Yes, the original one was, from the town of Budweis (sp?).
Most typical American beers are VERY loosely based on the Pilsener style of beer from Plzn,Czechkoslovakia. If you want to see what that style is supposed to taste like, try Pilsener Urquell (“Original Pilsener”) which is supposed to be the first of it’s kind. Tast test it next to Bud, and the difference is night and day. Pilsener Urquell is one of the classic beers of the world and is widely available.
I just had Fat Tire for the first time last week.
I agree–very good beer!
–James
So what is the difference between ale and beer? I know, I could Google it, but I figure it will make interesting reading this way!
Usually beer makes me sleepy but a couple of weeks ago I had 2 glasses of wine then 1-1/2 glasses of ale in the same evening, and I wasn’t sleepy at all. (I figure a lot of that was due to the company I was in that evening.) 
They’re all beer: the difference is between ale and lager.
One difference is the type of yeast used. The yeast used for ales ferments from the top of the batch, while lager yeast ferments from the bottom. Ales are typically fermented at warmer temperatures than lagers, producing a more "fruity"flavor as opposed to a drier,crisper flavor for lagers.
Lager generally uses different hops to top-fermented beer, the Hallertauer variety being typical. This gives a pretty distinctive flavour to the brew. Any beers in cans, and most beers in bottles, have been pasteurised to allow them to keep, and have oodles of horrible artificial fizz added. This drastically alters the flavour of the brew, nearly always for the worse in my view. These days, if I can’t drink cask-conditioned ale, I drink bottle-conditioned. This is unpasteurised beer (though filtered usually it has to be admitted) that has a small amount of live yeast in the bottle, which gently adds conditioning and preserves the flavour the brewer was striving so hard to achieve. Your canned or bottled mass-produced beers or lagers range from the revoltingly undrinkable (most of them) to the barely tolerable. In the latter category you can, at least, find the odd few that don’t have chemical flavours and which finish fresh and clean on the palate, but there aren’t many. Mass producers don’t like bottle conditioning because it requires careful, expensive filtering and the sort of hygiene standards that most bottling plants don’t aspire to (to exclude wild yeast and vinegar bacteria for example), and this costs money. Go for bottle-conditioned brews and pour carefully, then swig the remaining brewer’s inch from the bottle to give you all those B vitamins. If a supermarket is piling it high and selling it cheap, it’s shti, guaranteed, and will at best give you the farts and a bad head and at worst will put your marriage in jeopardy.
You’ve definitely got me intrigued, Steve. I have no clue if I’ve ever had unpasteurized beer, but I’m guessing I haven’t. And I’m not sure if I’d have much opportunity here in Alabama.
Actually, our local session is at a microbrewery. I’ll have to ask them if they pasteurize. They tend to have some decent stuff sometimes.
Reading through the comments about the different beers being recommended, I saw that Abita beer was mentioned. This beer is brewed in Abita Springs, Louisianna, which is just across the Lake from New Orleans. My brother moved to Abita Springs a few years ago, so it has been my good fortune on several occasions to visit Abita Springs and sample the great Abita beers.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abita_Brewing_Company
Abita Springs was heavily damaged by hurricane Katrina, so the Abita Brewing Company has come out with a special beer where a portion of the sale of the beer to go to Katrina restoration.
http://www.abita.com/party/restoration_ale.html
If you are ever in the regions, stop by the Brew Pub in scenic downtown Abita Springs.
http://www.abitabrewpub.com/
The received wisdom was that draught Guinness was unpasteurised if you bought it in Ireland but pasteurised in the UK. I believe the situation has changed now that it’s no longer brewed under licence in the UK. Whether that means it’s all unpasteurised now I’ll leave someone else to research. Bottled Guinness, a very different drink to the draught, was always unpasteurised, and bottle-conditioned, at one time, and may still be for all I know. I doubt whether any canned Guinness is unpasteurised. In the UK, “cask-conditioned” means unpasteurised beer that will throw a live yeast sediment in the cask, which has to be set in a certain position and left to settle in order for the beer to be served bright. It often gets a bad name because of mishandling by pubs which break into the cask then leave it for many days to get used up. Once a cask is tapped it needs to be used up in no more than three days, otherwise the beer goes rapidly downhill. I have no idea what the situation is in the US apropos of bottle-conditioned beers, but here it will always say so on the label - you have to have the bottle settled and pour it in one go, slowly, to avoid getting the sediment in the glass which will cloud the beer (though it doesn’t affect the taste). The most famous early example, apart from bottled Guinness (which never proclaimed its bottle-conditioned status - you’d never notice any sediment in the glass anyway in such a dark beer), was Worthington White Shield. There are quite a few more these days. The brewery with which I’m associated, Sharp’s, currently has two bottle-conditioned beers, Chalky’s Bite (named after Rick Stein’s dog) at 6.8% and First Reserve, at 4.5%. They’re both absolute gems, but I would say that wouldn’t I.
