Doc, methinks you betray a touch of chauvinism in your assessment.
I lived in England for a couple of years and enjoyed a few "CAMRA" beers. I also drank many "John Smiths". There are many great beers available there and a lot of swill also - just like every other beer-producing country. And, most of the beer that I saw consumed by locals was the mass-produced* stuff, like here and in the USA.
Yes, Stella is just another mass-produced lager. It's sold here as a "premium" beer - more because it's European than because of its supposed high quality. (But, I'll take it over a Bud anyday.
) In Belgium, it's considered low-brow, wife-beater beer. Still, there are quite a few high quality Belgian beers available - although I must confess that I can't remember the last time I had one, because you just can't find them here.
I think many people fall victim to the "if it's imported, it must be better" marketing. An example is "Alexander Keith's India Pale Ale". It's a Nova Scotia beer that's been around for a couple hundred years (although I doubt that it bears much resemblance to the original recipe). It's just another mass-produced ale, but it's sold in other markets as a premium beer - mainly because of the old-ish pedigree and the fact that it's "from somewhere else". That doesn't make it any better...
I think most beer drinkers start out with the bland mass-produced stuff, because it's the cheapest and
because it's bland. Many never graduate to quality beer because they think their beer is great and prefer quantity over quality. Never mind that if they did a blind tasting of Bud, Coors & Miller, they probably wouldn't be able to tell them apart
. If you set a "good" beer in front of them, they probably won't like it, because it has
too much flavour. My father-in-law is like that. If he can't see through it in a glass, he ain't gonna like it.
Then, there are those of us who, as we got older - and maybe drink a bit less - developed a taste for better beer. I know my thought was, "if I'm going to take in needless calories, they'd better be tasty ones". I don't drink as much as when I was younger, so I want better beer.
*By mass-produced, I mean the bland, cheap, widely distributed stuff. I see no reason why good craft beers can't be produced in vast quantities. It's just that the larger an operation gets, the more involved the bean counters seem to get. And then, of course, all they want to do is maximize profit. So, cheaper ingredients and methods get thrown into the mix.
