That's a fair point, but you can look at it another way too. In the UK, at room temperature, US beers like Budweiser taste just awful. In the States, at room temperature or at chilled temperature, is the same true of UK beers?
I wouldn't know, as I'm in the wrong climate, so I'm genuinely curious.
(I know I'm generalising too about UK and US beers, when in reality there is great variety in both).
TBH I don't like
any beer at room temperature (72f) Even while I was in the UK, your beer was served "chilled" in the pubs. But not truly ice cold (maybe we have a different idea of "room temperature") As to your question though, British beer tastes good chilled, yes, but not iced; it's just too thick for that. And remember, I said American beer is supposed to be served
cold (meaning
ice cold) not just
chilled.
I seriously doubt anyone, anywhere, ever liked beer from the first taste. It is after all, something you aquire a taste for. Therefore you're most likely to like the beer you learned to like. I know in my case, I didn't like British beer at all when I first got there. Bitter was well named, it was bitter. Stouts were like drinking motor oil. The lager was the only British beer that tasted right to me at first. But over the course of my tour, my tastes adapted and I began to apreciate most British beers, except bitters (which I never learned to like)
Remember, most of our brewing tradition, apart from the relatively recent craft beers, is based on German brewing rather than British. And by "our" I mean most of North America, not just the US. It was the German brewmasters that founded most of the large US, Canadian, and Mexican breweries. They were very good up until the 1970s when the trend towards "light" beers started to catch on. In more recent decades, recipes and processes have been further bastardized as the large corporate breweries change ownership and merge. The saving grace of American beer has been the emergence of the aforementioned craft beers and micro breweries which give that diversity of which you speak. Without them, most modern American beer would be very monotonous indeed; with the possible exception of Michelobe Amber Bock (one of the better mass produced beers) which ironically, is brewed by the same brewery that makes the trash, Budweiser (Anheuser Busch)
All that said, upon reflection I believe I made a mistake when I said that "cold kills flavor
in fats." I was thinking fats because the main food I can think of where cold kills flavor is cheeses. However, extreme cold helps other high fat foods such as milk and kills flavor in a no-fat food such as tomatoes, so I guess fat has nothing to do with it.
As to your question about how to remove the tatse of Budweiser, well, forget about any other beer. Your going to need rum
okenest:
), even nicer and without the adverts! If I ever find a pub with this on cask, I'll drink myself back to the mud...
