Of the options, wheat or pilsner. If given the option, Kölsch. Bohemia Oscura (the dark one, toasted malt) is a favorite as well, and Duchesse de Bourgogne, too. I dunno how to vote based on these preferences.

I guess Bohemia Oscura counts as a pilsner, so that or Kölsch.

Of these, IPA.

In general: barrel-aged barley wine.

Belgian/Northern French Blonde for me please.

enframed wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 12:10 am If given the option, Kölsch.

Kölsch falls under the umbrella of "pale lager". Kölsch, Helles, Czech lager, Miller High Life, etc. No beer will make me weak in the knees like a great farmhouse/saison aged in oak barrels; all that barnyard funk/horse blanket/damp grass clippings smell and all that shit, but for regular drinking, lager is my choice. It's hard to make a great one, but even a crummy one is fine. I'd never ever turn down a Hamm's.

I like wheats, especially if Belgian wits and Hefeweizens fall under that type. I'm a sucker for a good American wheat, too. Last time I was in Chicago I just drank a bunch of Gumballhead.

Brown is my least favorite on the list. A good roasty one on a drizzly afternoon is cool, but I'd rather have a stout. I like Porters fine, but they often feel like non-committal stouts.

You don't see a lot of regular ol' pale ales much in America these days. A great one is pretty great! My married (to each other) coworkers are back home in Chico, CA and plan to come back with a bunch of Sierra Nevada pale straight from HQ; I'm unreasonably excited about that.

A great IPA is great, but a bad one suuuuucks.

Lager, easily. Like that Underworld song.

losthighway wrote: Mon May 22, 2023 7:15 pm

zircona1 wrote: Mon May 22, 2023 3:15 pm From the list, Wheat Beer.

But I really like Saisons and Sours.

I can be down with a wheat just as often as a lager and they tend to be more interesting . A stout is a certain mood and a porter is even more specific but a wheat always hits the spot. Especially a German weissbier.

To me a Saison is a very particular kind of wheat beer (Tank 7 is delicious btw) and a sour is maybe a weird cousin with an off kilter brewing, but I'm only semi educated on these matters.

One of my all-time favorites. Santa usually brings me a case of it around Christmas.

My head just cannot deal with the over-the-top craft brews. Sweet, hazy majorly-hopped IPAs are just terrible and I get an instant headache. I can appreciate most finely crafted brews with the exception of sours and Belgian style beers. Never got their hooks in me.

My first choice will always be a something crisp and clean pilsner/kolsch type beer. I guess when it comes to beer I want it less compelling and more refreshing.

RyanZ wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 8:32 am Sweet, hazy majorly-hopped IPAs are just terrible and I get an instant headache.

I will go to bat for standard American or English IPAs, but hazy IPAs (with few exceptions) are awful. It might be my former homebrewer bias speaking, but the only IPAs that I ever brewed that were hazy were due to a flaw; rushed and/or not conditioned properly. I cannot get over thinking that the hazy IPA style may have originally been created as an excuse to get something subpar to market faster.

I love most beer styles, but I’d have picked lambic/gueuze or rauchbier had either been there. Not listing saison/farmhouse is a major oversight.

Given that, I went IPA from the list but I do really love Helles Lager and Schwartzbier.

The beer styles I actively dislike: pastry stouts, milkshake IPAs (what an abomination), Flanders red, ambers, Belgian pales, and wits.

Tree wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 8:09 am

enframed wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 12:10 am If given the option, Kölsch.

Kölsch falls under the umbrella of "pale lager"

A true kolsch is more of an ale since it is top fermented at warmer temperatures, so it’s hard for me to lump them with pale lager. I suppose for the purposes of this list that’s the closest though since they are light colored and cold conditioned. I’d maybe lump it with Pale Ale on this list though.

tommy wrote: Tue May 23, 2023 9:50 ampastry stouts

Don't know if it's the same thing but I recently tried a something-something "pecan mud stout", and the closest resemblance was the ice-cream liqueur that some tweens were boozing it up with at a Halloween party a couple of years ago. Revolting.