(I count myself amongst them, despite only being 3/32 German...)
What is this even supposed to mean?
Where are they loud? I never hear people in the pub/bar shout "My glass has micro-scratches, this is undrinkable!".
Food, god no, wouldn't want to cause a fuss. Uncooked chicken? I'll just push it to the side and eat the rest.
Really? You're not just being facetious?
I NEVER send food back if I just don't like it. If it's under-seasoned or not up to my standards, no big deal. I'll go elsewhere next time.
But if it's a food safety issue, or if I order something pricey and it's missing a key ingredient (they don't have to take it back in that case, just bring that ingredient to the table and we're good). I mean, if you paid for it and you can't eat it because it's unsafe or you didn't get what you paid for ... that should be totally understandable and expected that it gets sent back. I've worked in food service and while I would never spit on anyone's food no matter how much of a dick they are, I wouldn't even feel the temptation if it was a legit kitchen screw-up.
Yeah, no, that's an American PoV/meme to think all those nationalities somehow are fickle about the glass of the beer when in reality most of them wouldn't even notice in real life. Beer drinking is a causal activity there, not a sommelier activity where every detail is scrutinized.
You go to the park and it's full of Germans drinking beer out damn aluminum cans. Most bars are so dark and loud and people so drunk, the last thing they care about is if their beer glass is pitch perfect.
People do care about the quality of the beer, but the quality of the glass, not so much.
It isn't a matter of being a connoisseur's fetish, but about the basic standards expected by a large bulk of drinkers. "Craft beer" is a fairly novel and niche product in the US, but even Wetherspoons - a huge chain known for selling very cheap beer - serves a wide range of (often local) real ale in most of their pubs. Many thousands of British pubs are members of Cask Marque, a voluntary accreditation scheme that requires regular inspections of their cellar-keeping and the quality of their beer. America has a burgeoning beer culture, but much of the country is still a beer desert where the only widely available beers are pasteurised lagers. The effects of prohibition are still being felt today, because it takes generations to develop a proper beer culture.
Also, most of what counts as craft beer in the US wouldn't even legally pass as beer here.
This would have been true decades ago. It hasn't been true anytime recently, even more than a decade ago. At this point, craft beer is available bottled and canned in the typical supermarket and even gas station/convenience store in the US, even dive bars have at least one tap for craft beer or at least some bottles (although it is likely not going to serve it in high quality glassware), and craft beer makes up more than a quarter of the total dollars sold in the US beer market and nearly 15% of the volume.
You say this, but at the same time, the most popular beers drunk in every European country are pasteurised lagers as well. In fact, lagers are popular /all over the world/ for the same reason: They are light, easy to drink, cheap to produce and buy, and refreshing when served cold in hot weather.
I've been in plenty of historic pubs in the UK that were unfortunately acquired and ruined by Wetherspoons. A Wetherspoons is in no way any better than the average dive bar in the US, except that in the US it is commonplace for a bar to serve only alcohol and no food, where in the UK pubs are generally expected to have food.
Depends on the state; in mine, a bar can sell beer without a liquor license, but getting a liquor license (required not only for booze but for wine as well) involves jumping through a lot of hoops, one of which is that no more than X% of your sales by dollar amount can come from alcohol. There are no bars that are just bars, unless they only serve beer.
A practical side effect is that lunches are very competitively priced in restaurants that have busy bars, because they take the hit at lunch in order to allow wine/liquor sales.
As a Guinness fan I gladly go to a pub that does it correctly, compared to one that doesn't.
So the idea that there is a business impact to having lower quality experience even visiaul can not just be ignored by saying 'drinking is causal'.
As a pub you have to try to offer something that you can't get from aluminum cans in the park.
Clearly, this is false, and it is enough to visit such a country or look at beer sales to know that this is the case.
At the same time, I will agree that the average beer and what is considered "drinkable" in probably any European country is significantly better than the swill that passes as average in the US.
You are extremely incorrect on this point. I think this is true if you think of your typical dive bar in the US, but this is more a /cost/ point than a point of the beer culture. Dive bars are not expected to be good, just cheap. The best beers in the world of every style (except Belgian beers) are in made in the US. The US revived craft brewing and spread it around the world, and brought craft brewing to parts of the world that never had any serious beer culture. American beer is /far/ far more than light beers shotgunned out of a can in the parking lot during a college football game.
There are numerous craft bars in the US that take the quality of their pours, including the quality of the glassware very seriously. The US helped to pioneer the certification process for serving beer, modeled after that for wine. The BJCP was founded in 1985 in Colorado, as an offshoot of the American Homebrewer's Association, and the Cicerone Certification program was founded 25 years ago in the US as well. The US has done a significant amount, not just for itself, but for the world, to establish high standards of excellence for the making of beer and the serving of beer.
I say this as someone who is an expert on beer. I have traveled to more than 70 countries, in part specifically to drink beer. I have brewed beer for more than 20 years. I have judged beer competitions. I am a certified cicerone. I have drank more than ten thousand unique beers and been to more than 2500 breweries in my life. It is completely ignorant (and a nationalistic ignorance) to say that the US has a poor beer culture. This might have been true in the 1970s, it is not true today, and it hasn't been true for decades.
I thought Brits hate head on beer.
Northern drinkers traditionally prefer a thicker, creamier head and used beer pumps with a "sparkler" nozzle to provide this, while southern drinkers typically preferred very little head; this historic divide is starting to soften in recent years.
Some European beer styles are properly served with a bigger and frothier head, particularly wheat beers and pilsners.
https://bucolicaholic.com/2016/09/01/on-real-ale-the-sparkle...
https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2971/0116/files/dirty_beer...
This isn't meant to be a nationalistic point, but America has a relatively undeveloped beer culture; beer is often kept and served very poorly and drinkers rarely notice. British, Belgian or German drinkers will notice, complain and tell all their friends if you aren't serving beer properly.