Cost of "good" beer, versus "swill".

Just made a Quad and used 14lbs of grain to make five gallons.

Given all the corn, rice and filler they use, (and SUBSTANTIALLY lower ABV....) how many gallons of sludgeweiser could I have made from that same 14 lbs of grain?

 

Don't forget hops....you probably used the same amount of hops in your 5 gallon batch as bmc uses in on of their huge multibarrel batches . Jk.....well kinda

 

Hey, don't be so hard on yourself. Quad isn't my favorite type of beer either but I'd hardly call it "swill."

 

Depends if you factor in the equipment costs. If you dont, then the average batch of beer from an extract kit would cost anywhere from $0.60 to $1.00. But that also depends on the kit and where you bought it. The average cost of a 12 pack of Bud long necks is probably like $10.00. Dont really know that since I havent bought it in years. Either way, homebrew is WAY better.

 

Quite a bit, between 2 and 3 times as much, but Budweiser is likely cheaper to buy than to brew, once you figure in your energy expense (including lagering), and it's hard as hell to make well, to boot.
Of course, you didn't become a brewer in order to save money on Budweiser. Look up the cost of 2 cases of a Belgian quad, and then you'll see where your "savings," if we ignore equipment costs, come in. Flavor ain't cheap.

 

14 lbs of two row would give you 7.5 gallons of a 4.95% beer which is about what bud is (bud is 5%).. I believe the question was how much bud could you make from the same grain bill, not for the cost correct? Flaked rice and Flaked corn both have about the same potential as 2 Row according to Beersmith. Corn has 1.037, rice 1.032 and 2 row is 1.036

And, you got a 5G quad out of only 14lbs of grain? What was your post boil SG?

 

Don't forget that corn and rice are more expensive than barley.

 

Yes, it wasn't done to save money then, nor now. In fact when Bud came out it was the most expensive beer on the market in the US.

Maureen Ogle , in her book Ambitious Brew, cleared up a lot of those "beer myths" that we beer snobs used to harbor to "keep us warm" and to somehow make us think that we're better than those who drink Bud products.....

America like most of the world had quite an extensive array of beers available prior to the German Invasion of brewer's which later introduced the light lager. They pretty much had the "brewing culture" of all the countries that people immigrated from...Most English beer styles..you know Porters, Stouts, Partigyles, stuff like that. As well as mostly heavy German Styles of beer. Not to mention people from Scotland, Ireland, Russia and other places where beer was drank.

Remember up until then, beer was food.

In fact thew whole history of the light lager is the American populace's (not the brewer's) desire to have a lighter beer to drink, which forced the German brewers to look at adding adjuncts like corn and rice...not as the popular homebrewer's myth has been to make money by peddling and "inferior commercial product" by adding adjuncts, but in order to come up with a style of beer that the American people wanted.

Maureen Ogle proved that in Ambitious Brew it actually made the cost of a bottle of Budweiser cost around 17.00/bottle in today's dollars. Gee I've paid 17 dollars for a bomber of beer before...not too much difference there, eh?

When AH released Budweiser with it's corn and rice adjuncts in the 1860's it was the most expensive beer out there; a single bottle retailed for $1.00 (what would equal in today's Dollars for $17.00) this was quite difference when a schooner of beer usually cost a nickel.

The American populace ate it up!

It wasn't done to save money, it was done because heavy beers (both english style Ales and the heavier Bavarian malty beers) were not being drunk by American consumers any more. Beer initally was seen around the world as food (some even called it liquid bread), but since America, even in the 1800's was a prosperous nation compared to the rest of the world, and americans ate meat with nearly every meal, heavy beers had fallen out of favor...

And American 6-row Barley just made for heavy, hazy beer

Bush and other German Brewers started looking at other styles of Beers, and came upon Karl Balling and Anton Schwartz's work at the Prague Polytechnic Institute with the Brewers in Bohemia who when faced with a grain shortage started using adjuncts, which produced the pils which was light, sparkly and fruity tasting...just the thing for American tastebuds.

