Among the brands you’ve listed there isn’t really a difference. The majority of beer drinkers cannot tell the difference between a Budweiser and another brand of similar beer in a blind taste test. I certainly don’t say that as a beer snob. While I prefer to drink something other than Coors or Bud I find their flavors to be rather inoffensive and not particularly bad but nothing really good either. I do enjoy a Corona with some lime in it once in a while, go figure.
There is more to a quality buzz than alcohol content. Being drunk on wine is different than vodka even if you have the same BAC.
Cite? Because in my world ethanol is ethanol (unless it’s been de-natured) and anyone else is an amateur.
You’re dealing with a well season…um…consumer of “adult beverages” here. You’re required to provide I.D. and a “cite” before entering this thread.
There is a huge difference between cheaper beer and the pricier stuff; however, as mentioned, everything in the OP is cheaper beer. The major difference to me is that the mass produced beers in the OP taste like over-carbonated, metallic water. Well-made beer tastes like the carbonation is natural, like champagne (though it isn’t). Cheap swill tastes like soda pop with extra CO2.
Michelob is measurably better than Bud. And compare premium beers with craft brews, and you taste a huge difference, esp. if you drink it near where it’s made.
I’m really enjoying Pauliner Weissbier and Svytury’s Ekstra a lot these days, when I can find 'em. How I miss Rock Bottom and all the Seattle micros!
Look, I don’t care how serious you are about beer … putting out someone’s eyes just so their sense of taste will be heightened for a beer tasting is wrong! :eek:
Posts like this are, simply, invalid. These are opinionated statements at best.
The OP asks if the hops in Milwaukees Best are inferior to those used in Miller Genuine Draft. Is the corn/rice used in Busch inferior to that used in Budweiser? Is the yeast used in Keystone worse than that used in Coors.
A comparison between Michelob and Budweiser is invalid? The OP mentioned Bud and Busch specifically; comparing Anheuser-Busch’s three tiers is pretty central to the point!
For anyone who’s interested there appear to be differences in how different alcohols impact your mood: Does drinking gin make you mean? Can you get intoxicated quicker via alcohol enema? - The Straight Dope
I can find absolutely no studies focusing on comparing just different types of beer.
A lot of breweries have a house yeast they use for the majority of their beers. I kind of stopped drinking Rogue beers because I got tired of the yeast profile their Pacman yeast gives. When Wyeast produced that culture for homebrewers, I made a batch with it and it tasted very much like a Rogue beer.
As to the original question: Try them all and decide what you like. A lot of the beers made by Anheuser-Busch (now A-B Inbev) will have a very similar flavor from the lager yeast they use, which throws acetaldehyde pretty heavily, giving a green-apple flavor - and, some users report, contributing to headaches and other ill effects.
It’s easy as a beer snob (which I am) to say, “Oh, you should only drink good beer,” where “good beer” can mean whatever the speaker wants it to mean. Really, though, “good” is entirely subjective, so what works for me (Old Rasputin) may not be anything like what you are interested in. I do encourage you to branch out and try new things once in a while, as I think it’s a shame to only drink one kind of beer, but my overall advice is to drink what you like.
Fine. What’s the difference between the cheap beer in the OP and the pricier beer in the OP? Price. What’s the difference between a $5 bottle of wine and a $500 bottle of wine? Aren’t they both just crushed grapes? No, there’s a difference in technique, in quality, in name. What about a $5 bottle of wine and $50 bottle of wine? Well, the $50 bottle of wine is probably from an earlier vintage than the $5 bottle, but not as early as the $500 bottle; perhaps from a lesser known vineyard; perhaps not as good a year. But what’s the difference between a $5 bottle of wine and a $15 bottle of wine?
Marketing. The $5 mass-produced generic table wine appeals to people who just want cheap, mass produced table wine. But not everyone who wants to buy inexpensive wine wants to buy cheap wine. That $15 bottle might be nearly identical - you could just re-bottle the $5 stuff and slap the word “reserve” on the label - but it’s something you don’t mind having around if someone stops over for dinner. It’s something lower-end wine producers struggle with - make the wine too pricey, it’s a tough sell. Keep the price too low, and people think it’s swill. You have to find the sweet spot.
There are inexpensive beers, and then there are cheap beers. The producers are going for different markets - are you a college kid who needs beer pong fuel and probably don’t mind and/or take some pride in drinking the cheapest stuff? Or are you having some friends over to watch a game, and would be embarrassed to serve them the cheapest beer around? Taste and quality are not so much an issue. Also, you probably don’t see as much advertising for the cheap-o stuff - I could be wrong but I’ve never seen a Super Bowl commercial for Milwaukee’s Best, or Keystone. So that keeps cost down.
There’s also the issue of whether you’re looking to get drunk, or to just have one or two glasses of beer. Are you looking for something with complex flavors, or something with a simple and clean flavor palette? Do you like sour, bitter, sweet or spiciness? You may have to pay more to get the flavor combination you want from beer. The combination of yeast, malt, hops and other flavoring agents make a difference in the end result, especially if you’re dealing with varieties of hops and the hop-to-malt ratio or an oddball flavoring agent. Personally, I’m not a fan of most pilsners and lagers most of the time, so I normally am not in the “cheap beer” market. However, I have been known to enjoy Sam Adams and Yuengling from time to time, and have had some really great “cheap” beers (Gallo) in Latin America.
So much of beer drinking (to me) is “situational”, in that I associate the pleasure of the drink more with things like how it is drunk, the temperature, what I’ve been doing, etc. Example: on a 100F day having just finished mowing the FUCKING LAWN and being covered in sweat and grass, ice-cold Budweiser is as good as anything on the planet. Or sitting around a campfire late at night once with a bunch of girlfriends out in the woods having the time of our lives, with nothing to drink but Moosehead, it was the perfect drink.
My experience has been that beer snobs are like any other snobs. Sure there are differences in beer quality which even a barbarian (as I was described once by Cecil) can appreciate, but for the most part the enthusiasts are just doing “their thing” and having fun in their own way. More power to the beer snobs, but don’t look down your Gallic nose at me if after I mow the lawn today I grab a Budweiser when I sit in the shade.
You’re completely misunderstanding. Being blind drunk is only temporary. Don’t they teach anything at school these days?
I thought once the person had that much to drink is when you switch over to the cheap stuff anyways since no one notices the difference at that point.
Cheap beers are made with sugars derived from rice and corn, with as little of the expensive barley malt as possible. Besides being cheap, this reslts in a low alcohol, low taste brew, which is meant to be drnk very cold.
More expensive beers se 100% malted barley, and good quality hops.
The difference in taste is considerable-but many drinkers do not like a heavy, malty beer-the actually prefer the ultra-light cheap beers.
It’s like the difference between a fine steakhouse, and a chain like the Outback.
to each his own.
That’s what you do unless you’re Jesus, that is.
To answer just the question put forward by the OP with no regard for any beer not mentioned.
Yes. There is a difference between those beers. They all taste different, and some (to me) taste less good than others though none of them top my list of favorites.
I will drink something in the Miller family of products before most things in the Anheuser-Busch before I will drink something in the Coors family. (as a general rule, which doesn’t always follow. I like Michelob best of any of them.) Withing each family there are some beers that I find more tolerable than others, though the distinction is lesser. I like Miller High Life > Miller Light > MGD, for example.
I have a relative who will only drink Keystone Light. Only. She might possibly tolerate a Coors light if she has to, but only if she really has to.
In terms of cost, I suspect that is mostly marketing but I don’t have a real answer. But they don’t all taste the same. They just all taste bad.
Isn’t all this missing the point of the OP?
A ‘good’ beer is certainly distinguishable from a ‘bad’ beer.
But is one bad (but cheaper) beer distinguishable from another bad (but less cheap) beer brewed essentially the same way?
To use a specific example, what distinguishes a Keystone from a Coors, other than cost? Is there actually a taste difference between the two? The ingredients are (in theory) the same, so is the quality of the ingredients in Keystone/Coors the same? Is the difference in price purely a function of marketing?
I’ve never actually had a Keystone and have had few Coors in my life. Likewise, I’ve had Budweiser but never Busch and have had a couple of MGDs but never Milwaukee’s Best, so I can’t answer for any of these.
To note again, this isn’t about the difference between a Real Ale IPA and Budweiser or anything like that, it’s about the difference between two specific cheap beers targeting the same market and using the same flavor profile and ingredients but features one beer that is somewhat cheaper than the other, e.g. Keystone vs Coors.
I thought I answered the OP nicely. They all have different flavor profiles, if only slightly, and don’t all taste the same.