Why don't U.S macrobrews taste like European?

[TheMadKing]

This is not a challenge but an honest question

Who doesn't U.S macrobrew like budweiser, Miller, coors, etc have that sweet honey grain flavor of most mass produced European lagers?

Is it the adjuncts? Surely it's not because they are not implementing low oxygen brewing techniques.

 

[Die_Beerery]

Adjuncts, ABV, and dilution.
Have you tasted fresh bud, or coors from the tank (pre-dilute)? It's glorious.

Also honey is oxidation.

 

[TheMadKing]

Adjuncts, ABV, and dilution.
Have you tasted fresh bud, or coors from the tank (pre-dilute)? It's glorious.

Also honey is oxidation.

I have not, but why should dilution affect it if they are using deoxygenated water? Also what role does ABV play?

Thanks Bryan

 

[Die_Beerery]

I have not, but why should dilution affect it if they are using deoxygenated water? Also what role does ABV play?

Thanks Bryan

Dilution of flavor, and esters and body of beer (in both cases).

You also have to take into account demographics and expectations of beer flavors. Reverse the scenario (serve a bud light to a German, and a Helles to an American), and you would get the same result.

 

[schematix]

Have you tasted fresh bud, or coors from the tank (pre-dilute)? It's glorious.

Bud and bud light. Even the diluted filtered beer, glorious doesn't even begin to describe it.

EDIT: That was me trying to drink as much 5 hour old Bud and 12 hour old Bud Light i could drink in 5 minutes. Highly recommend the paid tour at A-B if you ever get the chance. This stuff is NOTHING like what you buy in the store. I'd honestly not home brew if they'd sell the stuff out of this tank right to me. It's a life changing experience.

 

[TheMadKing]

Dilution of flavor, and esters and body of beer (in both cases).

You also have to take into account demographics and expectations of beer flavors. Reverse the scenario (serve a bud light to a German, and a Helles to an American), and you would get the same result.

So I do agree that the brand expectation is probably the single largest component, but not necessarily that an American wouldn't appreciate the increased flavor of a Helles compared to bud light.

Most non-craft beer people, when visiting a craft brewery for the first time tend to gravitate towards the lighter styles and I've typically encountered amazement at the amount of flavor in these lighter styles when compared to their usual BMC. Obviously, yes, there are those that prefer the lower levels of flavor but I think that would be the exception rather than the rule, as shown by the ever increasing market share of craft beer in general.

I would say that the German would dislike the Bud Light because they would recognize an inferior product, whereas the American would be pleasantly surprised, but perhaps that's just my own bias

 

[Die_Beerery]

I would say that the German would dislike the Bud Light because they would recognize an inferior product, whereas the American would be pleasantly surprised, but perhaps that's just my own bias

I would agree with zee German part. However my family is full of BMC drinkers and I have copious amounts of helles, pils, and nearly every other German style beer. I'd like to think my beers are decent enough to be an example of the style. There are only a few that will try it and then they say, ooh its too "heavy" or "hoppy", but its "good" to which they finish the glass and go back to their beer of choice.

But I digress.
American Macro, Bland 2/6row, super high adjunct (up to 40%), Fermented high gravity, then watered down.
Euro, all malt.

Thats really what it boils down to.

With that said, I love US macro beer and German beer.

 

[TheMadKing]

Bud and bud light. Even the diluted filtered beer, glorious doesn't even begin to describe it.

View attachment 682602

EDIT: That was me trying to drink as much 5 hour old Bud and 12 hour old Bud Light i could drink in 5 minutes. Highly recommend the paid tour at A-B if you ever get the chance. This stuff is NOTHING like what you buy in the store. I'd honestly not home brew if they'd sell the stuff out of this tank right to me. It's a life changing experience.

Wouldn't that imply that their is an oxidation fault in their canning process?

I'm satisfied with Bryan's point above though, that it's a 40% adjunct beer diluted to near water as opposed to an all-malt product. That makes sense that the delicate malt flavors would be below the taste threshold.

 

[schematix]

Wouldn't that imply that their is an oxidation fault in their canning process?

I'm satisfied with Bryan's point above though, that it's a 40% adjunct beer diluted to near water as opposed to an all-malt product. That makes sense that the delicate malt flavors would be below the taste threshold.

It's not single faceted.

The character that i sense is lost from tank to can/bottle/keg is due to pasteurization. I've had the same beers served at the brewery and they don't have what those tanks have.

The all-malt vs significant adjunct is big.

And then there's the hops. Euro macro typically have significant more hop character.

