# Which light beers **URL:** \ **Category:** Cecil's Columns/Staff Reports\ **Created:** [July 28, 2000, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-light-beers/27181 "2000-07-28T11:45:51Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 9\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![RM\_Mentock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2000, 11:45am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-light-beers/27181/1 "2000-07-28T11:45:51Z")
The mailbag column [Is light beer made by watering it down?](http://www.straightdope.com/mailbag/mlitebeer.html) says that there are indeed some light beers that are made simply by watering down regular beer. Which light beers are those? ---
**Author:** ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2000, 1:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-light-beers/27181/2 "2000-07-28T13:55:54Z")
IIRC, Coors light at least started out just watering down their beer, but I can’t tell if they still do so or not. Their website doesn’t give me enough information on how Coors light is made to be able to tell. They make Zima, though, so I can believe they are capapable of _any_ evil. I’ve also seen a microbrewer (who left his brand unnamed) quoted as saying that he simply watered down one of his regular beers to make light beer. I don’t have the articles on hand so I can’t give you more exact references right now. Most brewers do use the enzymes to increase the alcohol content, and _then_ water it down (making, essentially, watered down malt liquor) but simply adding water is listed as a way to make light beer as well, although I doubt it’s very common. They probably brew a higher alcohol beer if they’re going to water it down to make light beer. ---
**Author:** ![Roger\_the\_Lodger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/48db29/32.png) [@Roger\_the\_Lodger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_the_Lodger)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2000, 4:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-light-beers/27181/3 "2000-07-28T16:36:11Z")
Cecil answered a question (page 348 of the paperback version of “The Straight Dope” book) about why light beer contained fewer calories than regular beer. The conclusion was that it contained less alcohol, directly in proportion to how many calories it shaved, and that the proteins and what-not in beer didn’t have much, if anything, to do with its caloric load. The current answer on how light beer is brewed seems to imply the opposite–that alcohol has no calories, and that the proteins and sugars in beer are what drive how big your gut gets after downing a few. So, which is it? Me, I’ll trust Cecil over the science advisory board. Here’s the original question and answer, which are NOT in the archives here. > [@](#): > > _Apart from the fact that all the light beers say “less calories” rather than “fewer calories,” I am irritated that they never tell us whether the alcohol content is also reduced. What is the alcohol content of, say, Pabst Extra Light (50 percent fewer calories) and how does it compare with regular beer? --Roland E., Chicago_ > > Believe it or not, you are dealing in classified information. If you asked the friendly folks at the Pabst Brewing Company about this, they’d cordially invite you to sue them before they’d tell you anything. Fortunately, you didn’t ask Pabst, you asked me. Alcohol is the prime factor in determining the calorie content of beer–the carbohydrate and protein percentages hardly matter at all. This, perhaps, is the source of Pabst’s guilty secret: the advantages of drinking a light beer seem to pale somewhat when you realize that you’ll have to drink twice as much in order to get a buzz on. > > The alcohol content of “regular” American-made beer varies between 3.6 abd 3.8 percent by weight, depending on the brand (European beers are significantly heavier, containing about 5 percent alcohol). For each 12-ounce can of Pabst Blue Ribbon you guzzle, you’ll be absorbing between 100-150 calories, depending on which tests you prefer to believe. The average light beer, by contrast, contains an average of 3 and 3.4 percent alcohol by weight and boasts an average of 96 calories. But like the name says, Pabst Extra Light is _extra light_, and if we take the ad’s claim of “half calories” at face value, it would have to check in at 50 to 75 calories per can. Given that range, an educated guess puts Extra Light’s alcohol content in the area of 2 percent by weight, give or take a few tenths in either direction. Might as well switch to Kool-Aid. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2000, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-light-beers/27181/4 "2000-07-28T17:51:04Z")
Alcohol itself doesn’t have any easily-usable calories, but it is the cause of beer gut (or at least one cause; I’ve got a bit of a potbelly myself, and I don’t drink). The problem is that alcohol slows your metabolic rate, so your body is burning fewer of the calories you get from other sources. ---
