So, people buy the beer because they like the taste
…and then they complain because it doesn’t have enough alcohol?
Seems to me that if the beer tasted watered down then you could just switch to a brand that doesn’t taste that way. Let the market make the decision.
Truth in labeling. I’d buy/eat horse-meat if it were available, but if the label says “beef” that’s what I expect.
Huh, interesting. Could they make this any more confusing?
I’d be willing to bet that rather than intentionally watering down the beer for cost-savings, they probably have a QC step that will water down a batch if for some reason, it comes out over-gravity or over-alcohol. In other words, if a batch comes out at 1.012 instead of 1.009, they’ll probably water it down to 1.009. Also, if a batch comes out at 4.1% ABV, they’ll probably water it down to 4% (or whatever FG/ABV values they use).
And, I’m sure that whatever FG or alcohol content adjustments they do, it’s to keep the beer WITHIN the labeled amounts, not to intentionally deceive the consumer. I suspect they’d be more willing to water down a batch to keep it within the ABV specified on the label than they’d be to let a batch out that was 0.3% ABV over the labeled strength.
This appears standard practice to me, as a former brewery quality lab supervisor. Every brewer of any size “waters down” their beer. Water, either de-aerated or carbonated, is added during filtration as a carrier for the filtration medium. Secondly, the abv% of the beer is tested before filtration so that you know how much diluent water to add to hit your abv target. Then the bright beer is tested to make sure your calculations were correct.
The Federal gov’t is very interested in knowing exactly what your alcohol percentages are on every single tank of beer because they are collecting taxes on it. If Bud was claiming their beer was 5% but is really 4.85%, they would be paying extra tax for no reason and the TTB would be all over them. I’ve had to sign the monthly reports to the TTB and you have to stamp and sign each page with the statement the report is accurate under penalty of perjury.
nm
We better start seeing tests from a lot of college chemistry majors to determine if in fact the beer is not labeled correctly.
I’d volunteer, but it’s…Bud.
I’m sorry, but there are limits as to what I’ll do in the name of Science.
Very good. I had never heard Budweiser products described in scientific terms. Thank you. 
Don’t be silly… you can’t really even create a mash without something like 40% malted barley- where do you think the enzymes to convert starch to sugar come from?
They’re not terribly hoppy, but that’s the style.
That’s not actually quite accurate. You can get full conversion with as little as 10% - 15% of a high diastatic powered malt (6-row being the highest at around 160, 2-Row coming in second at around 140) in the mash with the right mash schedule. However, I believe Budweiser is about 60% 2-Row and 40% Rice (with a very small amount of caramel malt that doesn’t throw those percentages off by any measurable amount). It also uses a highly attenuative mash schedule that contributes to not needing much malt so they could, in theory, go much lower.
I’ve never understood the hate that American Light Lagers get. Admittedly they aren’t a style I drink regularly (except on a really hot summer day while outside) but the technical expertise required to make them is something to behold. Anheuser-Busch probably has some of the best brewers on the planet and the fact that they can consistently produce what amounts to a perfectly crafted beer with nowhere to hide mistakes is nothing short of amazing. Yes, it’s light on hop flavor and aroma, but it is supposed to be. Hops aren’t everything; there are subtleties to beer flavor that are too easily masked by the current hop bomb trend. That’s not to say that I would turn down a Pliny the Elder, but I have both made and bought beers that I would gladly take over one. (Unfortunately I am on the East Coast in a rural town so I’ll never have the opportunity to get one anyway)
Back on topic, though… While it would be worthwhile for Anheuser-Busch to water down the beer (tax on beer is by the barrel, no matter the alcohol content) I think that it would be a monumentally stupid thing to do. I don’t have a huge amount of faith in the intelligence of people, particularly when there is money involved, but I would be very much surprised to find that they are actually watering down the brew.
Couldn’t you just add straight amylase enzyme powder? Would that do the trick? (Real question, I don’t know, I’ve never tried using amylase powder.)
I actually do think home brewers give them a reasonable amount of respect. From what I’ve noticed, it’s pretty much taken as true that American Light Lagers are one of the most difficult beers to brew well, as you can’t hide any imperfection in the process in them.
ALL is what I call “brewing naked.” There is nothing to hide behind, so if you don’t do things perfectly, everybody knows it.
You can. I’ve never used amylase directly, but I imagine it would result in a beer that is as thin as water and dryer than water to boot since you wouldn’t have the dextrines and proteins from the malt.
ETA: This is Geneb.. I didn’t realize that my wife was logged in on this machine.
This is also why they encourage drinking it ice-cold. 