Steve - I agree with you that bottle conditioned beers are head and shoulders above regular bottled beers. I’m lucky enough to live 3 blocks from a microbrewery that does carry a couple of cask conditioned ales (75th Street Brewery if any of you make it to Kansas City) they brew. Our local “micro-brewer” Boulevard, now not really “micro” since they cover about 7 states, bottle conditions their beers… and I really like their Pale Ale and Stout. Bridgeport from somewhere in the northwest also bottle conditions and makes a fine ESB.
ERic
Excellent stuff! I hope your brewery is just as fussy as Sharp’s about the quality of its malt supplies and that they refuse to use those horrid hop extracts. Lovely, sweet malty flavours, plenty of fruit esters on the nose and a firm undercurrent of fresh hoppiness on the palate, all leading to a long, mouth-watering linger. Yum. You don’t get that from gut-rot Stella or Bud!
Most American beers aren’t pasteurized, but filtered within an inch of their lives. A filter to get out bacteria will also remove all yeast.
There are some widely available American beers that are unfiltered – Sierra Nevada comes immediately to mind. If you get a fairly fresh bottle, you can culture yeast from it. Many brewpubs offer cask-conditioned ales on tap. If they offer a hefeweizen, that is by definition unfiltered.
I’ve been gone, so am ringing in a little late, but: I agree that Yeungling is a great value for a pretty decent beer. A couple of others that are widely available for about the same price are Saranac and (especially) Shiner. To give an analogy to what others have said about other beers, a highlight of visiting Texas is fresh Shiner Bock on tap.
For widely available beers, I’m quite fond of Pete’s Wicked, Sierra Nevada (pale ale and porter), Anchor Steam (also porter and their Christmas ale), Red Hook, many others.
Some locals I like are Dominion, Wild Goose (although it’s not the same since Frederick bought them), Magic Hat (a Vermont brewery that appears to be trying to go national, and their quality is slipping now, too), Bar Harbor (smallest brewery with an ATF license). . .
If I had to pick a favorite American beer other than my own raspberry wheat, it would probably be a tie between Anchor Steam and Dominion Stout. If I’m on the West Coast and they’re fresh on tap, it’d be Anchor Steam and Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.
Steve - no hops extracts for either the 75th Street Brewery or Boulevard…just the real stuff.
God I love beer…
Eric
Nirvana. 
Some of my favorites are:
Geary’s Special Ale from Portland, ME (might have something to do with the 7% alcohol)
http://www.gearybrewing.com/pages/hsa.php
Smuttynose Old Brown Dog from Portsmouth, NH
http://www.smuttynose.com/pages/beers.html
When I’m in the west, I like Fat Tire, but I can’t get it here in MA.
Portland, OR.
They make one helluva IPA.
My favorite drinking beer is made by Mendocino Brewing Co. Red Tail Ale…yumyum.
some of you mentioned Fat Tire, which is brewed by New Belgium Brewing Co…they offer this amazing organic wheat beer called Mothership Wit that is simply amazing…if you can find it, I command you to try it!
They’ve also got on called “Terrible”
There is a belgian beer “Pirat”, the pirate that is justamazing. Lots of taste and fairly alcoholic.
Kinda funny- the topic is “American beer” and we nater on about Belgian’s
Hey seems we share a similar taste in brew too.
Just had a Fin du just the other day.
You know Sapporo owns them now… I haven’t noticed any change to the worse over the last few years.
If you are up here some other time there is a brew place we gotta go to.
Indeed they do.
In 2006, Portland, Oregon surpassed Heidelberg (I think…) to become the city with the most breweries within its city limits of any in the world. In my opinion, some of the best beer in North America, if not the world, is being made in Portland and surrounding parts of Oregon.
Probably one of my favorites is the Terminal Gravity IPA. Amnesia Brewing Co. does a pretty good pale ale and an absolutely amazing pilsner, though I’m not sure how widely available it is outside Portland. Head over to their brewery on N. Mississippi St. and bring some empty Mason jars with you…In the past, I haven’t been all that partial to porter, but Alameda Brewing Co. does a very nice porter that’s very smooth with a subtle, almost chocolatey finish.
See more for yourself at http://www.portlandbeer.org. God, I love living here…
Beyond the Pacific Northwest, I like Anchor Steam and some of the things coming out of the Mendocino Brewing Co. If we were to expand to North America in general and bring in our Canadian cousins, there is some outstanding beer being brewed up there. I recall having a very nice Scotch Ale from Swans in Victoria. “La Fin du Monde” has been mentioned already and is good stuff (gave me a vicious hangover after election night in 2004…). Probably my favorite Canadian beer is Propeller ESB brewed in Halifax. Damned hard to find down here in the States, unfortunately.
There is a sad deficiency in bitters in general in the US. We had a great bitter, Ten Penny Bitter, made by Boulevard, that went the way of the Dodo.
Personally, I think most US drinkers are turned off by the term bitter - the few bitters around tend to only call themselves ESBs, and many yanks (we intellectual giants in this thread are excluded) aren’t bright enough to know what that stands for.
Eric