I've run into plenty of beer snobs, but this is the first time I've run into a homebrew snob!
Perhaps as you come along and refine your palate a bit, you can appreciate the subtleties in flavor that come with the lighter styles of beer.
Ever had a helles beer on draft *in* Germany?
In fact, most American drinkers have no idea
what real lager is, they only know the overcarbonated
stuff they get here. And that American
over carbonated, tart, thin bodied character
has been transplanted into some microbrews,
and many homebrewers try to duplicate it
using American ale yeast, although I doubt
most of them are conscious of what they
are doing, they are just shooting for a type
of flavor profile they are used to.
If you think you can't make a good flavored beer with American Ale Yeast....well, um, wow. Go check BeerAdvocate's top 25 beers, compare the styles listed to a book of styles and see how many of them American Ale Yeast is appropriate for. :
It doesn't matter. I don't like that style.
My point is many American drinkers have
been conditioned to like that style.
The rayg school of wisdom:
Nobody can possibly like light lagers
Wrong. American drinkers have been conditioned
to like it, just like they've been conditioned to
like fake burgers from McDonald's and fake
Mexican food from Taco Bell.
American Ale Yeast drains your beer of flavor
Wrong. American ale yeast is designed to create a
thin-bodied, tart ale that some people who are
conditioned to like bmc will like, but which I don't.
Wrong, aging beers is for lagers, especially those
made with relatively continental hops, and malts,
because those beers aren't supposed to have
a complex flavor profile, and the sulfurous aromas
from the malts used and the farnesene (green
apple aroma) from those hops has to be reduced
by aging because you don't have a lot of other
strong flavors to cover them up as you do in
ales.
Ray