Why does the most popular beer in almost any country always suck?

Cafe Society
21

Sometimes people are just thirsty and want something refreshing. Your garden variety mass produced beer hits the spot.

I’ll always reach for a Bud or Miller High Life on a hot summer afternoon. There’s nothing better after mowing the yard.

I save the fancy craft beers for quiet evenings at home when I can slowly savor every mouthful.

It’s no different than Soda. We love it because it’s familiar and something that reminds us of growing up.

My first beer at a high school party was Miller High Life. We always had Miller and Bud in coolers on fishing trips. Spent countless days on the lake water sking enjoying a brew afterwards.

I’m not giving that up entirely for a craft beer.

22

Or with thinking that the people who invented Cruzcampo, San Miguel and the many Estrellas knew what the fuck a Bud was.
Anything mass-produced is explicitly not trying to be for the elites. Complaining that bestselling beers, or cheeses, or yoghurts, aren’t as good as the stuff made by some dude whose name is only known to other people whose tools are also made from the shaven toenails of angels indicates a complete failure to see the point.

23

I have to question OP’s palate…of the several beers I’ve had from that map, most are distinguishable from Bud/Bud light.

24

So then I gather then that this is the time and place for all the worldly, cosmopolitan Straight Dopers to grandly, boldly proclaim how many different continents/countries/regions/cities/towns/villages they have beered in, and how that one tiny hamlet outside Ajdovscin has a minature, unmarked, even unnamed pivovarna that has been steadfastly brewing a transendent amber nectar since back in 1474, (throughout wars, famine, political upheaval and even the dark ascension of The Bee Gees) a brew that makes grown men openly, unstintingly weep manly tears of both spiritual and temporal ecstasy, a beer that emperors and scoundrels alike would joyfully give up all they possessed for, and blah, blah, blah, fucking blah, but for anyone to deny that sitting in an outdoor cafe in the mild, lazy Rotterdam summertime with a properly chilled, perfectly poured draught Heineken Pils (which is ONLY available inside the Netherlands, and is a completely, totally different animal from the famed yet unremarkable Heineken Lager sold around the world) is one of the most simple yet sublime experiences that life has to offer, well then, sadly, that poor benighted soul clearly does not know anything worth knowing about beer.

25

I can tell you why Carling Black lable is the most popular in South Africa. Higher alcohol content per can, taste is a secondary concern.

So if AB InBev decided to bring Budweiser in to replace the old SABMiller brands all they have to do is make it cheaper with more alcohol and Budweiser will rapidly become top beer in SA.

26

I went a craft beer festival in Oaxaca, Mexico last year. While talking to one of the brewers he told me that one of the problems they have is that their beers are too expensive for the average Mexican. Working class people in a lot of countries simply can’t afford it. Having a too many of beer choices is definitely a first world problem.

27

The other thing with nationally-popular brands (from Budweiser to McDonald’s to Coca-Cola to whatever) is that they’re consistent. Anywhere you go, if you see a Budweiser on the shelves, you know exactly what you’re going to get. You can try a local microbrew, and maybe it’ll be great, but maybe it’ll be terrible, or at least not the kind of thing you like. But with the big mass-produced brands, there’s no such gamble.

28

Lowest common denominator. The most popular anything sucks; the most popular movie, book, and song all suck.

29

That caught my eye as well.

30

With that kind of elitist attitude, your opinion on the matter can safely be ignored.

31

There’s got to be a component of affordability in the popularity equation. IIRC AB adds rice to get fermentable sugars, Miller adds corn. Both will cut costs and also add crapification.

32

Yep, in order to appeal to the most people, a product must, by definition, be consistently mediocre.

33

If you look at Saudi Arabia on that map, there is a little green star beside it, that indicates primarily alcohol-free beer.

Sure enough, when you look up Moussy, that’s exactly what it is.

34

They’re not. Here’s the beer history lesson of the day:
Pilsners were developed in Pilsen, a city in western Bohemia in what’s today the Czech Republic. It was kind of a revelation at the time- until then, beers were more like the English Pale ales, Munich Dunkels or German Alts. Essentially they were all somewhat dark, and most had a fair degree of yeast character, except in Bavaria, where the original lager yeasts developed.

