Quote Originally Posted by xsnaggle View Post
It's not what the Germans do to it, more what they don't do to it. Drink draught Berliner Kindl or Dortmunder Tier for a session and you'll never want british lager ever again.
But that's the point: I always assumed that stella, carling and the rest were somehow brewed differently to german beers. I'd assumed that the Reinheitsgebot indicated that other beers did have ingredients other than the basic 3. But as we've learned here - they don't. Clearly taste is a mattter of preference rather than fact, but I would drink any German lager over anything else (although I am not a fan of Kindl) and I am sure there must be a fundamental difference between German beer on the one hand and stuff like Carling, Stella or Fosters on the other. But it doesn't look like it is the names of the ingredients - the quality of the ingredients and the process from there on maybe, but not the ingredients themselves.

Interesting thread - it's made me want a beer for the first time in about 15 months!