The big guys buy malted barley, not straight barley.
At a consumer level, brewing-grade malted barley (Rahr 6-row) is around $35/50 lb sack, while you can get white rice for $23/50 lb sack.
Rice/corn is definitely cheaper than malted barley, even if you change the scale.
You are right about the flavor reason though; the adjuncts were originally there to lighten the body and color of the all 6-row Pilsner style beers brewed by European immigrants in the latter half of 19th century America. It just happens to be cheaper as well.
Go look up “Classic American Pilsners” for the history of the style that eventually developed/degenerated into the American Light Lagers of today.
If you prefer, you can substitute “commercial breweries” for “brewers,” and the statement is factually correct without any “Clintonball” going on. That said, I don’t have an issue with your first sentence either. It’s just that there’s this perception (which I actually think has significantly eroded) that American beer is all adjunct lagers. If you’re a beer lover, there are few places in the world better to be than the US right now (as long as you are in a metropolitan area) for the sheer breadth and depth of beer styles and beer choices.
I should have said “breweries” or “brewing companies” instead of “brewers.” I was not attempting in any way to use weasel words.
I understand your point. Please understand mine. If I walk into a store that has an excellent broad selection of American beers, the majority of the brands on the shelf will not contain adjuncts*. If I look through a list of beers produced in the United States, the majority of them will not contain adjuncts. If I peruse a list of American breweries, the majority of them produce adjunct-free beers.
Judging American beer by Bud is like judging American wine by Gallo.
** For purposes of this discussion, I’m excluding styles that are specifically based around the adjunct, such as oatmeal stout, hefeweizen, rye beer, and honey beer.*
Fair enough. I shouldn’t have started off defensive. Although responding with:
was a completely over-the-top response. And, by the way, not true.
I think maybe adjuncts are given a bit of a bad name; plenty of British ales include stuff like corn, torrefied wheat, roasted barley, etc… and the most famous and biggest selling stout- Guinness has a large proportion of roasted and plain unmalted barley.
It’s just the German/Czech practice of no adjuncts combined with the rather profligate use of adjuncts by the big American megabrewers that makes people think they should be forbidden.
Hell, even in light lagers, the “Classic American Pilsner” style makes a great beer, and it has a fair proportion of adjuncts.
I agree. I don’t think adjunct are a big deal. The original Reinheitsgebot did allow unmalted barley, so far as I know. I’m not sure how Bavarian wheat beers worked under that law exactly, though, with wheat not being barley and all. And apparently the latest German beer law (the Vorläufiges Biergesetz), allows other types of malt and cane sugar in beer, but apparently prohibits unmalted barley. I don’t know much about that.
At any rate, screw these “purity” laws. If Belgians followed them, we wouldn’t have many of the great beers they make.
I have to agree. The major reason that corn (maize) and rice aren’t used in classical European beers is because these grains aren’t native to Europe. It certainly isn’t because the Europeans did not like lighter, cleaner brews. The whole idea of a Lager is to use brewing methods (from malting, fermentation, through conditioning) that would produce a lighter taste and mouthfeel than traditional (ale) brewing techniques. Look at the Czech Pilseners to see how far they were able to get with barley malt.
The Germans, even with their reinheitsgebot allowed wheat in their grain bill. Sure, it was “malted wheat”, but malted wheat doesn’t have enough diastatic power to fully convert the starches in the wheat, which is why wheat bears can only tolerate about 30-40% malted wheat in the grain bill. In this sense, even malted wheat is an adjunct. If rice and corn had been available to the Europeans, you can bet they would have made beer from them.
This I don’t agree with. The big guys have contracts with the barley growers (who are corporate agribusinesses, not really farmers) to buy barley by the train car load. They malt it themselves. Do you really think Bud/Miller/Coors would trust the quality of their product to an independent malter? That is not the way big business runs, and for these major brewers, brewing isn’t a hobby, vocation, avocation, or even profession; it is a business, pure and simple, and you can’t be the biggest if your quality varies.
Also, there have been several comments in this thread alluding (or outright stating) that Light American Lagers (Bud, Miller, or Coors, for example) are somehow bad or low quality. This is incorrect. They are pretty much the highest quality beers ever made by mankind. I admit, I personally prefer a Porter, Pale Ale, or, if I can find one, a good Koelsch, not to mention any of the Ambers and other American Craft styles that have become popular (in a small way) in the past two decades, but there is a reason that Budweiser is the best selling beer in the world–more people prefer an ice-cold Bud than a luke-warm nearly flat Real Ale. And, if you are in the 90+ degree F sun, I have to admit, those folks have a point.
But, I like the flavor and experience of many kind of beers, so my favorite beer changes from week to week (sometimes, day to day) and it doesn’t bother me if I can’t get my favorite, I am sure I can find something I like. While I rarely drink Light American Lager, I know enough about beer and brewing to recognize that it is not a low-quality product. That and they definitely do not use adjuncts to lower the cost of the grain bill; adjuncts are used to achieve the flavor, color, and mouthfeel they brewer is trying for. The big guys do all sorts of things to lower costs, but using inferior ingredients isn’t one of them.
Well, I’m not going to comment on “badness” or “quality.” I would say they are very precisely formulated beers, incredibly consistent, with low tolerances for any flavor deviation. It’s well-known in brewing circles that what the macro brewers do with their adjunct lagers requires incredible quality control. There is little room for error, as any mistake will be detected in such a light beer. They’re pretty much impossible to brew at home for that reason. So take that as you will (speaking as someone who probably drinks macro lagers–mostly Old Style or Walgreens’ Big Flats-as 1/3 of his monthly beer consumption.) There’s an incredible amount of control required to brew a beer like that day in and day out. I have respect for the macros to do that.
