amphibian, on 30 October 2012 - 12:14 AM, said:
Sombra, on 29 October 2012 - 11:15 PM, said:
I dunno about that ... I've had Labatt. Those chips aren't sounding too good.
Then again, Labatt wasn't as piss as Yank beer.
Q: Why is American beer like having sex in a canoe?
A: They're both fucking close to water.

Yes, let's denounce the largest craft beer market in the world with a nonsensical joke. If anything, Australia is the worst first tier continent to get craft beers on.
'Largest' is mostly tied to 'biggest population' and partly to 'biggest beer drinking population'

Since the term craft beer is tied to limits on amounts of production, it kind of means that the larger the market, the more craft beer breweries are required in absolute numbers to satisfy the demand. It says nothing about the % of the population that wants to drink something other than pilsner/lager (aka, to satisfy the same niche demand in percentage of the population between the US and say, Belgium, one would require many more craft beer breweries in the US).
I won't disagree on the staggering amount of choice that's being offered to customers in US stores. Ours tend to be a lot smaller in nature than what I have seen in the US (for the five days I was there

), though there are a lot of bars with an insane amount of different beers available here.
I'll also say that craft beers is thoroughly Anglo-American in application and measurements. I am sure there are a lot of abbey beers and tiny breweries that would fall under the norm in Western Europe, if they but cared/ were inventorized. Being a craft beer isn't a hallmark or selling point on the continent, really, and therefore less interesting to be branded one.
Everyone is entitled to his own wrong opinion. - Lizrad