hi biroc,

thanks for yet another warm welcome

(...you're not lola by any chance???)

Hi DC!

Just to echo Aaron's paen to American beer. It's a tired old British misconception that it's all Budweiser. In my experience the States has the greatest variety and quality of beers anywhere in the world, and furthermore, Americans know their stuff about it. It's an industry far less in thrall to the major breweries than is the case here, and the proliferation of classy, innovative and extremely well-run local micro-breweries has meant that it's easy to find the good stuff almost anywhere now. Sigh.

Thanks everyone, but i've had enough of being welcomed, why not someone welcome in new member 

sambeckett

obviously, it was only a matter of time before he'd eventually show up

i'd do it myself, only not sure about whether i click on 'new poll' or 'new topic'

Reporting back after looking over the WH pub beer listing ...

There's nothing truly stellar, but there are several that are definitely good enough for a try.  As expected, they're among the larger volume microbreweries, and all but one has quite wide distribution in the USA.  The Flying Dog beers are quite a special find -- a great brewery in Colorado (a really amazing beer state).  Their Pale Ale is very, very good (and, if I'm not mistaken, I'm pretty sure the White Horse has cleaned up the name of the beer a bit -- I'm thinking the Pale Ale is actually called "Flying Dog Doggie Style Pale Ale"), and the Porter, if it's the one I'm remembering from my last trip to my father's place in CO, is wonderful.  (I'm also quite fond of their "Tire Bite," a Koelsch style beer that's poking fun of the much more widely available "Fat Tire" brand, also from CO.)

Both the Brooklyn & Goose Island (which is brewed just a few miles from me, in fact) IPAs are certainly worth drinking.  They're both good examples of classic American high-hop ales.  For my money, the Brooklyn Brewery is probably the better of the two.

Sierra Nevada and Anchor are both good, though both are now so widely available that that they're not particularly special offerings.

Yeah, I can't support that.  Vile liquid.

I have often suspected, when visiting certain areas of Wikipaedia, that I recognise signs of Ian having been there before me. Tell-tale footprints in the dust, the sound of a door closing quietly on an outer corridor, the occasional discarded cigarette butt (fewer these days), the lingering aromoma of Adorno left on the recently disturbed air. Can it indeed be he who has passed this way?