ALCOHOL CONTENT OF US BEER?

One doesn't ordinarily see the alcohol content listed in US beer labels as one does with wine or strong drink. Is there any reason for that? Maybe it varies from state to state? American beers overall seem to taste weaker than most European ones and certainly Polish ones whose average content (I have in mind your standard lagers not porter or mocne 9% barley wines) is around 6% by volume. In addition many Americans drink the so-called lite beers which contain even less alcohol than regular brews. For take-home purpsoses, they'd we further ahead buying the regular version of their preferred brand and watering it down with club soda to the lite level rather than overpaying for brewery-watered-down lite beer.

It is a deliberate US policy I believe. The thinking is that people would get wasted drinking the strongest beer. I would have thought it was easy to find out from a few samples but the nanny state knows best !

Not all US beers are the same. Some of the beer from the smaller (micro) breweries is both excellent and strong. Can't say that I like any of the big named brands much myself.

wine isn't labeled with alcohol content here either. most american beers (bud, coors, miller) are around 3%. lite beers aren't any weaker though. same content of alc. there are also 2.0 beers out there. they are called sunday beers in some parts of the coutry.

BUT, usa also produces the strongest beer of all. you'll have to look for that thread somewhere here in PF.

DIid some net-surfinn and it seems all lite beers are about 1% weaker in alcohol content than the regtular brews. They also seem to have all the taste drained out of them and have to be drunk super cold to numb the senses.

realbeer.com/edu/health/calories2.php

yeah, almost tasteless but then most of american commercial beers are crap. the microbrews are excellent though.

I haven't touched American beer in over 8 years - I had the worst head in my life after drinking that shite...Give me magic Czech beer any night of the week :)

I cant stand Czech beer, its got that nasty after taste.

Tyskie is the stuff.

If you want a splitting headache.

not czechvar. it is the original budweiser. it's way light though. tyskie is good but can skunk badly and then it will give you a skull splitter. i like zywiec or okocim from the polish beers.

American light lagers (Miller Lite) have ~ 3.5% ABV
american lagers (Budweiser) ~ 4.5% ABV
american ales (Blue Moon, Sierra Nevada Pale Ale) ~5.5% ABV
barley wines (Bigfoot Ale, Olde School) ~ 9-12% ABV.

For comparison, Polish Lagers have about 4% ABV, up to 6% ABV with Baltic Porters.

Never seen a Polish lager with ABV < 5 %. Name?

Dice
yeah, seems about right.

Hangover stuff aside, American beer is actually has a huge variance in stength. Most people are familiar with the Macro-brews (like Bud, Miller, Coors), but Microbrews can range anywhere from 3.5% up to 20%. I think a safe average is between 4.5-6.5%. And actually, most beers in America do state the Alcohol by volume. It’s actually kind of rare and surprising if it doesn’t.

American beer is like sex in a canoe.
They both are f#cking close to water.

You can say that about almost any country though. When people think of Scottish beer they will think of Tennants (bloody awful, and weak to boot) or some random large brewery owned ales (again, weak and horrible). However I know many a brewery in Scotland that makes lovely beer, and strong beer as well.

When we are defining a countries beer where do we start and stop? Do we classify it by the big names that are available in other countries, or by every micro-brewery? I think beer is too hard to classify, but if you are wanting to pay someone to travel the world sampling every beer in the world to classify countries...then I will volunteer :D

whewww.. liquified dog sh.t basically.

or kind of like a glass of pi$$!

I think that putting alcohol in American beer is a crazy idea....do you know how many of those people have guns....?