So the brewers brought Schwartz to America where he went to work for American Brewer Magazine writing articles and technical monographs, teaching American brewers how to use Rice and Corn...

The sad moral of the story is....The big corporate brewers did not foist tasteless adjunct laced fizzy water on us, like the popular mythology all of us beersnobs like to take to bed with us to feel all warm and elitist....it was done because our American ancestors wanted it.

Listen to this from Basic Brewing;

 

Respect!

 

Besides, "good" and "swill" are subjective. Many a die hard bud drinker would consider our IPAs, and Stouts, and Belgians and about 99% of the BJCP style guidelines as being swill. I mean I don't like Bud, but it isn't swill. It is what the "majority" likes or it wouldn't be the top seller (even though the craft beer market has consistently been bleeding them).

It's also one of the most difficult styles to brew, and commercially to brew consistently. There is NO margin for error in that style, you get your temp control or your pitch rate or your sanitization wrong even slightly and you're going to taste every flaw in the beer.

You have to give them props.

 

I am going to print this out and carry it with me everytime I drink milwaukee's best light while tailgating.

 

Man reading this thread is just depressing, but sounds pretty true. I did hear that a lot of the root cause for light lagers being so popular was prohibition. During prohibition bootleggers and homebrewers didn't always have access to the right malts and substituted it with adjuncts. Some even watered it down to make it last longer and earn better profits. Americans wound up getting used to these lighter tasting beers and their tastes gravitated towards these light lagers even after prohibition. That's another reason why american tastes for beer is so much different than other countries who didn't have such an awful law in their history.
It's funny though I've been working on converting my friends to good full flavored beer. I have one who has been thinking about starting homebrewing too. He did say the other day that sometimes it's really nice to have a darker beer because he can drink it while mowing the lawn and it still tastes good even after it warms up a little. To me thats the major drawback to BMC beers. I always feel rushed when drinking them because you HAVE to down them before they warm up otherwise they taste like crap, if you drink them ice cold they're not too bad (I can't believe I just admitted that). I just always wind up way more drunk than I want to be when I drink light lagers because I drink it faster than I would otherwise for fear of letting it warm up too much. Where as a nice stout or pretty much any ale and a lot of other lagers you can let warm up to the 40, 50, even 60 degrees and sometimes they taste BETTER than they did cold. It's just better for us beer geeks who drink beer more for the beer as a whole rather than just for the alchohol in it.

 

Not true...it was happening long before prohibition Budweiser came out in 1860-ish.

Maureen Ogle's book Ambitious Brew is the best and most historically accurate of American Beer History books out there. I can't recommend it enough.



http://www.amazon.com/dp/0151010129/?tag=skimlinks_replacement-20

Her blog archive has a lot of material covering the imbev takeover or Anheiseur Bush as well as stuff that didin't make it into here original book, so I encourage you to dig through that as well.


http://maureenogle.com/blog/

It clears up a lot of stuff like this, and busts a ton of myths like this one.

From Maureen Ogle's Book, Ambitious Brew, the story of American Brewing.

TThe story of the Blue ribbon is a fascinating bit of marketing lies...erm I mean "selective stretching of the truth"...

Here's the version in the PBR marketing stuff...

But, To the contrary, there is evidence to suggest that no such award was given, as contemporaneous accounts indicate that many vendors were frustrated by the Paris World fair's refusal to award such prizes.

One account says that the only prizes awarded by the executive committee were bronze medals in recognition of "some independent and essential excellence in the article displayed," rather "than merely to indicate the relative merits of competing exhibits.

