While Ron and Al take a little break, please enjoy this guest post from Mark at maeib’s Beerblog.

I recall a joke from my childhood where an American tourist is in London on a guided bus tour. She is shown Buckingham Palace and says “that’s tiny; my outhouse is bigger than that”, then she is shown St. Paul’s Cathedral to which she states “my village church is bigger than that”, and on it goes. Everything is so much bigger and better across the pond.

That’s pretty much how I view American beer; bigger and bolder than British beer. There’s no scrimping where ingredients are concerned. Brewers enjoy making big beers.

However, ask most Brits about American beer, and they’ll say it’s just Bud and other crap lagers. And that’s the problem, we don’t see enough of it. We need an importer to take the bull by the horns and get us these big, bold beers and show those who think it’s just Bud how wrong they are.

I’ve written previously about some American beers being newly imported into the UK, and that’s good, but those beers have only been seen at a handful of off-licences up and down the country. We need them in the supermarkets where they will gain a wider audience. In 2003 one of our supermarkets, Safeway, which has sadly been taken over since then, sold the 23% version of Dogfish Head World Wide Stout and Raison D’Etre. But it wasn’t enough. We have also seen Dead Guy Ale, Imperial Stout, Mocha Porter, Smoke Ale and Youngers Special Bitter from Rogue. Other than those though the only micros we’ve seen are the biggies of Anchor, Brooklyn and Sierra Nevada. We don’t even see American beers at festivals except for The Great British Beer Festival.

So, why do we not have a huge amount of imports? There are three reasons, each of which may have some truth but can easily be overcome. The first is price. It’s true to say that importing beer brings with it a fair amount of cost, but the American beers we have seen haven’t been sold at exorbitant prices, and in addition we export tons of beers over the water, so a reciprocal agreement could easily be arranged.

The second reason is that there isn’t a market for US craft beers as English beer aren’t willing to accept they will be any good. I agree that there are thousands of heathens who wouldn’t give them a try, but they are the same heathens who won’t buy imports from other great brewing nations such as Belgium which are readily available. The amount of Chimay, Duvel, Orval and others that are sold are testament to the customer base good beers have.

The third reason which links to number two, and is the one which frankly angers me the most is that we are just not ready for American style beers. I recall a quote from Meantime head brewer Alastair Hook which, paraphrased, said that the British palate isn’t capable of appreciating his own IPA or Old Smoked Bock and that was the reason they were for export only – thankfully the IPA is now widely available over here but the Bock is not. Alastair and others underestimate us. The US cask beers at GBBF sold far quicker than was expected this year, and customers lapped up the big Scandinavian beers that are brewed very much in an American style.

So, if there are any US brewers out there who fancy dipping their toes in the British market, do not hesitate. There are thousands of beer lovers over here. We don’t all just drink 4% session bitters. We like big flavours. We like American beer!