Reality — Stolen from Rednote

As shown by the fact that people buy beer made in the US

Spoken like someone that's never had U.S. beer that isn't one of the mass produced ones like Miller, Bud, etc.
- The craft brew movement was great right up until it got a bit too successful. Now a bunch of the indies have been gobbled up. Anheuser-Busch InBev has bought up Goose Island, Elysian, Devils Backbone, and Karbach, just to name a few of note.
  
  Sapporo famously bought up century-old Anchor Brewery during COVID, tried to convert their steam-beer brewing equipment into Japanese style production, failed, and ended up shuttering the plant.
  
  Then you've got the Sam Adams and Coors success stories, which ultimately ended up becoming more of the same big labels. If you've ever actually been to Boston or Denver, you can still get the more traditionally made beers and they're miles ahead of the generic crap distributed nationally.
  
  In the Midwest there's still lots of local breweries that are good
Oh American beer is piss, haven't heard that tired joke before. You should try different beer that isn't Coors or miller sometime
If you're drinking beer from hops that aren't from the US (or New Zealand but that's a way smaller market) then there's a very good chance your beer is average at best (unless it's a stout, wheat beer, bitter, sour etc. rather than a lager or pale ale, but those two are most likely)
- Weird, all the Americans I've drank German beer (from German hops) with called it far better than what they were used to
  
  That's why I said average at best - average beer is going to taste way better than bad beer and also perfectly acceptable, I don't mean it in a negative way, just that in the standard 3-7% golden beer fermented with only yeast category, Cascadian & New Zealand hops provide the best and widest array of tastes regardless of what you're after, as that's where the soil is best and where the breeding is generally done
  
  Are there actual, scientific studies on this topic? Because it's hard for me to take your word for it when all my lived experience has been the opposite.
  
  So there's obviously a split between objective fact and opinion and conjecture, but:
  
  Outbreaks of powdery mildew in the early 20th century meant it became somewhat infeasible to grow most aromatic and flavoursome hops, leading to research and breeding programmes to produce disease resistant hops with other desired characteristics
  
  Most of the mildew-resistant hops were wild and from the US and Canada
  
  Hop breeding and research started in the UK but ended in the 2000s
  
  Oregon State University has been breeding hops for almost 100 years
  
  The USDA also has their hop research center in Oregon
  
  The US is responsible for 40% of hop production, of which over 98% is in Oregon, Washington and Idaho
  
  Cascade hops, from the USDA research center in Oregon, started the craft beer movement due to the combination of high flavour and disease tolerance
  
  German hop research started in 1926, but only had any real success after the 1980s
  
  So essentially, the US has just got very lucky when it comes to hop production with good soils and disease resistance, while German beermaking was set back leading other styles to become and remain popular, such as very lightly hopped wheat beers, sour beers where the acidity comes from the fermentation instead of hops, and more recently Belgian style beers that are stronger abv so the stronger alcohol taste substitutes for some of the strength of the hops
  
  There probably are also studies, but they tend to look into mechanisms/variations whereas this is more of a series of coinciding factors which don't really need much research to make sense
  
  Thank you for the explanation, I didn't know about a lot of that! But the jump from all of that information to "beer with hop outside US/NZ is only average" is too large and too subjective.
  
  I get it's a big jump, but I've been clear I'm restricting it to the most popular types of beer and explained why US bred and grown hops had the good fortune to be the most aromatic disease resistant hops, so I still don't think it's unreasonable
  
  Again, none of this applies for styles beyond 3-7% golden beer fermented with yeast only, and even then there's a few exceptions for certain styles where the aromatics are different (eg bitter, which is less about the aromatic hops and more about the earthy notes of the bittering hops), but for the most popular lagers and pale ales I think it holds
  
  The issue is that just based on the history you've mentioned I can't say much about the status today. What developments have happened over the last two decades with more advanced methods? How much of the research is shared between countries, how much of the plants etc?
  
  Hops are highly sensitive to the soil acidity and minerals in terms of the compounds the plants produce, so sharing plants is largely infeasible, plus because it's the US many of them are trademarked so there's no sharing for that reason
  
  Weird, all the Germans I've drank Belgian beer with called it far better than what they were used to
  
  /jk, couldn't resist trying to assert the beer superiority of my tiny country :)
  
  I haven't had much Belgian beer, but the ones I had were great!
  
  Try to avoid the popular exports (Leffe for example), there are a lot of breweries that make generally better beers :)
  Plus if you got some recommendations for German beers I'm all ears
  
  Thanks for the tip, I'll try to keep a look out!
  
  Most of my experience is with the southern regions, my favorite being Tegernseer Hell - I think I've seen that in Belgium, though that might have been at one of those "sells every kind of beer" kiosks in Brussels.
  
  Thanks. I generally buy my beers from such shops, because regular stores don't sell that many types. I'll check if they have some next time.
  
  Some of my favourites are from l'Hermitage, la Caracole or la Brasserie de la Seine. But there are so many breweries and choices that I could drink a different one every day for the whole year.

Do they do factory tours?

As long as you called it Trump Piss.