St. Pauli Girl: Nectar of the Gods? Or Pedestrian Swill?

I rarely drink beer, and when I do my tastes are along the lines of Budweiser or Coors Light. The urge for a really good and really cold beer hit me yesterday. So I asked a co-worker for his advice on just such a beer, and he suggested St. Pauli. I bought a six-pack and chilled the first bottle in the freezer for about a half-hour. When I opened it and took that first sip, I felt as if I had never tasted a beer so delicious. It was just fantastic!

So, did I really have a religious experience over this? Or am I just an amateur who can be dazzled by any ordinary beer? :shrug:

Oh, and I paid $7.75 for that six-pack. That's a lot of money, isn't it?

:9

The beer is only exported -- because it's pedestrian swill.

But I do know that feeling of never having tasted a beer so delicious upon having the first sip -- it happened to me when I drank my first sip of Hoegaarden. Now that, my friend, is the nectar of the gods! :toast:

a few weeks ago....dangerous, DANGEROUS stuff :toast:

...and nice that you could get that on tap.

It is definitely worth it, though :toast:

i think it was last year.

this includes bass, beck's, stella, boddington's, and leffe.

Crap! I LOVE Boddington's....grrrrrrr.

instead of a lemon, or orange. i like it

My friend from Hamburg busted a gut at the idea of marketing a beer with that name.

:beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer: :beer:

Nasty nasty nasty beer...in my opinion anyway ;) I can't stand what the Belgians do to beer...I know it's Dutch, but I equate it with Belgium and their Kool-Aid beer thing...adding fruit and what not.

If you can get ahold of some St Arnold's, that's a fine beer, brewed in Houston. Negro Modelo (with a lime, of course) is great too. And of course, Guinness (in the can, the bottled stuff is nasty). Grolsch is good, St Pauli isn't bad, Dos Equis is good too. Life's too short for bad beer!

When it comes to Guinness, if it's not on tap, it's crap! :)

"adding fruit and what not"..."Negro Modelo (with a lime, of course)"

:shrug:

For instance, there's a brewery (Pyramid) pretty near where I live, that makes an "apricot hefeweizen." Good stuff, but then I tend to like the fruit-flavored beers - obviously I didn't heed that "no fruit in beer" Miller commercial (what the hell is a "man law" anyway? :eyes: ).

It seems arbitrary. How do you determine where to draw the line? Especially when some beers, i.e. India Pale Ale, have a fruitiness to the taste and nose.

with their display of total hypocrisy -

"NO FRUIT IN BEER" - then, a couple of months later, they come out with that execrable swill they refer to as "Chill", with lime & salt! :puke:

I'll give them credit for one thing, however - it actually got me started on my journey towards finding truly good beers out there, and I've sampled many fantastic ones over these past several months that I probably would not have otherwise..

:woohoo: :woohoo:
:hi:

Is that from Aeroflot or something? :P

that is awful, seriously...

I bought one too many. "Mmmmmmm," I thought..."HEINEKEN." Then I'd open the first one and it tasted and smelled like PePe LePew's litter box. Never again.

:evilgrin:

...what you had when you were partying in Amsterdam, to what you get from the corner store here quite often.

here, here

nt

Some Dutch mates told me that the crap batches are exported, while the good stuff is saved for local consumption.

I never started drinking beer until I went to Europe. My long time fave, McEwan's Scotch Ale, is no longer being distributed by the distributor - bastards. Only 14 bottles left in my stash. Then I'll have to start experimenting with what's available.

Piss in, piss out.

It is one of my very favorites.

and I wouldn't refer to it as "swill"

You paid $7.75 for a six? It's around $8.00 here

Warsteiner
Fuller's London Pride
Fuller's London Porter (ambrosia of the gods!)
Schwelmer Alt
New Glarus Spotted Cow (Very good domestic!)
Spitfire Ale (if you can find it in the States)

The Warsteiner is a good step up.

I introduced a friend to Fuller's London Porter on his 21st birthday, and he said he enjoyed the caramel/coffee tones of this superior brew!

I say have him try heavier beers early in his drinking career! Life is too short!

...but use a spoon instead.

suggests that it's evolved enough to walk on two legs. 'Quadrapedal swill' is better.

If you're gonna spend eight bucks on a sixer, try Pilsner Urqell or Stella Artois.

...eventually one does learn that the Belgians and Czechs are on to something.

You would like Affligem Blond, if you can find it in your area.

But Urquell is my "usual" beer.



oops, I mean



Czechs make great beer because they happen to have the best hops. All of the best European beers and many US beers are made with the Saaz hops from the Czech republic. I think they keep the best of the best for themselves.

Hoppy, hoppy, joy, joy!

but far from a religious experience. One word of caution, though, when perusing your local six-pack outlet for imports: beware the green bottle. Premium beers tend to linger in the display case longer, and thus have more of a tendency to turn skunky, especially when in green bottles and exposed to light in lit display cases.

