I’ll have to send you one of my schwarzbiers when they go into 6 packs later this fall.
I’ll look forward to it! I imagine it would be great in a beer like that. But it just reinforces my finding that some Briess specialty malts are OK, but stay away from the base malts. IMO.
I use a heck of a lot of Best Malz and some Thomas Faucett. Don’t currently use any Briess basemalts.
I use Best for German and Belgian styles and Rahr or GW for American. I don’t brew British styles, so I don’t have to worry about MO.
No love for fuggles.
True, many in the Midwest use Briess, West Coast not so much except for some specialty grains.
Maybe I over generalized, but I’ve been to a lot of breweries outside the Midwest that use Briess. Anyway, the point I meant to get across was if you use something other than a North American base malt in an American ale, you might not get the character you were looking for.
You took the words out of my mouth. Briess 2-row brewer’s malt is the melba toast of 2-row malt.
I use Avangard Pils for every style other than British ale. It’s a dead ringer for Durst Pils at an unbelievable price point. My favorite British base malt is Thomas Fawcett Pearl. I do not brew West Coast-style American ale (life is too short to spend it immersed in citrus and pine 
).
I have not found much difference between Briess and other American 2 row malts - but I so rarely use American base malts, that perhaps I should try to get some Rahr - it is cheaper from some sources. My main malts are Avengard Pilsner and English Maris Otters. But I brew a fair amount of English ales and very few hoppy beers - mostly BoPils and Helles with the pilsner malt. My favorite is Best Malz - floor malted! It’s more costly, but worth it.
Let’s put some numbers to this:
If a bag of Continental Pils is 55 lbs @ $70 = $1.27/lb
and a bag of Briess Pils is 50 lbs @ $42 (~40% less) = $0.84/lb
Using 10-15 lbs in a 5 gallon batch, that comes to $4.30-$6.45 per batch.
For me, an extra $5 or so is worth it for the highest quality / most traditional ingredients.
In an IPA, you wouldn’t use Fuggles instead of Simcoe/Nelson/Mosaic/etc. just to save $5, would you?
Bottom line - since you’re unsure of the value, buy a bag of each and brew with both. Compare and judge for yourself.
No, I’d do it because I hate Fuggles! 
Now that I’ve been brewing a lot more lagers, I’ve been contemplating buying a sack of good-quality Pils and just using that and/or MO for all my base malt needs. You may have finally convinced me. An I do brew West-Coast style American ale (I don’t get enough fruit in my diet…)
I’m looking to brew the La Cumbre ‘Project Dank’ IPA recipe in the last issue of Zymurgy, and it uses IIRC Canadian Pils as the base malt. In addition to LARGE amounts of hops, . I’m intrigued by the idea of the pils malt combined with that hopping level. We’ll see how it comes out.
EDIT - I brew West Coast ales (clearly). Life’s too short NOT to brew and drink citrusy, piney beers, aside from any number of other styles.
If I want citrus and pine, I can get it commercially. But if I want peach/mango/pineapple with a touch of dank citrus, or any other combo like that I have to do it myself if I want it done right (and fresh). As far as the pils malt thing goes, I have a few hoppy lagers under my belt and I think Pils malt works just as well as US 2-row with hops.
Yeah, I’ve used pils in IPLs and liked it, not with quite that hop schedule. I’m sure it’s great. As for the hops, I don’t spend a lot of time trying to duplicate commercial beers either - I’d rather experiment with new hops and combos. But I also decided I don’t want 5 gallons of fruit bomb APA or IPA as a rule, so there is generally some combo of pine/dank, citrus, floral, and fruity hop characters for most of mine.
Any day of the week! However, I brew traditional IPA. Fuggle is a traditional IPA cultivar.
Edit: I love Fuggle, especially UK Fuggle. Yum!
Glad I’m not the only one who keeps a pound of fuggles in the freezer.