Quote Quoting Frank Zappa
You can't be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline - it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.
Beer has come a long way since the 80s, when it was thought of as little more than a means to get really wasted while hanging outside a stadium waiting for your football team of choice to start playing. Nowadays, beer is a virtual cornucopia of varieties, with styles to suit every taste and sensibility and is taking its rightful place along other libations such as wine as a compliment to food and friends. Beer sommeliers are starting to turn up everywhere.

Beer has been discussed before, often in passing in the gastronomy thread, but Benny, Megs & I, beer brewers the lot of us, thought I would be cool to give it its due, a thread all its own, advocating 30 great beers from 30 different world class breweries, each offering the unique perspectives of guys who actually know how to make the stuff.

So, here's how its gonna work. The three of us have lists of 10 of our favorite beers. Each of our individual lists can not repeat a style more than once. Furthermore, none of us can list a beer from a brewery that has already been represented in this thread.

Should be interesting, eh? We'll get a lot of great beers getting talked about here, and you'll soon find out that great beer is, quite literally, everywhere.

Anywho, I have my first beer for review in the fridge. I'm gonna crack that bad boy open, pour me a pint, and get the review under way. After that, keep checking this thread out, cuz Benny & Megs have their lists too. Should make for some great back and forth.

Stay tuned! First review is on the way!

bac0n's Beers:
  1. Founders Harvest Ale (Wet-Hopped American Pale Ale)
  2. Bells Oberon (Weiss)
  3. Smithwick's Brewery Kilkenny Irish Cream Ale (Irish Red Ale)
  4. Sprecher Black Bavarian (Schwarzbier)
  5. Bierbrouwerij De Koningshoeven Tilburg's (Dutch Brown Ale)
  6. Unibroue La Fun Du Monde (Tripel)
  7. Lagunitas PILS (Czech Style Pilsener)

Benny's Beers:
  1. Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA (India Pale Ale)
  2. North Coast Brewing Brother Thelonious (Belgian Abbey Style Ale)
  3. Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale (Brown Ale)
  4. Deschuttes Brewery Black Butte (Porter)

Megs' Beers:
  1. Scotch Irish Brewing Black Irish Plain Porter (Porter)
  2. Steam Whistle Brewing Steam Whistle (Pilsner)
  3. Shepherd Neame Bishop's Finger (English Ale)
  4. Hockley Valley Brewing Hockley Stout (Irish Stout)
  5. Wychwood Fiddler's Elbow (Wheat Ale)