Beer School: Five Starter Beers

Because Beer School is an interactive curriculum, your first homework is going to be going out and buying some beer to drink. To give you a little push, we’re listing a few readily available beers to start you on your way.

One meta-suggestion: Try picking up your booze at a liquor store instead of a grocery store. Not only will their selection be better, but most stores don’t mind if you mix and match a six-pack, paying for each bottle individually.

These aren’t necessarily our favorite beers, but are suggestions for the budding beer aficionado to start working the palate without being so off-kilter that they’ll be impossible to enjoy. They are also, to our best ability, available nationwide, despite the fact that many of our favorite beers are available only regionally.

• Yuengling Traditional Lager: Brewed by the oldest family-owned brewery in North America, Yuengling (pronounced Ying Ling) Traditional Lager is the most widely available offering. It is kosher to call the Traditional Lager simply “a Yuengling.” Available up and down the East coast, Yuengling is an American Lager, not unlike your typical American Pilsner available from the “Big Three” American breweries (Budweiser, Miller, and Coors), but with a slightly darker color and just a bit more rich flavor. It also happens to be very affordable—we’ve seen 12-packs of bottles for as low as $10.

• Sierra Nevada Pale Ale: Our everyday sippin’ beers tend to be “pale ales.” Sierra Nevada’s Pale Ale is their flagship beer, which means for lucky ol’ you it is available around the country—often on tap. It’s crisp and goes down easy like a pilsner, but has a slightly floral note that balances its malty taste. As typical for American pale ales, it’s got a boatload of hops—America’s signature flavor—which gives it a pleasing bitterness. Drink it real cold from the glass or bottle, just like you would a Corona.

Adventurers’ Option:Sierra Nevada Celebration Ale (a Christmas Seasonal) and personal favorite.

• Guinness Stout: Double N, Double S—Guinness for the win. Yeah, yeah, our Guinness is made in Canada and your turd of a nephew went to Ireland and it’s totally better there and it inspired him to write his screenplay about James Joyce as a competitive paintballer. Dogs’ bollocks scrotums. American Guinness is a perfectly drinkable stout and a fine introduction to the world of dark beers that don’t actually taste all that bizarre. It also happens to be available nearly everywhere, even your typical sports bars and sports bar-themed restaurants.

Update: A clarification regarding the source of American Guinness from Guinness themselves:

Whether in a can, bottle or poured in the pub, all Guinness Draught served or sold in North America comes from Dublin, Ireland. Guinness Extra Stout for distribution in the United States is produced in Canada.

Adventurers’ Option: Beamish Stout. Guinness is actually a bit sour by design, which could turn a person off. Beamish is sweeter and, for my money, tastier.

• Dos Equis Ambar: Perhaps counterintuitively, much of Mexico’s brewing culture stems from German and Viennese tradition. That’s because the Germans pretty much kick-started modern brewing in most of the world, including not just Mexico but also most of Asia. Dos Equis (pronounced Dos Eck-ease) Ambar is the most common variety of Dos Equis in the United States (there’s also a lighter “Especial”) but fortunately for you it’s also the better of the two varieties. It’s a lager in the “Vienna style”—a style most commonly found these days in Mexico, not Austria, with a red tone, toasted malt flavors, and a bit of hops. (Which, yeah, is what a lot of beers have. Just try it.)

Adventurers’ Option: Negra Modelo, a darker beer produced by the same people who make Corona, except it’s way better.

• St. Pauli Girl Special Dark: Although technically a German beer, you’d be hard pressed to find anyone outside of the United States drinking St. Pauli Girl. The lighter varieties are the typical green-bottle Euro-lagers that are possibly even worse than the average American lager due to a “skunky” flavor imparted by light pollution during their long import process. The Special Dark somehow manages to avoid most of the pitfalls of its peers and is a generally drinkable brew, offering you a good entry point into beers that have a “caramel” flavor.

Adventurers’ Option: Brooklyn Lager… if you can find it.

Are there better beers to start with? Possibly. Will they be debated endlessly in the comments? Almost assuredly. In the meantime get out there and grab yourself a sixxer and try some new flavors. (Notice we only gave you five beers. That means the sixth slot is a wildcard—try something totally out there and see if you like it. And report back!)