Light Beer With Alcohol

How does BMC create light beers with mid 4% ABV yet keep the calories so low? With 4.3% ABV I get about 140 calories.

Is it the rice? If sugar ferments out completely , that would mean alcohol but no calories. But not much flavor.
I could be totally off.

Simple sugars (rice syrup), high attenuation, and actual lab measurements vs software estimation.

Rice syrup solids?

I'm trying to create a wheat ale or a pale ale recipe that keeps the calories low but still has mid 4% ABV. But taste is still important. She doesn't care much for typical American light beers.

the Alcohol itself does still have calories, but it is less than the sugar.

I suspect that BMC use special 'anti-calories' the problem with using them (besides cost) is they also impart 'anti-flavor' to the product. You will find this is common in many lower calorie products.

ACbrewer said:

I suspect that BMC use special 'anti-calories' the problem with using them (besides cost) is they also impart 'anti-flavor' to the product. You will find this is common in many lower calorie products.

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I like my beer with some flavor.

As others have said, it is most probably down to the high attenuation. Alcohol as about 7 calories per gram, a figure you wont' get rid of. The low calories is due to the stuff being like vodka, just not 40% but 4%. It will have no flavour and be alcoholic water.

ACbrewer said:

the Alcohol itself does still have calories, but it is less than the sugar.

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Well... the bulk of the calorie content in ANY beer is due to alcohol. The remainder is due to the unfermented sugars (i.e. carbohydrates).

The adjuncts in Bud Light allow there to be very few remaining sugars, and therefore, fewer calories. Also, less taste - which, to be fair, is to style.

It's amazing how tasteless low calorie beers are to me now that I've been drinking heavy home brews for 6 months now.

They also break down the unfermentable sugars so there's very little in there but water and alcohol.

I like my beer with some flavor.

Give me an IPA, brown ale, or porter!

rodwha said:

Rice syrup solids?

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Rice syrup, rice solids...same net effect.

rodwha said:

I like my beer with some flavor.

Give me an IPA, brown ale, or porter!

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Fine. Nevertheless, irrelevant.

homebrewdad said:

Well... the bulk of the calorie content in ANY beer is due to alcohol. The remainder is due to the unfermented sugars (i.e. carbohydrates).

The adjuncts in Bud Light allow there to be very few remaining sugars, and therefore, fewer calories. Also, less taste - which, to be fair, is to style.

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I'm sorry I was trying to say that calories in Alcohol v Sugar, the sugar has more. But since Alcohol v Sugar in beer is mostly Alcohol, most of the calories are from alcohol. The unfermented carbs carry some of the caloric load, but in a beer with lots of adjucts bringing the ABV%up, the residual carbs are naturally down.

ACbrewer said:

I'm sorry I was trying to say that calories in Alcohol v Sugar, the sugar has more. But since Alcohol v Sugar in beer is mostly Alcohol, most of the calories are from alcohol. The unfermented carbs carry some of the caloric load, but in a beer with lots of adjucts bringing the ABV%up, the residual carbs are naturally down.

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I recently did a beer calorie calculator, and had to delve into where the calories actually came from. In pretty much any beer, most of your calroies come from the alcohol - even very sweet beers have far fewer calories from carbs than from the booze.

If you know the OG ad FG, I can give you a pretty exact calorie count for your beer. If you only know ABV, I can give you an estimate.

Some American light lagers will have fewer calories than the estimate, due to the adjunts and fewer sugars, but otherwise, it works very well.