think BMC beers have done a lot of damage, making people assume that adjunct automatically equals cheap or low quality...which is obviously not always the case.
But that actually comes from ignorance, non on the historical fact and the reasons why it was and is used in those styles today.
They aren't using rice and corn because it is cheap, but because it is
necessary to make that style of beer. You can't make a light lager without adding an adjunct like that to provide fermentables and thin out the body to achieve that light fruitiness.
It wasn't done HISTORICALLY to cut costs, NOR is it done that way today to cut costs. It's done because that's what's needed to make that style of beer.
just like you add corn in a cream ale, or you add sugar in a beligian beer. We don't ***** about that do we? We
understand it is necessary to get the right alcoholic content and the body....
Try to make a light lager without any rice or corn.
The 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.
This is the part that blows the "cost cutting" argument out of the water. In order to use those adjuncts you have to process them separately from the rest of the mash, and then add it to the mash. You either have to do a cereal mash to pr-gelatinize them or you have to roll them with heat to make them flaked...either way, besides the labor and energy involved to grow and harvest those plants, you expend labor and energy to make them usuable. You have to boil them in a cereal mash. That's another couple hours of labor and energy involved in the cost of the product.
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.
The American populace ate it up!
The market WAS in a sense, craving light lagers...
The German brewers didn't want to make the switch. They were perfectly happy with their bocks and all those other great heavy German Beers. But
the rest of us weren't into it.
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. Or to save money.
Listen to this from Basic Brewing;
November 30, 2006 - Ambitious Brew Part One
We learn about the history of beer in the USA from Maureen Ogle, author of "Ambitious Brew - The Story of American Beer." Part one takes us from the Pilgrims to Prohibition.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr11-30-06.mp3
December 7, 2006 - Ambitious Brew Part Two
We continue our discussion about the history of beer in the USA with Maureen Ogle, author of "Ambitious Brew - The Story of American Beer." Part two takes us from Prohibition to the present day.
http://media.libsyn.com/media/basicbrewing/bbr12-07-06.mp3
