How exactly do Bud/Miller/Coors brew such consistent beers??

The professional brewers at Bud, Miller, and Coors are very good at what they do—turning out a light beer, decade after decade, that tastes exactly the same. Though come to think of it, bottled water companies do that too...
-John Palmer

bcgpete said:

The professional brewers at Bud, Miller, and Coors are very good at what they do—turning out a light beer, decade after decade, that tastes exactly the same. Though come to think of it, bottled water companies do that too...
-John Palmer

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bottled water companies make light beer?? this has got to have something to do with obama.

Every batch gets blended and compared to a previous batch.

Even with insane amount of computer controls they cannot get it right each and every time, yeast is stubborn that way.

grndslm said:

Why can't I just drink my Budweiser warm??

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Cuz you'll projectile vomit

Even smaller breweries do a great deal of testing. Widmer's main bittering hop (alchemy) is actually a mix of hops that varies from year-to-year, but the level of each bittering component in the final mix is always the same.

sweetcell said:

it's probably been mentioned before, but it's easy to have consistent taste when there is little taste to start off with. i'm not knocking BMC beers, part of their popularity comes from the fact that they don't hit you over the head with hops and yeast.

i'm much more impressed when belgian beers taste relatively consistent.

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This is untrue.

sweetcell said:

i'm much more impressed when belgian beers taste relatively consistent.

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Many Belgian companies blend too.

Calichusetts said:

Bud has a master taster just for their shipments of rice. The train rolls in, he creates a sample of it and tastes it. If it differs from the accepted the WHOLE ENTIRE train cart of rice goes back. That is quality control

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They do this with their water too. I saw it on modern marvels. They showed a bit about how in depth they go for consistency in all their ingredients.

For the pharmacy people, isn't it true many drugs manufactured under a certain name are not always manufactured by the same people? It's not like there is one huge viagra plant somewhere making every blue little pill is there?

I have a degree in process technology. Every manufacturing plant requires precision quality control to make their product consistent. Temperature, pressure, flow rate, level, and every other factor is controlled and gauged to an exact measurement every time. If one number is off, then the whole process is off.

petep1980 said:

For the pharmacy people, isn't it true many drugs manufactured under a certain name are not always manufactured by the same people? It's not like there is one huge viagra plant somewhere making every blue little pill is there?

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Viagara is a trademark. And is produced by a specific pharmeceutical company.

However, the compound used may be trademarked under different names by varied companies aka Revatio.

GilaMinumBeer said:

Viagara is a trademark. And is produced by a specific pharmeceutical company.

However, the compound used may be trademarked under different names by varied companies aka Revatio.

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Pfizer may not own all the labs that make Viagra though (as an example). I bet AHB owns everything about Bud Light....

Disclaimer, I know jack what I'm talking about.

spearko520 said:

i heard it comes from the exact same penis of the exact same horse... everytime

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Hahahahahahaha GOLD!!!

18thstatebrew said:

I have a degree in process technology. Every manufacturing plant requires precision quality control to make their product consistent. Temperature, pressure, flow rate, level, and every other factor is controlled and gauged to an exact measurement every time. If one number is off, then the whole process is off.

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This is most likely why. I have a degree in automated manufacturing and studied qaulity control and factory automation. AB most likely uses a PLC to automate their breweries and have all their brweries on some sort of central network to monitor every plant and collect data 24/7. They also most likely compare statistics of all their plants against each other. They've also been doing it long enough with exact records to predict issues before they're present and can design a brewery for consistency. I'm also pretty sure their suppliers also must provide statistical data on their products and have their processes certified by AB in a way not much different from the automotive or aerospace industry. They're also most likely practicing six sigma and using statistical process control.

But you don't need a trillion dollars to practice good quality control or use sound problem solving methods. You can produce consistent results on a homebrew level. You just need to keep good records and baseline your process and tweak it in from there and be as precise as you can be or care to be.

grndslm said:

Why can't I just drink my Budweiser warm??

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Why would you want to?

grndslm said:

Was thinking about how different beers from my kitchen are, even in the same batch, quite different from one another when bottled. Then I realized that Abita, Lazy Magnolia, and even Sam Adams have variations from bottle to bottle.

So... how EXACTLY does, Anheuser-Busch make every single Budweiser take the EXACT same???

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edit: somebody already made the horse pee joke.

I think the comments about the raw ingredients lends an important point. BMC have enough scale to be able to have produce grown to their specifications, maltster malting to their specifications, etc. Everybody else, from craft brewery to homebrewer, generally gets the leftovers of their requirements. That adds a lot of opportunity for variance because Sierra Nevada can't say, "well these hops aren't right so **** it, take it back and bring us another truckload" like AB Inbev can.

To the comment earlier about Sam Adams, I think there's some overall poor QC going on at BBC and it's magnified by all the contract brewing. There's really no other reasonable explanation why so much varied (and sometimes bad) product is released. I used to actually enjoy several SA beers but in the past couple of years they have gone from good to horrible. I can't remember the last time I even bought their products. I realize my palate has improved over those two years but that shouldn't have made that much of a difference because there are several popular beers I used to like and still find taste good.

I used to love Sam Adam's Oktoberfest, and I know my tastes may change over the course of a year between their seasonal releases, but I find that beer disgusting now.

KeyWestBrewing said:

Calichusetts said:

Bud has a master taster just for their shipments of rice. The train rolls in, he creates a sample of it and tastes it. If it differs from the accepted the WHOLE ENTIRE train cart of rice goes back. That is quality control

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They do this with their water too. I saw it on modern marvels. They showed a bit about how in depth they go for consistency in all their ingredients.

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I know a farmer who does contract growing of grain for AB, he's told me stories of them rejecting an entire crop just due to a fraction of a percent of protein in the grains. He detests doing contract growing for them but said it pays extremely well if they accept it.

Yes, they do quality control at that level. And since it's contract, they have little loss if they don't like the quality of the contracted items.

Not only do they have quality control at an extreme level, but they also make HUGE batches and that volume tends to average out any inconsistencies. If one of us has a 5lb bag of pale malt that isn't 100% perfect, our whole batch will suffer. The likelihood of 10000 lb of pale malt being off and still being used is pretty low, so that 5lb inconsistency is swallowed up by the sheer size of the brew.

I work for a company that is an indirect supplier for one of the big boys, and got a chance to work on a project with them for an issue that that were trying to correct.

Believe me, they have an army of PhD's and the latest and greatest analytical equipment, along with insane QC at every step and a very sophisticated tasting panel.

They are not ****ing around, and the consistency of their product in a very difficult style to brew is kind of amazing, whether you like the product or what the company represents, or not.

LandoLincoln said:

Crazy amounts of temperature control, blending batches, yeast batch verification with microscopes...things that no homebrewer could ever hope to accomplish with our limited resources.

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This about sums it up.

But I have one more nugget to add....

Chris and Jamil's ''Yeast'' said:

Large breweries address these issues [of transportation] in a number of ways. Anheuser-Busch, for instance, stores and grows up all of its yeast at one location, in part for security purposes, and ships the liquid yeast out to satellite breweries around the world. Other large breweries propagate yeast at multiple facilities, making transportation less of an issue but creating the potential for varying yeast quality from place to place.

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