Stella Artois - classic or dud?

But I always quite liked it.

well duh

i've never seen Red Stripe advertised on TV...

I don't mind the taste especially, but then I don't mind chemical slop. Its better in pints than Kronenberg, which is too heavy and frankly rub compared to the French stuff.

warsteiner is okay. grolsch is okay.

which French stuff? it's all made here anyway, probably all in the same giant vat, with a bunch of dogs swimming around in it.

i just can't stand the taste of bitter after half a pint of that. blame the sweet tooth perhaps.

I used to drink Stella more in Toronto - it tasted different. I don't know if it was actually imported from Belgium or not - it could very well be made in Canada - but it tasted pretty good, and has a much better reputation than it does here.

There's always the danger of overdosing on televised tennis before the real deal begins a fortnight later too.

Favourite moments: Lendl (peaking two weeks early) putting McEnroe and Becker to the sword in consecutive rounds in '90; that insane Rusedski-Ivanisevic tie-breaker in '98 (?); Pecci's run to the final in '79; Matsuoka's heroics vs Edberg in '92...

Oh, wait...

Miles is right - I remember having wee bottles of "1664" once which I was sad to see only had 4% alcohol. Now I'd be delighted to discover a decent lager that's not too strong.

Stella's Jean de Florette marketing does work wonders, though - the fact that they're still using it (and the "reassuringly expensive" catchphrase) 15 years after the film indicates they're onto a winner.

That Stella Artois = dud because Roddick always wins it these days.

That's not quite what I was trying to say.

hmmm that rings a tiny bell but i can't trust my memory on this one

Kronenbourg Blanc is amazing. A good pint of Stella can actually be fairly special but I doubt that most people who drink it care much either way

I've only seen this ad at the cinema.

I thought they were originally meant to be parodies of Jean de Florette (and also Manon des Sources, of course).

It's a bit of a mish-mash - a Belgian beer whose ads portray it as French, with Italian music in the background.

i don't think it's been inspired by Allo Allo more than anything else, the two are completely different things with different intentions. artistic merit of advert also bears no relation to actual product in reality most of the time, which means i can appreciate the artistic merit and concept of said Stella advert on it's own terms and not think 'oh this is offensive to the French' just because it's a French brand marketed by English to English (although if Stella is advertised in France or other parts of Europe, which may not be the case, what are the ads like? do they mention the war etc.).

i find it interesting that the ad is positing some sort of continuum of national sterotypes that stretched right back to the start of the 20th century that we supposedly can all identify with merrily... why do i find this annoying when i find allo allo occasionally funny? you know when you start wondering why ads don't work on you. sorry, probably labouring the point here.

and the holsten pils ones based on the guns of navarone with griff rhys jones and old bits of doctored film.

more 80s beer ads greatness: the Carling ad that just refused to end

jack dee as a computer animated penguin: dud
the one where a young white jazz saxophonist is encouraged by a father figure black guy and they share a beer at the end of his sucessful fist-pumping concert: dud

I hadn't heard of it until I got to Chicago. I love it, but maybe just maybe the American version is better somehow?

interesting news

Young's ditching Stella (yay) because they're "premiumising" their whole range (boo?), possibly reflecting an apparent upsurge in ale over lager's decline (eeh)

heineken? fuck that shit!

Nothing like a nice frosty pint of the ol' wifebeater.

Vile stuff. And I'm not a beer snob or anything, I like quite a few other mass produced premium lagers.

urban legend: here they claim stella gives you mad headachey hangovers. roffle

Dud for its commercials before every movie I've ever seen at a Landmark Theater.

Never gave me an unusually bad hangover.

Drank four pints of Coors because it was on offer at Spoonies, gave me terrible headaches the next day.

an apparent upsurge in ale over lager's decline

I don't think this has actually happened.

i thought stella *was* "premium" tbh. it's more expensive than mooted replacements heineken and (?) amstel (which is equally vile).

Good if served in the proper Stella glass. OK in a pint glass. Usually drink because it's the least-worst choice on tap.

Stella is 'premium' lager really but that premium status has been eroded by the 'wife beater' tag and the fact that it's essentially loopy juice. So the company that brews Stella (Anheuser-Busch, right?) responded by launching all these Artois brand extensions like Peeterman the the other one I can't remember.

What's probably been going on is Anheuser have been leaning on Youngs and threatening to withdraw Stella unless it stocks the other (less profitable) beers in the range, and Youngs have gone 'fuck that for a laugh'.

Inbev likes to portray Stella as the ultimate premium lager (is that bordering on tautology?) referring to it as, "reassuringly expensive."

Is this still the slogan? I think of it as like an early 90s thing

The Artois Bock, the dead strong one, is quite nice IMO

peetermans is rats piss. but i'm not a big lager guy.

Ah right its InBev not Anheuser, my mistake.

i just don't buy the idea that stella makes people any more aggressive or gives people any worse hangovers than any other lager. show me some science!

it's just something people experience/observe about it.

It has more alcohol in it than most other lager!

Also the alcohol content of lager has been creeping up in general over the last few years as other beer brands try to compete with Stella and maybe Young's has decided it isn't doing their brand much good to have their pubs full of people drinking 5%+ lager.

but it's only 0.2% more than Kronenbourg, Grolsh etc! while, fair enough, that might account for people being marginally more drunk, the reputation seems to be related to some idea that stella has other chemicals in it that make people more prone to behaving like thugs. where's the evidence eh? i'm just saying i think it's an excuse based on its reputation.

I'm not sure the science actually matters seeing as reputation is everything here.

the reputation seems to be related to some idea that stella has other chemicals in it that make people more prone to behaving like thugs. where's the evidence eh?

people infer from the way people act on it, though agree that it's not that much worse than kronenberg.

the reputation seems to be related to some idea that stella has other chemicals in it that make people more prone to behaving like thugs.

has this been sorted?

it's classic by the way. a little more crisp than most mass-produced lagers.

at the time of this thread being active Stella was 5.2%, stronger than all the other top-selling lagers in the uk at that time. you would get more drunk off of it (a six pack of stella and a bottle of Bucky was a common evening tipple for me back in those days). 6 stella definitely packed more of a buck than other lagers, even though 0.2% on the face of it is not a big difference.

it's an absolutely disgusting beer and it's hilarious to me that it is expensive in North America, although that mimics the marketing of stella in the 90s in Britain - it was "reassuringly expensive" before pivoting to being relatively cheap

it's not that expensive here. i have some because there was a promotion on drizly.

i like the green bottle.

well, I mean it's priced more expensively than domestic lager. Budweiser tastes like a refreshing fizzy water that some wheat came near, much more pleasant to me than the actively unpleasant stella taste

idk I don’t like Budweiser it tastes weird and makes my stomach feel bad.

can’t recall what Stella tastes like

it's like budweiser but seems more effervescent, less foamy. and there is a weird skunky, chemical taste to stella which isn't as bad as it sounds.

Peroni is a way better alternative to Stella

birra moretti thanks

those are both beers I enjoy