Budweiser, Miller, Coors, Schlitz.
What do these beers (and many others not listed) have in common?
Well aside from very expensive add campaigns, these mass produced beers share a trait that many are unaware of.
Cheap ingredients.
Water, lots of it.
Low alcohol content.
Lack of taste.
Now, if you happen to be a man that counts one of these as your go to beer I really can't find too much fault with you if you haven't experienced anything else. You probably think that these are great beers, they are smooth, they taste good to you!
Even the reason these beers became the way they are really isn't your fault and addresses all of the four traits listed about.
WWII.
Yes, Nazi's are to blame for the way our most popular beers have been degraded over the years.
You see, during the war, brewers didn't have as much access to expensive ingredients as they did in the past. That meant that they had to find substitutes for hops and barley, using less expensive crops like corn and rice.
In addition to these ingredients being cheaper, they are far less flavorful and diverse.
Also, with lower alcohol content came greater water content. This causes you to have to drink more beer which means you get that bloated feeling and pee more.
Unfortunate for us all, the end of the war did not signal the end of cheaply made inferior beers.
By then, the large breweries had a taste for cheaper product and larger profit margins and we had a taste for their watered down "beer". Using these new profits, these corporate giants began to buy up all the smaller breweries that still used the expensive and tasty ingredients, thus creating less and less choice and diversity in your local beer aisle.
Huge marketing campaigns convinced our fathers and their fathers that the beer was manly, tasted great, and had a cool factor.
Oh look! Beautiful people having a great time. I think I'll buy some corn water!
Shouldn't it have been a clue that we weren't drinking quality beer when the advertisement for Bud Light became "The difference is drinkability"?
What the hell is drinkability? What Budweiser was doing was insulting you directly to your face. Most lifelong drinkers of the big brews develop a taste for the bland, so when they venture out and try a craft beer they find it's taste too strong. It's almost like having to acquire a taste for beer all over again. So what Budweiser was essentially saying was "The difference is that our beer is relatively flavorless and easy to drink, like water".
So when you sit down at the steakhouse to enjoy a big juicy sirloin and you ask for a Bud Light, not only are you missing out on beers that are much more flavorful and complimentary of the taste of your steak, you're essentially asking for cheap, watered down alcoholic corn water.
When you are sitting at the bar looking for female companionship or trying to chat with an attractive woman and you are holding a can or bottle of Miller, you are conveying that you are like every other mass market influenced, weak taste, mainstream beer drinker.
Take a girl to a local microbrewery or bar that serves interesting craft beers like double oatmeal stouts. You're not only doing yourself a favor by experiencing the wonderful wide world of beer complexity of taste, but you are adding a layer of interest and intrigue as well as class on top of your own persona.
So do yourself a favor. Venture out. Explore. Push the bounds of your beer tastes and expand them past the corn and rice water that you've come to think of as a "good beer".
Don't be that guy that saddles up the bar, one that has plenty of good and interesting choices in bottle and on tap, and answer the bartenders question of "what can I get for ya" with a twangy "Bud Light!".
(reblogged from my personal blog:http://neverrhubarb.blogspot.com/2014/06/be-man-drink-real-beer.html)