know how or why my tastes changed. And I'm not passing judgement on anybody has different tastes than me, so I'm not going to take offense when you say "who gives a f***" about what's probably my favorite food in the world. Just please don't take offense from my opinion/different taste either. :mug:

Remember, there's extremely significant genetic differences in the way that individual humans taste a lot of foods. Cilantro to most people tastes like a fresh herb that goes well in salsa. But about 10% of the human population has a specific set of genetic mutations that causes cilantro to taste like bath soap.
 
My unpopular beer opinion is that message delivery matters. If the latest groundbreaking brewing revelation is delivered like a drill sergeant to a platoon of recruits it's not going to win over many converts in a hobby that is populated by a group of people who are rebels to start with. If we were compliant we would drink whatever is presented on the shelf. Know your audience: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
 
I'll stir the pot a little with another opinion.

I don't think most home brewers have the skill to execute a half decent ale, let alone a half decent lager, and even fewer who have the technical background to make a LoDO the way it needs to be done.

And those are the people who rip on lodo the most. Enjoy your bucket fermented, oxidized, hazy, bottle sedimented beer that still hasn't cleared after 4 weeks on the cake and another 2 months in a carboy.
 
I have two:

People who get so deep into the science of brewing and constantly try to create the ultimate geek brew lose the essence of what brewing is all about and end up with a product that is barely, if any, better than what a decently skilled homebrewer can create with 1/20th the stress/money. I'm obsessive, but some of ya'll are crazy! :D

Also, lemongrass doesn't belong in beer.

Okay, maybe three. I like a nice haze in a beer. It makes it feel less "commercial" and feels more like an experience when drinking.
 
brewbama said:
My unpopular beer opinion is that message delivery matters. If the latest groundbreaking brewing revelation is delivered like a drill sergeant to a platoon of recruits it's not going to win over many converts in a hobby that is populated by a group of people who are rebels to start with. If we were compliant we would drink whatever is presented on the shelf. Know your audience: you catch more flies with honey than vinegar.
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Like this:


schematix said:
I'll stir the pot a little with another opinion.

I don't think most home brewers have the skill to execute a half decent ale, let alone a half decent lager, and even fewer who have the technical background to make a LoDO the way it needs to be done.

And those are the people who rip on lodo the most. Enjoy your bucket fermented, oxidized, hazy, bottle sedimented beer that still hasn't cleared after 4 weeks on the cake and another 2 months in a carboy.
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Perfect timing though. LOL
 
brewbama said:
Like this:
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It's not the delivery, it's the message that there is a way to do things differently to get better results and people don't want to hear it because it goes against a lot of HB conventional wisdom. It just so happens it's over the head of 95% of home brewers for various reasons, and they aren't the target audience.

I'm a straight shooter and call it like i see it. I don't sugar coat the delivery for the snowflakes among us. The reality is that it's an advanced home brewing topic that's out of reach to a lot of people for a lot of reasons.
 

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