“Do you find yourself drinking more beer these days, and enjoying it less? An increasing number of Americans are finding themselves in this dilemma. American beer has become lighter and lighter, until finally one is forced to concede that it is indeed water.” I concluded that, for the most part, there was no diversity of choice in American beers, even though there were labels aplenty. My conclusion: “If you taste one American beer, you’ve pretty much tasted them all.”

At that time I had tasting notes for some 120 beers from across the U.S. and other countries. I was fairly well educated in what beers were out there in the U.S.. I searched for beers that had taste; discussed imports and the problem of shipping beer over long distances. I quoted Chicago columnist Mike Royko that American beer tasted as though it were “filtered through a horse.” When some of those brewers complained, he apologized—to the horse.

In that, and subsequent articles, I searched for American beers with taste. My northwest selections were limited to the brews of then Heileman-owned Rainier in Seattle, Pabst-owned Blitz in Portland, independent Olympia in Washington and General Brewing  in Vancouver, WA. There were few Craft Brewers in existence. My beer ratings were as follows:

No world class beers.

Fine Beer: Rainier Ale. My enthusiasm for that beer is embarrassing, as I read it now: “Rainier Ale has the good taste of English ales and is only slightly inferior to such greats as Bass and Worthington (and much cheaper).” Hey, what did I know?  The imported English Bass of that era was rather pathetic, and Rainier was better then than now, although it was what our brewers called bastard ale (i.e. bottom fermented warm at 70F and aged as a lager at 40F. Rainier at that time had an OG of 15P/1060, 7 percent ABV, with only 30 percent corn grits. Half of the malted barley was 2-row Klages and Peroline, the other half 6-row Larker and Beacon, and hopped with Yakima Cluster hop pellets.

My second choice was Blitz Old English 800 Malt Liquor, which also had better taste in those days. I said it had “the rich full taste of an ale if not the color, with an impressive English hop bouquet.” At that time Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve was being touted as a great beer, but my third choice  was Heileman’s Mickey’s Malt Liquor * from Seattle, followed by Henry’s, which I panned as being nothing more than a higher class smoother Blitz-Weinhard. At least my opinion of that beer is not embarrassing to me now.

I reveled in the opportunity to blast the cursed big brewers and what they had done to my beer. I babbled on somewhat incoherently about American beer, which I labeled “yellow industrial swill,” made from the regular Reinheitsgebot ** ingredients plus such “cereals as corn, rice, oats, rye, unmalted barley, sorghum and soy beans, and which may be in the form of flour, coarse ground grain, steam rolled and pressed grains, (or) chemically leached cereals such as grits. To these may be added any of the 59 other chemicals and ingredients then approved by the FDA.” The product was called “malt beverage and has been known to appear in such soda pop flavors as raspberry, strawberry, lemon and lime…(and) fermented and aged for as little as two weeks…and (thoroughly filtered to) remove most of the…‘good’ taste of beer your grandfather may remember.” I concluded: “One of our beverages is missing—beer!”

Hausner gave his notice at Boston Beer to take “a key sales and marketing position with Anchor, a direct competitor of Boston Beer,” the suit states. Boston Beer brews Samuel Adams beers; Anchor’s Anchor Steam beer is another widely distributed craft brew.

Hausner began to work at Boston Beer in 2007, the suit states. “Boston Beer taught Hausner everything he knows about the beer business.” Soon after he was hired, Hausner was transferred to the West Coast.
“As a district manager, he was privy to Boston Beer’s plans and strategies,” the suit alleges.

Non-competes often are hard to enforce. Boston Beer notes in its complaint that the agreement with Hausner only provides that he not work in what’s called the “Better Beer” category.

Boston Beer wants a court injunction barring Hausner from working at Anchor for one year and the repayment of training costs.

Neither Hausner nor Anchor Brewing had responded to the suit in federal court as of press time.

My last five-cent hamburger? Memphis TN, in 1944. It was very small, about three inches diameter. I was weaned on 3.2 beer in the Marines during the war, which was all the military could serve enlisted people, It was free, but rationed, in combat zones. That designation indicated that the beer had only 3.2 percent alcohol by weight, the measuring standard of the Prohibition era. America’s pre-Prohibition brewers were mostly of German extraction, and they calculated their beer parameters using the mathematically simpler “by weight” system, which was equivalent to 4 percent “by volume.” Today we all use the universally understandable “by volume,” since almost all other alcohol standards, these days, are in that format as well.

Light Beer vs Heavy Beer

Old brewing texts describe the traditional difference between heavy and light in beer: 12.5 Plato. Less than 12.5 Plato (Original gravity, or OG, of 1050) before adding yeast delivers “light,” while more than that gives us “heavy.” Light beer may therefore be (loosely) defined as a beer with less than 5 percent ABV (alcohol by volume). Truly classic Guinness Draught, is a black light beer at OG 10.3-Plato and 4.4 percent ABV. Unfortunately, there’s no nationally available American brew quite like Guinness Draught, found in a surprising number of American pubs across the country.

As I noted above, most craft brews in this country are actually “heavy.” Worse, even the beer we call “session beer” is often brewed to over 5 percent ABV. Not so in Europe, where most of the beer finishes below the 5 percent edge.

We have become obsessed with the idea that light beer must be tasteless, exceedingly pale and calorie deficient. At the same time, we are taught to believe that any beer with less than 5 percent is weak, wussy beer; hence the fading malt liquor phenomenon: insipid wussy beer with plenty of alcohol. We have even become acculturated to disdain our traditional “3.2” beer (4 percent ABV). In Britain, however, such beer will not be wimpy at all. British milds and bitters will, for the most part, be delicious and very enjoyable. Good taste is possible even in non-alcohol beer. Check out NA Kaliber from Guinness!

But that’s not my point. Our craft brewers (bless them) have taken to brewing some truly magnificent beers: strong and delicious at 10 percent and up to over 20 percent alcohol. There are more such brews out there now than there are of what we formerly called “session beer” or what the British call “mild.” Strong beer cannot take the place of what I call table beer, which, if it is done in the traditional way will have less than 5 percent alcohol content. If one wanders the continent these days, most of the beer served in pubs is of 4 to 5 percent. Since the name “session beer” is no longer available, we need a new name. May I suggest “table beer.”

For readers in their 20s or 30s: way back at the dawn of the current craft brewing age, the mid-1970s, there were but two native US beer styles, the blonde cream ale and a copper-colored style that used to be called “steam beer.” For legal reasons, the latter is now called California common beer, although that term does not appear on the label.

Today, there are more than a few all-American, homegrown beer styles produced by innovative brewers. Most of these styles developed out of a very simple process: take a recipe for an established style—say, wheat beer—do something to it, and see what happens. If enough happened, a new, American version of an old style was born.

Cream ale and California common, though, stand alone as original US styles. They are certainly not exotic like the Belgian lambic, enormous like barley wine, or full of character like dry stout. They are like Kristina Abernathy, the southern blonde Weather Channel honey, not Liz Hurley, the English model and actress with a wild streak as long as the Mississippi.

Don’t get me wrong. The world needs Liz Hurleys to keep life interesting and stir the blood. But, men, if you have nice, respectable, God-fearing parents, whom would you choose to bring home to meet them? The foreign, dark-haired, ultra-sexy Liz or the cute all-American beauty with stable, marrying qualities, Kristina?

That’s the sort of beers these are—like the pretty girl next door.

Cream ale and California common are worthy alternatives to some everyday drinking beers. You could substitute cream ale for standard and premium American lager, and California common for other copper-colored ales and lagers.

Cream ale is categorized an ale hybrid; and California common, a lager hybrid.