I was in your boat a few moths ago, and I was lucky to discover some great brews, thanks to some good friends.
KarmaPolice's list is a reasonable 'gateway' list. It's all stuff you can find pretty easily. It's a bit lacking in belgians (Except for Stella, which IMO is just a basic euro lager, nothing special about it.)
I's recoomend trying some beers in each style first, and then branching out. My recommended list would be:
IPA's/Pale Ales: Sierra Nevada Pale Ale; Smuttynose IPA
Basic Lager: Sam Adams Boston Lager, Spaten
Stouts: Maeckson's XXX Stout, Guiness
Porters: Sierra Nevada Porter, whatever else you can find at your local beer store/brewpub
American Strong Ale : Arrogant Bastard (If you want something that'll kick your ass)
Belgian Tripels/Stong Pale Ale: Duvel or La Fin Du monde, tripel Karmeliet, Kwak
Wheat Based Beer : Aventinus (might be a little weird, but it's an amalgamation of two great styles, wheat based ales, and bock.)
Belgian Trappists: Chimay Blue, Rochefort 10 (Approach when you're done with the above)
There's a ton of styles that I haven't included here. If you don't like a particular style, don't stop drinking beer because of it. There are so many different styles that you're bound to like some of them. These recommendations are beers you should be able to find nationally; for region specific recommendations, let us knopw where you're from
That's all I can come up with off the top of my head. For more info, just hitup
www.beeradvocate.com
Originally posted by: Jinru
Can anyone name a few quality retail beer? I've only tried to Corona, Bud, Miller and other beers in that category. I want to know what these "good" tasting beer are made of. Is Samuel Adams good?