Combine the yeasts and Pilsen’s extremely soft water, and the brewers found that they could actually brew a pale beer. (the more alkaline the water, the more dark malt has to be included to get a good beer without water treatment)

Even at that, a “real” Pilsner wasn’t like Bud Light. They were still in line with their darker, funkier counterparts in terms of gravity and hop levels (IIRC 1.050-ish and ~40 IBU), but the yeast and water combined to make the new beers all about the flavors of the hops and grain.

These new lighter, clearer, more crisp beers took off, becoming the “default” in most places without a strong brewing tradition already in place, and even making inroads into places that did have that tradition (Germany, for example).

This extended to the US; in the 19th century, German immigrants brought brewing, and in particular lager brewing to the US. People like Adolphus Busch (Anheuser Busch), Adolph Coors (Coors), Bernhard Stroh (Stroh), Gottlieb Pabst/Jacob Best (Pabst), Kosmos Spoetzl (Shiner Brewery), Joseph Schlitz (Schlitz), Friedrich Muller (also known as Frederick Miller) (Miller) and Gottlieb Heileman (G.Heileman) came to the US and opened breweries.

They mostly brewed adaptations of the traditional European style pilseners, with some changes made for local US ingredients, in particular six-row malt. In order to get a clear product due to the protein content of the six-row, they had to cut it with rice or corn. But the gravity and hop content remained the same. These were NOT watery beers.

The biggest single driver of the weakening of mass-market US beer was World War II. Because a lot of men were in the armed forces, the brewers aimed toward the working women of the era, and started making the beer weaker. They noticed that even after the war, as they lowered the OG and hops, sales would increase.

That’s how we went from a beer that was maybe 70% malt, 30% rice or corn, and brewed to an OG of about 1.052-ish with 30-40 IBU, all the way down to one that’s probably an OG of about 1.030, and probably around 12 IBU. In other words mass market US beer hasn’t always been this mild and weak.

35

Yes, I think good craft beer and the mass produced watery stuff serve different purposes. If I’m going to a bbq in the middle of July for the afternoon I’m drinking Millers or Buds, not keeping count, and maintaining a slight buzz all afternoon.
Much different than going to my local craft beer tap room where i’ll slowly sip through 2 but no more than 3 pints of the good stuff and feel pretty damn full afterwards.

36

I would contend that all beer sucks, so the most inoffensive version is the best you can hope for. Budweiser and its ilk are about as inoffensive as you can imagine.

Look at what beer is. It’s soaked cereal grains that have started to rot, so you have to cover up the taste with hops which is primarily designed to make it more bitter. This is not the recipe for a delicious beverage. If it didn’t result in a buzz, good chance we wouldn’t be talking about it today.

37

All of this also happened at a time in history when less people had to work agricultural and manual labor jobs and instead started working in offices and factories, and were therefore burning less calories daily, so “lighter” beer made sense.
Back in 2016, I spent 2 weeks in Plzen (then a week in Ceske Budejovice, both as part of a kind of personal “Eastern European Beer Pilgrimage” which I highly recommend to anyone, at least the bits of it that I can remember) and the brewery tour guide there mentioned all of the factors you pointed out. It was the best, most informative, most enjoyable such tour I have ever been on and if you ever get the chance, I am sure you would appreciate it.

38

You can’t get Corona in a can, but you can get Heineken in a can, where it’s infinitely better. Green and clear bottles cause them to skunk. I never knew that Heineken wasn’t supposed to taste terrible until I had it from a can.

In Mexico, Corona isn’t too bad if you can get it as fresh as possible, before it starts to oxidize.

Singha’s pretty good. Chang tastes oily to me.

39

It is hard for me to imagine that German brewers were happy to use rice or corn…

40

Bud doesn’t taste like water, maybe Olympia or something is more on the nose.

Oh, Ireland has its share of mega popular shit beers - Dutch Gold etc. And there are much better stouts in Ireland than Guinness. It’s just not a boring choice.

Couldn’t zoom in enough, but yes Singha is the best Asian restaurant beer.