The whole dirty tale is in chapter 3 of Maureen Ogle's fantastic and eye openning history of American Brewing, Ambitious Brew - The Story of American Beer by Maureen Ogle

 

I think you misunderstood what I was saying. I never said Budweiser didn't exist but that the landscape was very different before prohibition and more than likely Anheuser Busch probably wasn't brewing the same beer in 1860 that it does today. Prohibition itself had a huge impact on the light lager becoming "the American Beer". It's really the only major event in U.S. history that didn't happen in other countries that would affect beer styles. I guess I'm better off Citing a resource.
http://www.brewingtechniques.com/library/backissues/issue2.3/fix.html
and I hate using a TV documentary but Beer Wars a documentary done by Anat Baron the former CEO of Mikes Hard Lemonade also touched on this when she was describing how the major brewers marketed to push out the smaller brewerys. Didn't really want to get into a debate about it but actual personal preferences of the majority of the populace is just kind of hard for me to swallow as a reason why something so thin and flavorless could possibly be the best beer out there. People just don't like change and before the 80s craft beer was almost non-existant. The only thing people saw on TV was forcefed ideas about light lagers. I won't call light lagers swill, I mean it's a style on equal ground with any other but social events are what really formed a taste for it. It's really a beer for people who want to get drunk, same alchohol content but less filling than what most of us on the forum would consider "good beer"

 

Wow, this thread has taken an interesting turn....

I don't for a minute blame the big brewers for what constitutes the bulk of what is sold as "beer" today. They are only giving the market what they want - and given the amount sold, I'd say they've nailed the target.

My initial flippancy aside, what I was getting at was "how much lower gravity "lite" beer could I have brewed from 14lbs of barley"?

 

Revvy, what do you think of this guy's review of the book? He thinks Maureen is too biased towards Bud and even criticizes craft brewers.

http://www.amazon.com/review/R2KXSL...e=UTF8&ASIN=0156033593&nodeID=&tag=&linkCode=

 

Listen to her basic brewing podcasts, she talks about that idea. I think it's bull**** actually.

 

Sweet, I can now buy the book with a clear conscious!

 

It's always fascinating to me how some people -a lot of people, actually- invariably want to blame external factors on some problem, and never an flaw inherent in human beings.

I see the situation involving taste in beer as being an expression of a Barnumism: "No one ever went broke underestimating the intelligence (or taste) of the American people."

If most people are told on enough TV shows featuring talking frogs at Super Bowl halftime that they should be drinking X then many of them (though by no means all) will drink it. It's built in, all part of life's rich pattern. Get used to it.

""The fault, dear Brutus, is not in our stars,
But in ourselves-"

-Cassius to Brutus, Julius Cæsar

 

My thing about all this is....The craft beer industry has existed since right around the time I turned 21, about 24 years ago...at least that's when I first noticed there were OTHER beers around besides BMC....there was snpa, and bell's and sam adams starting to pop up in a few stores in Metro Detroit at that time, as well as imports like Guiness, Bredore's and Double Diamond (from England- the first non bmc bottled beer I ever bought)...This stuff was first in my awareness in the mid to late 80's....

In fact when I was underaged I had my first taste of bud, spat it out and made my decision that beer sucked...and drank other things in the interum, mostly wine, and bourbon...in fact the first legal drink I ever bought was a bottle of calvados. Yet, since I loved to read, I always heard about beers like guiness, and other things...so I kept hearing that there was "good beer" out there.

Then I turned 21 and shortly after, like I said above, I began to see these OTHER beers around in bars and better beer/wine stores around my college campus. Plus the first micro brewery was in a resteraunt near campus as well.

I think my first non BMC beer I tried in a bar, was a guiness....And, as much as I think little of it NOW, it was a soul changing moment...I truly found out that there was something better than a budlight out there.

The point being..There has been alternative to BMC somewhat readily available since probably 1985...and more and more everyday.

Despite bmc's control over distribution craft, or imported beer has managed to be available to one degree or another for a lond time.

And now with commercials for Sam Adams, and even a show about dogfish head on one of the most popular cable channels...it really is NOT invisible anymore...if it ever was...And I don't believe it ever was.

Just like it was my choice to explore the world of beer for 24 years, it has been other folks choice to make Budlight the best selling beer on the planet, despite the fact that personally it makes me want to puke. Craft beers make other folks want to puke...It's just the way it is.

It's not AHB's "fault" that their product is the top seller...Nor is it totally a vast conspiracy to manipulate the marketplace as some of us beer snobs want to convince ourselves (though it does go on to a greater or lesser extent) But it's NOT the main...

The main reason is that more folks like those safe, (flavorless to me) light lager style of beer.

And despite a 10% loss of sales over time...it's still going to be the top seller in the market place...

Why? Because the majority of folks choose it over the vast array of other products out there. It simply reflects the relatively safe tastes of human beings...especially the american populace.

Most people are afraid to try new things...so their horizens or limited...but there's also going to be folks, who DO try craft beers....and go back to BMC...because that's what they prefer....there's nothing wrong with them...it's just their choice....

Just like it is our choice to like the alternatives...that's just the way it is.

 

OP - if you were to use the techniques behind lite/low-cab beers, you could turn out 14 gallons of a 3.5% beer like Genny Light. As Revvy says, it's a tough style to do. There just isn't any margin for error.

Note: one of the techniques is using aggressive enzymes to maximize the fermentables, so I used 36 points per pound.

 

Too right! And don't forget, those (commercial) beers have to be consistent across the nation or people will turn to their competition -and at their level its a true cut-throat business. I wouldn't want that stress.
When its all considered, they also have to have a relatively low price to boot.
I recall not too long ago (in beer years) the slogans 'tastes great, less filling' was the selling slogan -I can't recall which beer this was (was it bud or miller?) but you don't get a full bodied taste in a 'less filling' beer. At least not that I'm aware of. My fathers' wife really enjoys (is it Bud?) Ultra -to me, it comes across as barely flavored (though I can guzzle quite a bit of it -far more so than anything I brew, without feeling 'stuffed'. The only homebrew I make that she likes is my summer ale -its just a simple lawnmower beer but its the 'lightest' thing I've made -and its way too heavy for her.
As Revvy said, if it wasn't what the consumer wanted, it wouldn't be the best selling out there.
I don't dislike it -though its certainly not what I reach for when given a choice in the restaurant or when buying a commercial brew, but you have to give credit where credit is due.

 

To the OP, If you added about 5-6 lb of corn to the mash with the 14lb of barley, you could make up to 20 gallons of 1.045 beer depending on efficiency.

 

Swill may be the wrong word for the mass produced bland stuff that lines the shelves. How many of the members of this forum genuinely likes drinking BMC? I think very very few if any. Many of us hated certain vegetables when we were kids right? When were young we have certain flavors that we appreciate and its not until we are forced or force ourselves to eat something that we truly aquire a taste for something. Me for instance I hated broccoli when I was a kid, I even didn't like it into my early 20s. I did eat it on occasion to be polite, or because it was the only vegetable in a meal and I knew it was good for me. I now love broccoli and will actually choose it over other vegetables because I enjoy it. No one ever forces young people to drink full flavored beer or tells young people full flavored beer is good for them. They are told through hardcore advertising that BMC is the best and that's what they believe. Its super bland so it doesn't offend their childlike beeer palate so that's what they choose to drink. Big breweries realize this so that's what they dump most of their advertising money into. BMC may not be swill but it definitely doesn't deserve any sort of props on a beer geek forum like this by a long shot no matter how hard it is to make beer that tastes like slightly flavored water. I can't sing Mmmbop but that doesn't make it a good song, not even because so many people bought the album. BMC is the mac n cheese of the beer world. We chose to drink actual good beer because we craved flavor and variety. We like good beer because we were brave and broadened our horizons. I mean how many other beers have BMC drinkers even tried before they decided that that was their beer. Maybe one or two of the other big three, maybe some pabst, busch, molson or any number of other light lagers that very few people could pick out in a blind taste test. Defend crappy beer all you want but how often do you buy the junk when you have a better choice?

 

Actually quite a lot of us do....We may be beersnobs, but we're not EAC's.

I'm OK with drinking BMC... Are you?

 

Ok I read the thread, you and I think 4 others actually admitted to buying it, the majority said they'd drink it if it was free or had no choice and there were quite a few who said they would flat out refuse it even if it were offered for free. Got another thread to support the idea that BMC is good? Because that one wasn't a very good one to oppose my stance of it being the mac n cheese of the beer world.