**Author:** ![Roger\_the\_Lodger](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/48db29/32.png) [@Roger\_the\_Lodger](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Roger_the_Lodger)\ **Post date:** [July 28, 2000, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-light-beers/27181/5 "2000-07-28T19:30:59Z")
Well, I suspect the real answer lies somewhere between Cecil’s original answer and the SDSAB answer. [http://www.hbd.org/brewery/library/AlClbinger.html](http://www.hbd.org/brewery/library/AlClbinger.html) We should also remember that while carbs and protein have 4 calories/gram, alcohol has 7 calories/gram. However, while I was able to find a number of sites which claim extensive medical evidence that the body does not metabolize alcohol very effectively, but no citations were forthcoming…but there are sites like this [http://alcoholism.about.com/health/alcoholism/library/blnaa35.htm](http://alcoholism.about.com/health/alcoholism/library/blnaa35.htm) which cite the same statistics. (If you read closely, ladies, there is a new diet awaiting you in the information.) The following table implies that about 70% of a 5% alcohol (by weight) beer calories comes from the alcohol in it: [http://brewery.org/brewery/infobase/AlcCalTables.html#PerCal](http://brewery.org/brewery/infobase/AlcCalTables.html#PerCal) So, who knows? Alcohol has calories, but they may be miracle calories which simply do not get used (in which case, we should be able to distill the urine of drinkers in our efforts of recycle everything). I also didn’t mean to imply that pot bellies come from drinking. It was just a cute (or so I thought) way of noting weight gain. ---
**Author:** ![RM\_Mentock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)\ **Post date:** [August 6, 2000, 10:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-light-beers/27181/6 "2000-08-06T22:29:24Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Gaudere \* > **I don’t have the articles on hand so I can’t give you more exact references right now.** I’m still interested in this question. Any help? ---
**Author:** ![APB9999](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/8e8cbc/32.png) [@APB9999](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/APB9999)\ **Post date:** [August 7, 2000, 7:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-light-beers/27181/7 "2000-08-07T19:32:45Z")
Chronos, why is there no such thing as a wine-gut then? Why do pot-bellies seem to be so thoroughly associated with beer drinkers? ---
**Author:** ![Gaudere](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/e495f1/32.png) [@Gaudere](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gaudere)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2000, 1:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-light-beers/27181/8 "2000-08-08T01:40:56Z")
> [@](#): > > The current answer on how light beer is brewed seems to imply the opposite–that alcohol has no calories, and that the proteins and sugars in beer are what drive how big your gut gets after downing a few. I did not intend to imply that; I note that the calorie loss of light beer comes from “loss of dextrins [i.e., carbs] and subsequent dilution [i.e., the alcohol content is usually lower than the standard beer]”. However, the calories in beer are made up of carbs and alcohol, right? Which do you think the average beer drinker thinks is more expendable? Light beer is generally diluted to slightly less alcoholic content than regular beer, but that does not account for all of the calorie loss, unless they are simply watering down the beer to make it “light” instead of using the more sophisticated methods to remove the “unnecessary” carbs yet keep the alcohol content relatively high. Assuming 30% of the calories come from carbs (I have no idea if and how much of a role protein plays; I can’t find any good info on that, so I’m assuming it’s negligable), removing nearly all of that 30% makes a big difference; add a little water and there you go. Look at the difference between Guinness at 4.27% ABV and 153 cal and Coors Light at 4.36% ABV and 107cal. (source: [http://pages.prodigy.com/SMSD34A/aleabv.htm](http://pages.prodigy.com/SMSD34A/aleabv.htm) ) Old Milwaukee Light has 95% of the alcohol content of Old Milwaukee regular, yet 84% of the calories. MGD Light has 90% of the alcohol of MGD, yet 67% of the calories (hope I’m doing my math right here). The main point of light beer brewing is to make a lower-calorie beer that equals approximately the same amount of drunkenness, which it can even at a slightly lower ABV because of the loss of dextrins. But Cecil was correct (of course) that Pabst Extra-light is indeed some weak-ass beer at 2.51% ABV and 67 calories. RM, I still have yet to make it to the library to re-look up my sources, but I’ll do that soon. From the calorie/alcohol percentage stats, I would say that Coors no longer simply waters down their light beer, but the reason they stuck in my mind is that they sometimes lay claim to having the “first light beer”, when all they did was water down their regular beer. It works, but it’s considered lame enough that the only one considered the first true light beer was the one using Owades’ method. And I’ve seen it mentioned as a method for making light beer, and one brewer even admitted to it (unnamed) but digging up exact names might be tough–it’s not something they’d want to broadcast. If you can find a light beer where the alcohol content is 75% of the regular beer, _and_ the calorie count is 75% of the regular, that’s probably what they do–all the other methods used would show a disproportionately low calorie content compared to alcohol content. (I suppose the brewer could simply just water down their original mash, but that’s essentially the same thing as watering it afterwards–it’s different than using a slightly dilute mash and using enzymes to make the final product’s alcohol content acceptable.) ---
**Author:** ![RM\_Mentock](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/e274bd/32.png) [@RM\_Mentock](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RM_Mentock)\ **Post date:** [August 8, 2000, 2:38am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/which-light-beers/27181/9 "2000-08-08T02:38:47Z")
[QUOTE] \*Originally posted by Gaudere \* \*\* > [@](#): > > From the calorie/alcohol percentage stats, I would say that Coors no longer simply waters down their light beer, but the reason they stuck in my mind is that they sometimes lay claim to having the “first light beer”, when all they did was water down their regular beer.\*\* I thought Coors claim was because of their regular beer, not the silver bullet.