Select 55 is in my opinion the best lite beer out there. The flavor is enough to be satisfyingly acceptable without being bloated. And for those that say the ABV is to low drink what you want then and when your liver is distended and sticking out the right side of your abdomen like a small watermelon More Power To You.
Resurrected a thread from 2010.
My wife and I went through some of these diet, low calorie, and low carb beers. Michelob Ultra, Miller 64, Bud Next, couple others. She wanted to try the keto / low carb thing for awhile. As an aside, we found this diet is next to impossible to stay on as so many good things are high in carbs (pizza alone) and things you wouldn’t think have carbs do.
Anyhow, we found most of these beers are awful. Low carb / low calories / low color / low flavor. Miller 64 is 2.8% alcohol. Ultra is supposed to be one of the best - advertises 2.6 grams of carbs. For my money, I just keep coming back to good old Miller Lite for “diet beer”. It beats them all. And for Ultra’s 95 calories, 2.6 carbs, 4.2% abv - Lite has 96 calories, 3.2 carbs, 4.2% abv. Not that much difference nutritionally but a world of difference in color and flavor. Try any of these diet beers side by side with Lite and see for yourself. The original is still hard to beat - IMO.
Michelob ultra is a fantastic beer and I'll die on that hill. A lot of these preferences are regional. Mich ultra and busch lite are pretty popular with farm boys around these parts. I find both to be very crisp and delicate, very refreshing on a hot day and satisfying still in an ice hut in the winter. YMMV
Brewing one of these guys is tricky, but I have spent much time and energy pursuing this objective. I have done probably 4-5 iterations of regular "american lager" (e.g. bud heavy, coors banquet style) brews and about the same of light american lagers. As many professionals and brewing writers have remarked, its a challenging style to do well because the delicate flavor leaves nowhere to hide shortcomings. Things like water chemistry make profound impacts, and yeast variety and health also impart dramatic effects on light gravity worts like this. When brewing one of these it really is more chemical engineering than art or cooking. I can't say I've managed to brew a 55cal beer, but that isn't a goal I find worthwhile TBH. I have, however, gotten pretty low carb beers. This is a thing I am interested in as my wife is pre-diabetic and an IPA will spike her blood sugar needlessly. Plus, I need a good lawnmower beer I can crush on the reg.
In my opinion, a good standard american lager should be approached more like a classic american pilsner or pre-prohibition pilsner. Maybe slightly dialed back in terms of malt complexity and hop bitterness. I have had success with the following (I liked both of these but they were slightly different as I will elaborate):
roughly 2:2:1:1, 2-row: pilsner: rice: corn
This was a pretty good coors banquet/busch tasting beer. Very light in flavor with a touch of sweetness. A bit more sweetness than I wanted and not quite strong enough malt backbone. I brewed this a couple times with different hop schema and yeasts. Its really a good starting point. I also experimented with replacing one of the adjuncts for the other (i.e. 1:1:1 2-row: pils: rice) and its more or less fine... I don't care for that much rice I learned. Anyway, this led to the following formulation:
78% pils, 20% flaked maize, 2% caramunich
I quite like this. Just a touch more complexity, still very crisp and can finish plenty dry if you mash low, step mash etc.
For any standard (not lite) American lager I like to use classic new world hops in the 18-25 ibu range. Higher gets a little pilsnereque and if you want a crushable summer beer its better to be in the 15-18 range. Liberty, crystal, cluster, I use a blend of the three and whirlpool them as well.
My typical OG here is 1.045 and will finish around 1.006-1.008 with 34/70, WLP802, or modelo yeast. I think 802 (budijovic or w/e) is my favorite but 34/70 is prob the biggest crowd pleaser and most balanced. I will say more about modelo (wlp940/ que bueno) later. These gravities will net you around 5% abv and ~150 cal per 12oz. Its not
that hard to brew this well, if you have good technique and practices for lager brewing e.g. temp control, build big starters, oxygenate your wort, etc. I have found that while this style benefits from lagering, the amount of time required for what I consider a very good and drinkable beer is quite short compared to other lager styles. Like, a marzen I feel I need to lager for at least a month, 2 preferably as it really does improve that much in that time frame in my experience. With the above beers, 2 weeks is quite adequate. Diminishing returns after that.
Lite beers is where it gets really tricky. In this style I really am shooting for low carb, which means low starting gravity and finishing bone dry. Keeping the beer crisp, but not tasting too dry, comes down to both recipe and water chemistry. I keep the water pretty soft to help here-- sulfites fairly low (20-50ppm), chloride a little higher (50-100ppm) and calcium in the minimum effective range (30-50 for yeast health). Despite experimenting with a fairly wide ibu/sg range, I have found you really do have to keep it low. I have found a few recipe approaches that "work" but I keep going back to this:
2:2:1 2-row: pils: rice or corn.
It gives a very lite and crisp flavor, with just a touch of sweetness. As long as the bitterness is balanced, its really good. Since my starting OG is usually around 1.03-.035, that means keeping the ibu around or under 10. Finishing dry is both a function of mashing and performance enhancing drugs (amylase!). Efficient mashing requires not just temp optimization but pH too, so I adjust pH right after I dough in. 5.2-5.3 is the sweet spot. I will rest at 145 for at least 90 minutes and then up to 160 for half an hour before mash out. As soon as I pitch the yeast, I also add glucoamylase, typically 10ml of white labs ultraferm. Patience pays off and after 2-3 weeks I will hit 1.000 or thereabouts. I find the best suited yeast for this style beer is modelo (wlp940 or imperial que bueno). There is an interesting article in zymurgy or craft beer and brewing or something like that where a blind tasting panel of bjcp judges and normies all rated test beers (same wort, pitched with a panel of yeasts) evaluated this yeast as better than a whole bunch of others, including old reliable (34/70). I really like the unique flavor it imparts, and its a super solid wort chewer to boot. I highly recommend.
So getting back to the whole 55 cal thing... is it doable? I dunno, depends on what you call beer. The above recipe yields a 4% abv beer at 4.5 g of carbs, for about 100 cal per 12oz (assuming 1.030->1.000).
It's easily the best bier in all zee world, yea!!! I also love their awesome ads I just feel free, as if riding nude on a clydesdale through Central Park when guzzling my Fidyfive, dats wat I'm talkn bout!:rockin:
