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[jough]

Australia's XXX beer is really good.

Around here we like a local brew called "Yeungling Lager."  They claim to be the longest-continually-running-brewery-in-the-country.  They're not quite a micro-brewery, but not big enough to be big.  But it's tasty and goes well with burgers at a barbeque.

[acoxcae]

My roommate comes from Delaware, and every time he goes he brings a case or two of Yuengling back.  He swears by it.  It's not my favorite, but it's certainly not without its charm - and I have to appreciate it because of all the work he puts into bringing it out.

I don't have an absolute favorite, I don't think, since it depends on mood, and whether/what I'm eating, but current top-runners are Guinness (the traditional standby), Rogue Mocha Porter (the best porter ever, as far as I've seen), or Bell's Amber.  During the summertime, Upland Wheat creeps on to the list.  I think Bell's and Upland are regional, but Rogue seems to be spreading, and Guinness is most assuredly available at your corner store.

Come to think of it, New Belgium's Abbey Ale should probably be on there somewhere, except that I don't like it all the time, for some reason - it's a very mood-dependent beer.

[CortJstr]

Australia's XXX beer is really good.

Around here we like a local brew called "Yeungling Lager."  They claim to be the longest-continually-running-brewery-in-the-country.  They're not quite a micro-brewery, but not big enough to be big.  But it's tasty and goes well with burgers at a barbeque.

"Ying Ling" is a lock for Most Misspelled/Mispronounced Beer.

[Bozack]

Maybe I'm just going to the wrong bars.

Finding a good bar in NYC is hell, man. Most people here give up on beer, because the options are usually thus:
a)Go to a bar and buy a beer, for $3 or more. Then buy another one. Then buy another one. With tip, you're probably out $11 or more, and three beers doesn't do much for me if I'm actively trying to kill my liver, which is the only time I usually go to a bar.
b)Go to a bar and buy a Long Island Ice Tea, or some other god-awful concotion that could clean drains, for $7, drink it really fast and get wasted.

The best option is really c)Go to Dallas BBQ and get a Texas-sized frozen drink; it's literally a cereal bowl filled with the cheapest liquor God ever made, and with an extra shot (served in a test tube!), it comes out to be $8. Also, they always bring it out before your food, so you usually drink half of it on an empty stomach.

Where in New York do you live? Perhaps I can point you in the direction of some cool places.

Gentrification foot soldiers unite, yo!

[AugustWest]

Australia's XXX beer is really good.

Around here we like a local brew called "Yeungling Lager."  They claim to be the longest-continually-running-brewery-in-the-country.  They're not quite a micro-brewery, but not big enough to be big.  But it's tasty and goes well with burgers at a barbeque.

I had a couple of those when I was in Pittsburgh.  Tasty.

[Lister]

At college (Auburn University, where we LOVE the BCS), we generally followed this hierarchy of beer, from cheapest/most desperate:

Natural Light/Milwaukee's Best
MGD/MGDlight
Southpaw (Reigonal cheap beer)
Icehouse
Miller High Life/High Life Light
Miller Lite/Bud Light/Coors <- "Workhoss beers"
Michelob, Red Stripe, Corona, etc.
Guinness, Bass Ale, Harp, etc.

Which we had was basically a function of what was on sale, how much money was available, and whether there was liquor.  Most of the time everyone would bring their preferred Workhoss beer, and then supplement it later in the evening with crappy cheap stuff.  It was very rare to drink more than one "premium" beer.

I may be remembering this list wrong, as I really only drank beer my senior year, and stuck to Jack and Coke when it was available*.  Nowadays I don't drink, because I think paying 2 bucks in a restaurant for a drink with refills is exorbidant, and drinking alone at home is very sad, indeed.

So, yeah.  I basically justify computer/toy purchases by accounting for all the money I've saved by not drinking or smoking.  Sad but true!

*And I made it available, 'cause I was that asshole who had money saved for college and then got a scholarship on top of it and a supplemental scholarship on top of that.  I shared the Jack rewards, though.

[jough]

Coors Light is pretty much just water.

Bud Lite is piss (literally).

You can't really count other light beers in terms of taste, because they're all pretty much swill.

Guinness technically is stoudt, not beer.

Sam Adams is pretty decent.  Wheaty.

Heineken is the official beer of sushi bars.  I don't know why, but every sushi place I've ever seen always has Heineken (and usually some Japanese beer like Sapporo or Zing Tao/Jing Dao, which are about the worst damn beers on the planet).

Corona is practically Mexican water, except you can drink it.

Red Stripe is new for me - just had one about a month ago.  I wasn't impressed.

Belgian Beer tends to be really hopsy, and is more like a meal than a beverage.  Some of the Belgian Ales are really good too.  St. Sixtus, etc.

I like sampling the microbrews stuff - most of the beer distros in PA will offer sampler cases of various microbrew beers, but I'm always annoyed when they try to sneak in "Cranberry Nut Crunch Ale" or something fruity like that.  I want beer-flavoured beer.

I'm not drinking coffee until the end of the year (yesterday was my first day off the sauce - and it's just one day at a time from here on out) and I'm not much of a beer drinker anyway, so it's easy to drop that.  