 

[Die_Beerery]

Wouldn't that imply that their is an oxidation fault in their canning process?

Well anytime anyone moves still beer, oxygen ingress is going to happen.

I mean I counter pressure can my beers, and I am super anal about o2, with super long purges, seam on foam, etc. As soon as the next day I can blind taste and pick out can from tap. Packaging is a nightmare, doesn't matter who you are.

 

[TheMadKing]

Well anytime anyone moves still beer, oxygen ingress is going to happen.

I mean I counter pressure can my beers, and I am super anal about o2, with super long purges, seam on foam, etc. As soon as the next day I can blind taste and pick out can from tap. Packaging is a nightmare, doesn't matter who you are.

Now THAT sounds like a fun triangle test. I'd love to try sometime.

If I'm ever in Germany (and there's a good chance I will be when normal air travel resumes) I'd like to give it a shot

 

[BreeBrew]

Another thing can be that for example Heineken, a Dutch beer, have their own yeast strain since 1873! which they keep secret and so is exlusively used in Heineken beers.

 

[Die_Beerery]

Another thing can be that for example Heineken, a Dutch beer, have their own yeast strain since 1873! which they keep secret and so is exlusively used in Heineken beers.

They all do, so I'm not sure on this.

 

[rogervj]

Back in the 70s when I first got out of college, and was hungry for work, I took a job for a month at the Newark N.J. Budweiser plant. What an eye opener! I was working rebuilding a 40' x 100' bottle pasteurizer. There was more than one....

So, scattered around the plant were taps that you could drink out of, and "dew drop inn"s where there were coolers stocked with every product that they bottled. Free for all...on every break, and before and after work....

To the point, Bud imported a product from Germany at the time. I can't recall the name, it was very European and strong compared to the domestic products. It never took off marketing wise. It wasn't like they didn't try. American tastes at the time didn't support it. I have to wonder what would happen now if they re-introduced it?

 

[day_trippr]

I don't know if this still exists, but the Coors plant in Golden had a hospitality suite with beers on tap that had no resemblance to what was sold in cans. Fabulous flavors (this was the very early 70s for context) that always left us wondering why the hell they didn't sell those beers...

Cheers!

 

[Dgallo]

Or it could be as simple as this, European country’s have had a long standing history of craft beer and macro brewers there had steady competition from micro breweries for well over 100 year, forcing macro breweries to cater to the craft/quality of beer for a very long time.

Macro breweries have owned the Americana market since after ww2 and only in the pass 20 years have had large amount of micro competition and you can probably be safe to say that micro brewers in the us hadn’t had a valid stake in the national market until the past 5–10 years. Consumer demand drives what is considered quality and if more are demanding full flavored beer with less highly fermentable adjuncts(used for profit margin vs. quality) than supply will follow. Exactly what’s going on now. In 20 years this post will be “why don’t [insert new craft beer market(country)] macrobrews taste like American ones ?”

 

[h22lude]

My brother in law works for a Germany based company and goes about once a year. He brought back a Bud from one of his trips. I wish that was what they made from Americans. It was such a great beer

 

[Islandboy85]

Bud and bud light. Even the diluted filtered beer, glorious doesn't even begin to describe it.

View attachment 682602

EDIT: That was me trying to drink as much 5 hour old Bud and 12 hour old Bud Light i could drink in 5 minutes. Highly recommend the paid tour at A-B if you ever get the chance. This stuff is NOTHING like what you buy in the store. I'd honestly not home brew if they'd sell the stuff out of this tank right to me. It's a life changing experience.

That was a good tour, and I agree. Unfiltered Bud is great. Once it’s processed and packaged not so much.

 

[Vale71]

1 - Adjuncts. They're basically tasteless and only add sugar which gets turned into alcohol. That's OK if most of your customer base is only looking to "get their buzz going". Their use is "verboten" in Germany but allowed (and common) in other European countries.
2 - Very low hop rates and basically no hop aroma.
3 - Cans as the most common form of packaging. While cans protect better against light they cannot be filled with the same low residual O2 levels as you get with bottles, the reason being you cannot vacuum purge cans because they would collapse. Only with multiple evacuation/purge cycles (and hence only with bottles) can you get really low O2 levels in the packaged product.