This public service announcement brought to you by your friendly neighborhood beer snob. :P

if you are ever in my neighborhood, I'll take you to the 6 Pax and Dogs. They have a beer cave with an amazing selection of imports and microbrews! I guess that's why I haven't drunk any St Pauli in a while. In the old days, I was a Heineken Dark girl. And also a Rolling Rocker before it was stolen away to New Jersey, or wherever. .. :cry:

how are ya, my friend? :hi:

Remember getting cases of the pony bottles, and stacking them up as each case was finished? Good times, good times... :beer:

How you doin', hon? Things are pretty good here. I love spring in the Burgh, it's just so pretty isn't it? :hi:

but those pony bottles were cute. Nothing tasted so good on a hot day as an icy cold Rolling Rock. Sigh.


It is lovely here, with lots of beautiful trees in flower- so many pinks, whites, the dogwoods, and all the flowers. Lovely and green. My clematis and wisteria are in bloom already. It's wild how early they are. My one rose is out of control! :wow:

it sure was a long time coming this year, wasn't it?

School will be out in a month, my kid turned 12, he's taller than me now and (his voice is changing already!) :yoiks:

...from the glass lined tanks of Old Latrobe.

"33"

RR is corporate crap now. I can't put it to my lips without my heart feeling so heavy.

I MISS IT!! :cry: :cry: :cry: :cry:

I prefer a good Pacifico or occasionally a Mac n Jack Amber.

Some Fat Tire.

new Belgium Brewery. good beer, and a good company.

That fru-fru flavor is almost over-the-top enough to be good, but it tastes...funky instead. Funky and skunky. As someone pointed out upthread, it's like a hooker: a hooker viewed from a distance. "Good from far but far from good."

Yes, if you have been drinking a normal American beer, then moving up to almost any European light lager will be like going from black and white to technicolor.

St. Pauli is a good transitional beer.

If you found it delicious and fantastic - then that's great. Enjoying beer is not about satisfying someone else's sense of taste.

Heineken is another good beer for something that's not an American beer, but won't strike you as tasting strange.

I still like to have a sweet beer once in a while. If you are looking for something cold, thirst quenching (well, at least as thirst quenching as beer gets), generally available and probably less expensive than St. Pauli, give Corona a try.

But if you liked the more complex taste of St. Pauli, then skip Heineken and try Grolsch or Pilsener Urquell. If you ask me, Heineken is a little over-rated and has a metallic aftertaste. My wife loves it, but she's Dutch.

If you are hungry AND thirsty, then try a German wheat beer (Weißbier or Weissbier). It's a little heavier, but not something that comes off like a stanky bitter mess like porter, which you probably wouldn't like.

If you *rarely* drink beer, then don't worry about a few dollars unless after trying a few others you decide you really like Bud or Coors Light. The Grolsch bottles are even fun to play with.

I drink beer often, have brewed my own beer, and could be something of a beer snob, but if someone likes Bud, then they like Bud, and that's fine.

But there is a lot of variety out there. There are many good and low-priced regional beers.

Also, get two good pilsner glasses. Do not drink beer from a can, a plastic cup (unless you are at a beer festival or kegger and can't bring your own glass), or from an ordinary tumbler glass. You can drink beer from the bottle, but you are still missing out on a good part of the experience. Again, if you only drink beer rarely, then there is no reason that it should not be a special occasion, and having a proper glass to drink it from makes enjoying your beer such an occasion. Store your beer glasses upside down so that it does not accumulate dust.

You must get at least two glasses because, while enjoying a good beer by yourself is perfectly fine, enjoying a good beer with a good companion is better, and it would not do to only have one proper glass.

Beer is one of the oldest beverages known to man, and was no doubt invented just a few months after the first crop of grain was harvested. Moderate consumption of beer has commendable health benefits, and if you don't work off the extra calories, then you'll have a beer belly like mine which, in my active imagination, is admired by women, envied by men, and feared by children.

Good widely available beers:

Guinness - pour into beer glass
Sam Adams - Anything
PBR
Pacifico
Lowenbrau
Newcastle

St. Pauli NA is the only non-alcoholic beer I'd rate with Clausthaler.

when its good its good and when its bad its bad

It's definitely in the category of beer that I wouldn't bother to drink. If I'm going to buy cheap beer in the states, I'd rather just get some PBR, Old Style, Tecate, etc. depending on where I am. I guess it's better than Coors, but I don't think I'd ever touch that stuff. I also don't think $7.75 isn't much for a six pack, though I won't often pay more than $10.

I saw in your profile that you're in Pennsylvania, and if you're anywhere near Pittsburgh, you should go to this place: http://www.churchbrew.com/ I was only there once, but I remember that the beer was quite decent - not the best I'd ever had, but good and fresh, and the atmosphere was great.

People will tell you all sorts of beers are the "best", but my opinion is, except for as an occasional thing just for the sake of change, the best beer is going to be the best local beer from your area. Grolsch, for instance, is a lot better in Holland than it is in the states, and Fullers is better in the UK than in the US, etc. It even goes from city to city at times, but definitely on a regional level I think it always applies.

Not so nice beer.

so maybe a can of Milwaukee's Best that would have tasted wonderful in the mood you were in.

mikey_the_rat

nt

:hi:

:beer:

Gimme a Jack Black and I'm in heaven. In my life I've tasted only one beer that I actually enjoyed and that was in Germany and just one of the oh so many brewed there.