I give ALLs a crapload of credit for being able to brew that style consistently day in, day out, batch after batch after batch. I just don’t want to drink it unless I’m looking for a “lawnmower beer.”
I wonder if the former employees from the article know about the ABW/ABV difference and about why you can’t just bottle and sell a beer that’s too high in gravity. :dubious:
It’s akin to marveling that McDonald’s can turn out the same billion burgers. Yes, the craft of brewing is tougher to do consistently, but the vitriol comes from Bud, Miller, Coors dumbing down the American beer palate for decades all the while ensuring their stranglehold via their draconian distribution deals. I’m thankful that craft beer has been steadily gaining market share for over a decade now, and awareness of craft beer is at an all time high. Finally, the American adjunct lagers were based on pilsners, and they’re a poor imitation. While a pilsner is typically no hop bomb (Victory Prima Pils, mmm), their hop and malt characteristics far outshine the America fizzy yellow stuff.
Years ago Budweiser put out a special brew called Brew Masters Private Reserve that was essentially an all-malt full bodied Bud. It was spectacular and depressing at the same time, because it showed what they were capable of, and then it was killed.
Yeah this is what I expect Bud and everyone else is doing too. For profitability’s sake, and since they make a lot of beer, they most likely hold the beer in some in-between stage where the yeast is lifted off so it’s no longer fermenting, but it hasn’t been filtered so it’s not finished beer yet. This is ruh beer. Run it through the alcolyzer to get your ABW and OG or calories if it’s light beer, then put it in the program to see how much water it needs. Then you filter the ruh, add the water, test the tank, and hope it’s right.
I interned a bit at a brewery.
Making beer and making hamburgers are not even remotely similar. I can provide you with my recipe for hamburgers and my recipe for Wee Heavy. You’ll make the hamburgers identically and the Wee Heavy would likely only resemble mine in color. (I’m not saying that I am a particularly good brewer, only that the smallest differences in production, equipment and even ambient air temperature and humidity result in a completely different end product with beer. Not so with hamburgers.)
Just to be clear, I wasn’t defending Anheuser-Busch in my previous post. I think they’re a terrible company that has run plenty of great breweries out of business. I was defending beer, brewers and, particularly, American Lager as a style as it receives entirely too much hatred simply because it is associated with Anheuser-Busch InBev.
As for the relation of American Lager to Pilsner, of course it is a poor imitation. It’s not a Pilsner, it’s an American Lager. To imply that American Lager is a bad beer because it is a bad imitation of Pilsner would be akin to saying that Porters are bad beer because they are a bad imitation of a Brown Ale or that Stout is bad beer because it is a bad imitation of Porter. Nearly all beer styles are intertwined in some way, most of them coming about because someone brewed a traditional style with minor differences/mistakes, using locally available ingredients and water, or brewing the old styles with new ingredients or technologies. Heck, the very beer you mention as an example of a Pilsner (Prima Pils) is a German Pilsner, which is an offshoot of the original Bohemian Pilsner and as different from it as American Lager is to Pilsner.
Expounding upon that, most of today’s “traditional styles” wouldn’t have even been recognizable back when they were originally popular because of advances in technology. Back when malt was roasted over an open fire, beer would have a distinct smoky taste to it. In addition, sanitation wasn’t what it is today so many beers would have a hint of sour that would be considered an unforgivable flaw now (in the vast majority of beer) and get considerably stronger as the beer aged so that old beer would have to be mixed with new beer in order to make it drinkable.
In short, I don’t think one should hate an entire beer style because it is trendy to do so or even because the major brewers of it are terrible companies. All styles have their merits. There will be some that you truly don’t like and that is to be expected, but to say that American Lager is inherently bad beer is as ignorant as what an intern I once had at work said when we took him out for supper: “I don’t eat anything that’s green.”
You need to read up on your beer history, my friend. The original American pilsners (now called "Classic American Pilsners) were originally an adaptation of the original Bohemian and German pilsner recipes for American ingredients, in particular 6-row barley. In order to get a clear product and a more appropriate flavor, the brewmasters (mostly Czech and German, BTW) mixed in a proportion of corn or rice. However, the hop levels were still in the 40-60 IBU range, the beers tended to be finished with imported noble hops, and the original gravity was somewhere in the 12 degrees Plato range, or even higher.
In other words, it was a serious beer. Over time, the gravities and hop levels have gone down, and the adjunct levels have gone up, with the hops dropping more than the gravity; ISTR that straight-up Budweiser is still brewed at 1.045, but with something like 15 IBU.
American pilsners were never all-malt, and the adjunct additions weren’t for cost-cutting either… give the guys some credit!
People should remember this when they think about the Founders. The Founders had a very, very healthy buzz on most of the time.