 

[Big Monk]

1 - Adjuncts. They're basically tasteless and only add sugar which gets turned into alcohol. That's OK if most of your customer base is only looking to "get their buzz going". Their use is "verboten" in Germany but allowed (and common) in other European countries.
2 - Very low hop rates and basically no hop aroma.
3 - Cans as the most common form of packaging. While cans protect better against light they cannot be filled with the same low residual O2 levels as you get with bottles, the reason being you cannot vacuum purge cans because they would collapse. Only with multiple evacuation/purge cycles (and hence only with bottles) can you get really low O2 levels in the packaged product.

WRT your 3rd point, while cans typically start with a relatively higher TPO than bottles, they have virtually no future ingress so fare better than bottles, especially when shipping, sitting around, etc.

I’d kill for some of my German favorites, i.e. Ayinger, Weihenstephan, etc. in cans. Bitburger is almost always fresh in my area and a large part of that is its packaging in cans.

 

[bkboiler]

Oh yeah! I had bitburger in cans from aldi the other day and was blown away how fresh it stayed!

 

[BruceH]

My brother in law works for a Germany based company and goes about once a year. He brought back a Bud from one of his trips. I wish that was what they made from Americans. It was such a great beer

Was it a Budvar? If so not the same beer, comes from Czech Republic. Unless something has changed Budweiser can't be sold in Germany due to the beer purity law.

 

[Vale71]

Was it a Budvar? If so not the same beer, comes from Czech Republic. Unless something has changed Budweiser can't be sold in Germany due to the beer purity law.

It's made in Ceske Budejovice and it can be sold throughout the EU (the Czech Republic joined the Union in 2004) as the EU Commission struck down Germany's attempts to restrict import of non-Reinheitsgebot compliant beer as far back as 1999 if I recall correctly.
I had the fortune of spending two weeks in Ceske a couple of years ago. You can get a 0.5 liter pitcher of that sweet nectar for as little as 1.4 Euros (you pay 3 to 4 times that in Germany and most of the EU) there. My liver is still trying to recover from the experience...

 

[BruceH]

It's made in Ceske Budejovice and it can be sold throughout the EU (the Czech Republic joined the Union in 2004) as the EU Commission struck down Germany's attempts to restrict import of non-Reinheitsgebot compliant beer as far back as 1999 if I recall correctly.
I had the fortune of spending two weeks in Ceske a couple of years ago. You can get a 0.5 liter pitcher of that sweet nectar for as little as 1.4 Euros (you pay 3 to 4 times that in Germany and most of the EU) there. My liver is still trying to recover from the experience...

Last time I was in Germany (2018) I was able to buy Budvar at the local gas station, along with a selection of many beers. They also sold it at one of the grocery stores in the Frankfurt airport.

IIRC back in the 80's when I was stationed in Germany someone had to bring it back from another country. Wonderful beer and the story I was told is it's what US Budweiser was modeled after back in the 1800's, no way to know for sure.

Cz is on the travel list, won't be going anytime soon though.

 

[Vale71]

In the '80s it was a commie beer. I imagine as a US military person you could have gotten in trouble for having such "contraband" in your possession...
Times have changed indeed.
The only beef I have with Budweiser Budvar is that it's filled in those awful green bottles and I've never had one that wasn't severely lightstruck. A far cry from what I could imbibe on a daily basis while on location.

 

[h22lude]

Was it a Budvar? If so not the same beer, comes from Czech Republic. Unless something has changed Budweiser can't be sold in Germany due to the beer purity law.

Yup that's it. From my recollection, it looked just like an American Bud bottle. I was way off. I just looked it up on Untapp'd. That's too bad. I was really hoping they brewed that beer just for Germany and it really tasted that much better than American Bud. Either way, it was still a good beer.

 

[Paulaner]

It's made in Ceske Budejovice and it can be sold throughout the EU (the Czech Republic joined the Union in 2004) as the EU Commission struck down Germany's attempts to restrict import of non-Reinheitsgebot compliant beer as far back as 1999 if I recall correctly.
I had the fortune of spending two weeks in Ceske a couple of years ago. You can get a 0.5 liter pitcher of that sweet nectar for as little as 1.4 Euros (you pay 3 to 4 times that in Germany and most of the EU) there. My liver is still trying to recover from the experience...

And that's why you buy it in a can, no light struck flavors and the superiority of canning due to limited o2 ingress after canning shows off the great beer that Budvar/Budweiss is.

 

[Vale71]

We're going on a bit of a tanget here but whatever...
There is an ongoing legal battle between Budweiser Budvar and the AB conglomerate over the use of the name "Budweiser".
The results of the legal dispute vary depending on the jurisdiction.

 

[Brewbuzzard]

That was a good tour, and I agree. Unfiltered Bud is great. Once it’s processed and packaged not so much.