Umm, do you think that malting is done for free? Malted barley costs more than unmalted, whether the brewer malts it, or someone else does. I’d love to see some evidence that malted barley doesn’t cost more than adjuncts. I’ve never seen it.
Use of adjuncts is principally done for two reasons:
6-row barley is relatively high in protein, and adjuncts allow a bright product without protein haze.
Adjuncts are cheaper than malted barley.
And for what it’s worth, macrobrewers don’t buy barley by the train car load. They buy it by the unit train load, and have very close standards for product quality.
Not with Bud. That shit is proof that we are all destined for the Nether Regions.
I’ve always referred to American Standard brewing as “brewing naked.” You have nothing to hide behind. The slightest flaw is quite evident. Those guys are consumate brewers.
In fact, at this very moment I’m drinking PBR, very non-ironically.
No kidding. When they brew their own stuff for contests, the results are almost always incredibly good.
It’s a bad rap, anyway. It’s hardly any beer aficionado’s favorite style, but American Light Lager is certainly a valid style on its own and one which the macrobrewers do incredibly well.
And they’re especially refreshing when one is on vacation (especially in a tropical country), and the local BMC clone is the only thing available in the entire country (there’s a reason they’re also the most cloned beers by volume in the world).
As for the adjuncts, I rarely drink it, but the slight apple sweetness in Budweiser from the rice can be pleasant on occasion. As mentioned above, it’s about 30% and there’s no way to get the same clarity and lightness without the rice.
But, you can’t add the corn or rice (or oats, for that matter), directly to the mash; they have to be processed just as the barley. Sure, gelatinization of the starches is different from malting, but comparing the cost of malted barley to rice or corn is making the same mistake as just comparing the cost of barley to the other grains. If you are just comparing the costs of the raw materials, though, comparing the cost of barley to the cost of other grains is a fair comparison. It would be a valid point that malting your barley increases your processing costs, but processing the adjuncts also increases your processing costs (over a straight barley malt grain bill), so it gets complicated.
Protein haze is easily handled by other methods, “Cold Filtered” is one, precise mashing schedules, another. Rice is low in water soluble proteins, but corn is much higher.
This is still a question. There is no question, however, that when the use of adjuncts was pioneered, they were considerably more expensive for the brewers than barley. The way agribusiness is run today, it could be difficult to make a comparison other than the commodity prices already mentioned. For any particular brewing company, it really just boils down to what agreements they can make with their suppliers. In my opinion, it is irrelevant, since a typical bottle of beer has maybe 3 cents worth of grain in it. Cutting that to 2.5 cents doesn’t make much business sense if your customers don’t like the product. Increasing that to 3.5 cents makes a lot of business sense if your customers prefer the result, particularly if you selling your product for $6 a six-pack.
No, the main reason for the use of adjuncts is to achieve the end result. Once they get a process that gives the desired end result, they look for cost savings everywhere they can, but that is done after the grain bill is settled on, not before.
Consider me educated. I assumed they just bought malted barley under tight specs, but you’re right, after a little research it looks like they do malt it themselves.
The question then becomes whether or not raw barley PLUS the time and effort to malt it is more than adjuncts?
Even so, these days, I’m sure adjuncts are a flavor profile thing as much as anything else. I’d bet any amount of money they could make an all-malt 12 plato beer and price it similarly to Bud Light and make a boatload of money if they so chose.
In the days of the most famous Reinheitsgebot brewing beer with wheat was a privilege granted to certain nobles and monasteries. The Reinheitsgebot was the default rule for the general population. The modern incarnations of the law always contained various exceptions.
MillerCoors makes Batch 19, a pre-prohibition style lager. I’m not sure that it is all-malt, but it is definitely maltier than your typical macro. I quite enjoy it.
I do too, actually. And if it’s a true pre-Prohibition lager / Classic American Pilsner like they purport, it should absolutely NOT be all-malt. The adjuncts were a response to the higher protein levels of the US 6-row malt by European immigrant brewmasters.
That said, the CAP/PPL/PPP style is essentially a continental pilsner brewed using US domestic ingredients, so it’s not a small beer in any sense of the word.
Yes, there are corporate agribusinesses, but saying farmers don’t grow barley is quite an overgeneralization. I know quite a few farmers around here (Montana) that grow barley under contract for Coors. Not big huge operations, just individuals with a quarter or half-section of land that have demonstrated their ability to meet the quality standards.
There are independent malting companies that contract to the big brewers, too. ADM (now owned by Malteurop) malts 200,000 tons of barley per year in Great Falls, Montana.
I’m not sure if you were referring to me, but I’ll clarify my statements regarding those light American lagers:
They are objectively consistent, sell extremely well, and it requires a great deal of brewing skill to produce them. The sales are partly attributable to the flavor and partly to the fact that they’re generally the cheapest beer in the store.
Subjectively, I consider them beers for people who don’t like the flavor of beer. There is very little malt or hops character. Generally, if something like Bud Light is the only beer available, I’ll drink wine or soda pop instead. Quality being a subjective thing, I won’t bother to debate your claim that they’re the highest quality beers ever made by mankind, but I will say that if it doesn’t taste like beer I don’t care how much “quality” it has in it.
