Another vote for Guinness.
When I first started drinking beer, 25 years ago, pretty much the only way you could get Guinness in the U.S. was in the old bottles. I tried it, and thought it was nasty.
12 years ago, we went on a trip to Ireland with some friends. I was still in the "Guinness = nasty" mindset, and was drinking Harp. One night, in a pub in Kilkenny, two eighteen-year-old local girls were giving me grief for not drinking Guinness. So, I had one, off the tap. It was an epiphany. This was NOT the lousy beer I'd had out of a bottle in 1983!
At roughly that same time, Guinness introduced the "widget", the little doohickey in the can or bottle that lets the beer carbonate when you open it, replicating the tap experience. And, that's dang good, too. Between that, and being able to find Guinness on tap in more and more bars in the U.S., it's become my favorite.
On that same trip to Ireland, I also discovered
Smithwick's, which is an Irish red ale. We fell in love with it, but, at that time, it was nearly impossible to find in the U.S. (they did export it to Canada, and we had a Canadian friend who would bootleg some for us). But, a few years ago, Diageo (who imports Guinness to the U.S.) started marketing Smithwick's here, too. Yay!
On megamania's beer-and-diabetes note: I, too, have had to really cut back on the beer (which I was doing anyway; now I've got an even better reason). I've been told that one of the cardinal sins for someone on my meds is to drink on an empty stomach; allegedly, the meds work *really well* with alcohol, and can make you hypoglycemic. But, my doctor says a beer or a glass of wine with a meal is no problem for me.