You don't homebrew just because you love to?

 

[Brewbuzzard]

We're going on a bit of a tanget here but whatever...
There is an ongoing legal battle between Budweiser Budvar and the AB conglomerate over the use of the name "Budweiser".
The results of the legal dispute vary depending on the jurisdiction.

I thought it was all settled and unfortunately AB won.

 

[Robert65]

No, it varies. In many countries the American beer has to go by Bud, not Budweiser. In the USA, the Czech beer has to go by Budvar (made up from the first 3 letters of the name of the town, and the last 3 letters of the word for "brewery." Imagine the American product labeled "St. Lewery.") In some places like the UK, neither has exclusive rights and both are called Budweiser. Apparently those courts are fairly certain anyone who can fog a mirror will be able to spot the difference straight away.

 

[verboten]

1 - Adjuncts. They're basically tasteless and only add sugar which gets turned into alcohol. That's OK if most of your customer base is only looking to "get their buzz going". Their use is "verboten" in Germany but allowed (and common) in other European countries.

you rang?

 

[Brewbuzzard]

No, it varies. In many countries the American beer has to go by Bud, not Budweiser. In the USA, the Czech beer has to go by Budvar (made up from the first 3 letters of the name of the town, and the last 3 letters of the word for "brewery." Imagine the American product labeled "St. Lewery.") In some places like the UK, neither has exclusive rights and both are called Budweiser. Apparently those courts are fairly certain anyone who can fog a mirror will be able to spot the difference straight away.

That is good to hear. It would be a shame not to be able to use your own name in the country of origin. I've drink Budvar and it's a very nice beer. Unfortunately my daughter drinks Stlewery and lives there too. She calls my beer fufu beer.

 

[TheMadKing]

That is good to hear. It would be a shame not to be able to use your own name in the country of origin. I've drink Budvar and it's a very nice beer. Unfortunately my daughter drinks Stlewery and lives there too. She calls my beer fufu beer.

They say you can't choose your family

They're wrong

 

[Nate R]

We're going on a bit of a tanget here but whatever...
There is an ongoing legal battle between Budweiser Budvar and the AB conglomerate over the use of the name "Budweiser".
The results of the legal dispute vary depending on the jurisdiction.

One of the better tangents if you ask me...
It's these types of threads that keep me coming back...
People talking and sharing their love for beer- all beer. No hate, just experiences and love for Bier.
Now, look up Spike's Warranty... ugh.
Maybe this LODO side aint so bad?!?

Edit- man.. then i read a few more posts down to the 'locked' post...
I dunno. Maybe i am just to thin-skinned for this section??
But reading up on macro machines the scrub O2 from strike water... so cool! Who knew?!?

 

[TheMadKing]

One of the better tangents if you ask me...
It's these types of threads that keep me coming back...
People talking and sharing their love for beer- all beer. No hate, just experiences and love for Bier.
Now, look up Spike's Warranty... ugh.
Maybe this LODO side aint so bad?!?

Edit- man.. then i read a few more posts down to the 'locked' post...
I dunno. Maybe i am just to thin-skinned for this section??
But reading up on macro machines the scrub O2 from strike water... so cool! Who knew?!?

I'm actually investigating a fuel cell technology right now, that can be run in reverse and pull oxygen out of a container. It is cheap to make, can be fitted into a mason jar lid, and can reduce the PPM of oxygen to around 200 within 1 hour.

 

[TheMadKing]

As for the tangent - speaking as the OP, my original question was answered to my satisfaction, so as long as we are talking about something related to LODO and don't call down the wrath of the mods, I'm content to talk about whatever!

 

[Bilsch]

I'm actually investigating a fuel cell technology right now, that can be run in reverse and pull oxygen out of a container. It is cheap to make, can be fitted into a mason jar lid, and can reduce the PPM of oxygen to around 200 within 1 hour.

Maybe you meant to say 200ppb in an hour?
Yeast are even cheaper and will take the O2 to essentially zero in half that time.

 

[TheMadKing]

Maybe you meant to say 200ppb in an hour?
Yeast are even cheaper and will take the O2 to essentially zero in half that time.

That's 200ppm in gas not in liquid

Yeast don't work well in a dry hop vessel like a yeast brink or a sight glass

 

[Die_Beerery]

That's 200ppm in gas not in liquid

Yeast don't work well in a dry hop vessel like a yeast brink or a sight glass

200ppm is crazy high for cold side.

A slow purge from the bottom with the output going into water, will be much more efficient.