Someone told me that nasty taste that cheap, mass-produced American beers (PBR, Miller, ad nauseum) have is because it’s made with corn, instead of barley. Is that true?
Mass-produced “pop beers” taste pretty much the same in other countries. No, they’re not made of corn. They’re just cheap and weak.
I have downed a few beers in my life. I do not like stout. I do not prefer dark beers but will drink them if thats all that is available. I do not like most of Sam Adams beers, A couple are OK.
I generally drink Canadian beers since I live in Detroit and can get them at the exchange. I prefer Molsons and Labatts.
If you want non mass produced beers ,you have to go to a local brewery. Some of them are pretty good. I like Kellys beer in Key West. She has wheat beers and a few others that are interesting .
In Budweiser and Bud Light, it’s rice, not corn, being added to the barley malt. With Miller, it’s corn. Either way, the problem is not the grain bill (though it certainly doesn’t help), but the decision making process. The easiest way to get rich making a consumer product is to make the product as inoffensive as possible, and dark, bitter, complex beers are harder to get used to. Plus, most of America is hot as hell in the summer, and even guys like me often switch to light, refreshing lagers (though nothing by BudMillerCoorsHeinekenCorona) in the hot months.
Why is almost everything that’s mass produced and heavily marketed by a company that’s worth a fortune absolute crap by a connoisseurs vantage?
It’s cheap to make.
Yes, this kind of beer is what the market demands, therefore it is supplied.
Valete,
Vox Imperatoris
There is nothing wrong with mass-market beers. They are made with good ingredients, but are very light-because people drink them very cold. They are refreshing and OK if you drink one or two. If you like more flavor, a beer made with 100% barley malt , and lots of hops, is best enjoyed at about 40 F. I like all kinds of beers, and after a few porters, I’ll have an American lager to balance things out.
By the way, you can make a decent corn-based beer, but they are usually sweet, as the fructose corn sugar is not 100% convertable by beer yeast.
As for wheat beers-they are OK (in the summertime).
Cheap Euro beer is crap too.
Yeah, it’s all exactly the same all around the world. Cheap beer tastes like cheap beer.
Why do people like them? They are cheap and they taste refreshing when its hot. Not everyone is into beer. Some people are just looking for something they can down quickly that leaves them refreshed and slightly buzzed.
IMO it is the same reason that chain restaurants have bland food - they are trying to appeal to too many people. In so doing, they make a bland, average product that no one could accuse of standing out from the crowd.
There’s some expensive crap in there too. Stella Artois, reassuringly expensive? Expensive yes, but reassuring? One reason I thought it was called “wifebeater” was the terrible hangover it gave me too.
Carlsberg too has a nice little catchphrase, probably the best lager in the world, that in no way matches it’s taste.
And Harp lager? Brew with “pride” at the “Great Northern Brewery”? Tastes exactly as you would expect the Lagan to taste, if you strained the bits out of it.
Yes, but it’s important to remember that beer manufacturers made the market. The US at one point had thousands of small breweries, much like Europe did. The US had a market for a wide variety of styles of beers and could. During the prohibition years, most of the local ones had to close. Only the larger breweries survived prohibition. When they re-opened there were only a few breweries to serve the entire U.S. population. These breweries favored the lighter brews because of their mass appeal (and some researchers say that women preferred the lighter brews-- because so much of the US male population was off fighting the war, Rosie the Riveter and her associates were a larger share of the beer-drinking market as well as the workforce)
<Tinfoil Hat>It’s the Mind Control Serum the Bilderberg Group adds. </Tinfoil Hat>
I’d read what Nom_de_Plume wrote somewhere else as well- in short, Prohibition wiped out many of the smaller breweries, and then WWII following closely behind meant that the beer they did make was aimed at beer-drinking women. It then caught on after the war, and the rest is history.
Who else has tried that new Budweiser American Ale? That’s mass produced and it’s not the worst tasting bottle of Budweiser beer I’ve ever had. I might even go as far as to say that it’s pretty tasty.
Now that’s a ringing endorsement!
Seriously, I’ve been tempted to try this, I probably will eventually.
I’ve got a story concerning the flavor of Budweiser, told to me a retired AB brewmaster. It’s about August Busch, Jr. (1899–1989) --“Gussie Busch.” (He was the colorful one who would often ride in parades on a wagon pulled by Clydesdales.)
Gussie came back from a vacation one year (late 1950’s of early 60’s I’m guessing) and said that when he drank beer with a lot of hops it gave him gas pains. And he decreed that Bud was going to have cut down on the hops (which is what gives beer a bitter flavor.)
The brewmaster, a fairly good friend and a serious person, chuckled when he told me this story, and said, “And that’s why Budweiser isn’t a bitter beer anymore, because hops gave Gussie Busch gas.”
I’m more cynical than my friend was, and asked him, “Couldn’t he have just made up the gas story because the marketing people told him that Bud had to be less bitter to compete? But he didn’t want to admit that to the brewmasters…?”
The notion actually surprised him. “I hadn’t thought of that,” he said.
Brief tasting notes from our local paper. They seemed to think it was a step in the right direction, but underwhelming compared to microbrews.
A fascinating New Yorker article recently profiled Sam Calagione of Dogfish breweries. You can find the complete article here. I found the following quite instructive:
Man, I don’t get the Budweiser hate. I love beer of all kinds, and cheap canned beer definitely has its place. Among the admittedly inferior ranks of cheap canned beer, Budweiser, Pabst, and Stag rise to the top as the best of their class. Tasty and cheap is a hard combination to beat. I mean, hand-crafted microbrews are really the pinnacle of our society, and Bud pales in comparison; but so does Kool-aid and people still drink that. The trick is to realize that cheap beer is a different class of beverage, like Kool-aid, that shouldn’t really be compared to ambrosia like [insert your favorite ‘high class’ beer here]. Taken on its own terms, Budweiser is pretty flavorful and refreshing.
But don’t get me started on the foulness that is ‘Lite’ beer.