But I miss the connoisseur aspect of coffee and alcoholic beverages.  What else can one be a connoisseur of?  Iced tea?  Bottled water?  It's just not the same.  I need to be particular about some kind of healthy (and cheap) drink now.  Any ideas?

[Ben-San]

High-quality teas, maybe?

[Doc]

My girlfriend's dad got into that a while ago, he's opened a tea shop and everything. My opinion, as someone who is not into hot beverages in any way, is 'bleh' they smell real good but most don't taste anything special.

I don't know if you have those juice/smoothy places over there like we do here but you could be one of those guys who is totally into how many shots of wheatgrass he wants in his breakfast anti-entropy fruit-shake.
That seems the healthiest overly picky thing I can think of off the top of my head.
Or become a total asshole about buying expensive bottled water.

[yu-huang]

Over here in Brazil my favorite is Miller. On the other end there's "Itaipava", a local beer from a town called... Itaipava, which is just watered down beer, with no taste (since it costs only US$0.50, roughly, that's what we all go for when we're broke and want to get wasted quickly).

But in Rio there are some great places if you're into beer, man. They have this pub called Shenanigans ^^, where you have all these crazy bavarian beers which of course are hella expensive (US$15 a bottle, roughly), but boy, they're so strong and rich, one bottle will fuck you up to your haircut. You can see all those darned cereal grains lolling in the bottom of the bottle, the foam is all different-ey and shit.

Usually when we want to have a good Friday night and we have the money, we go to Shenanigans, have each one two bottles of the thing (by the end of the first you're lamenting not being born at the same time and place William Wallace was), then head to the car, light up a fatty... mad hijinks never failed to ensue.

I'll make sure I'll get the names of those brews down, 'cos I just realized that talking about beers without providing the names is really of no help.

[V-Adore]

Yeah, if you have to go all aficionado about something reasonably healthy, tea is your way to go. You can get really snobbish about it, and while some of us can't really taste the difference, this is of course because we're groundlings.

My beer experience is not extensive, but man, themed holiday beers are just wretched. I'll never forget the "celebration ale" a friend of mine passed around -- vile. Like drinkin a fuck*ng fermented Yule log.

[jough]

The U.S. is a coffee and beer culture.  You can get a cup of decent-enough coffee pretty much anywhere. Even the local gas station has good-enough brew.  

Any bar will stock a decent beer (especially here in the Philly area where we have some fine local breweries), but to get a decent bottle of wine you pretty much have to go upscale.  Same thing with a good Scotch.

Tea?  Forget about it.  Where the hell can you get a good cup of tea except in the ever-so-few tea shoppes?  And who else but other tea drinkers are going to want to go there with you?

Plus, I'm not a fan of hot tea, other than when eating Chinese food.  

The juice-bar thing was popular back in the mid-90s and I pretty much scoffed at it then as I wrapped my lips around a good Scotch.  Now I wish the blended fruit drinks were more popular.  You can't really get them around here unless you make them yourself or go down the shore to one of those not-so-popular stands on the boardwalk.

[wombat]

V is right that there's nothing snobbier than tea - for the very reason you cite which is that you can't go out and get good tea hardly anywhere in the US. See, if you want to be a drink snob, that's perfect. You can be too particular to even drink your favorite beverage in a restaurant, and have to make it at home.  You can make a fuss every time the waiter comes around at the end of a meal to offer coffee or tea and expects you to use tea in bags.

But seriously, maybe once you'd made good tea you'd be more a fan of it.  You can get all kinds of tea on line and know all kinds of nonsense about where it's grown, just like wine.  

Here is one site with some teas that are more expensive than you ever imagined.

[sjlimmer]

Over here in Brazil my favorite is Miller. On the other end there's "Itaipava", a local beer from a town called... Itaipava, which is just watered down beer, with no taste (since it costs only US$0.50, roughly, that's what we all go for when we're broke and want to get wasted quickly).

But in Rio there are some great places if you're into beer, man. They have this pub called Shenanigans ^^, where you have all these crazy bavarian beers which of course are hella expensive (US$15 a bottle, roughly), but boy, they're so strong and rich, one bottle will fuck you up to your haircut. You can see all those darned cereal grains lolling in the bottom of the bottle, the foam is all different-ey and shit.

Usually when we want to have a good Friday night and we have the money, we go to Shenanigans, have each one two bottles of the thing (by the end of the first you're lamenting not being born at the same time and place William Wallace was), then head to the car, light up a fatty... mad hijinks never failed to ensue.

I'll make sure I'll get the names of those brews down, 'cos I just realized that talking about beers without providing the names is really of no help.

Isn't Xingu Black Beer from Brazil?  God I love that stuff, so malty good.

[yu-huang]

Yeah, Xingu's from here. Really good that one, we use to drink black malts  during winter.

As for coffee, do you guys had some brazilian coffee already? We used to *punish* at it until sometime around the 60's, but now Colombia is all over it, IIRC.

I never tasted American coffee, but some friends say it's not as strong as ours, so much that it's another experience already. I don't know about that. I admit to be curious about the quality of Starbucks (although again some friends who went abroad to the US said it's still not as good) - one would have expected the franchise to have metastasized one or two spots already in Rio; apparently they'll have one opening next year or something.