Light Beer: You Don't Have to Like It, but Respect It

Discussion in 'Beer News' started by sandiego67, Nov 2, 2012.

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  1. herrburgess

    herrburgess Grand Pooh-Bah (3,053) Nov 4, 2009 South Carolina
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    From the penultimate paragraph of the original Atlantic article:

    "For Brooklyn Homebrew's Kyler Serfass, it took three months of experimentation to crack the code using an old refrigerator he discovered in the basement of his apartment building. 'When I saw that fridge, it was like a light shone down from heaven,' he said. Serfass made only two cases' worth of his 'Budweiser clone,' but the duplication was considered such an achievement that it won him a gold medal at this year's Homebrew Alley competition, held at the Brooklyn Brewery."

    I suppose you would have judged his beer as "generic and uninteresting"?
     
  2. rlcoffey

    rlcoffey Initiate (0) Apr 20, 2004 Kentucky

    See my comment in the other thread about Justice Stewart's definition of obscenity.

    And yes, it applies to Bud too, I was just specifically calling out Bud Light.

    Edit: confused first and last names of a supreme court justice. Doh!
     
  3. herrburgess

    herrburgess Grand Pooh-Bah (3,053) Nov 4, 2009 South Carolina
    Pooh-Bah Society

    So you would have "seen it" in the above-mentioned homebrew competition, too?
     
  4. rlcoffey

    rlcoffey Initiate (0) Apr 20, 2004 Kentucky

    Not sure what that has to do with anything. Ive judged before. You judge against a standard. Its possible to win Cat 1 (bjcp) without being a quality beer. Just the best entered.

    True for the other categories too, for that matter. Although Ive always felt the winners in the categories Ive judged were quality.
     
  5. TheHammer

    TheHammer Pooh-Bah (2,050) Feb 15, 2009 Canada (ON)
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    I probably would have, if it was indeed a Budweiser clone, as this article suggests. I have doubts that it tasted like Budweiser or Bud Light though, as I doubt the same ingredients were used, and I doubt he had access to chemical preservatives that give Bud it's metallic taste. I should probably add though I was referencing this thread and this article, which I erroneously thought was the same article this page referenced.

    http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/macro-brewer-putting-beer-snobs-to-shame.47641/
    http://www.reddit.com/r/beer/commen...u_dont_have_to_like_it_but_respect_it/c6v2wef

    Let me make one thing clear, I don't have a problem with Light Beer, I have a problem with Light Beer that has no flavour. Sleeman Clear and Sleeman Light are probably the two beers I would reference in this comparison. One is beer flavoured water, one is a light beer that has taste, and in my opinion, the vast majority of macro produced beer (espcially light beer) is either lacking in flavour or is generically boring, like many import lagers.
     
  6. drtth

    drtth Initiate (0) Nov 25, 2007 Pennsylvania
    In Memoriam

    Please provide documentation for the claim that Bud uses chemical preservatives to a create metallic taste, thanks.
     
  7. stupac2

    stupac2 Pooh-Bah (2,031) Feb 22, 2011 California
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    It's sort of baffling that people don't understand this. So the argument is that I'm supposed to respect Bud Lite as a beer because it's a phenomenal engineering effort? Uhh, what? In what world does that make sense?

    Making a terrible product really consistently isn't something that should be admired, it should be mocked. If they applied those kinds of standards to making something good, just imagine what they could do.
     
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  8. Optifron

    Optifron Initiate (0) Aug 17, 2012 Minnesota

    People can complain about the big guys all day long, but at the end of the day, they're responding to consumer demand, and doing it well. Like almost everyone here, I barely touch the macro products, because I don't enjoy the product, but is it poor quality? If your definition of quality is a beer with a complex layering of flavors, sure the macro guys are near the bottom, but that's not the product they're trying to make. If the definition of quality is making a consistent beer that is light in taste without complexity and inexpensive (and let's face it, that's what a large part of the market wants, like it or not that's the demand), then I'd say the macro guys are at the top. Not only that, but ABI's purchase of companies like Goose Island shows they're not stupid, and they recognize a growing change in consumer demand. Unfortunately, I'm assuming ABI will figure they can get higher profits by decreasing the complexity and using cheaper ingredients for some the GI beers, at which point I will stop buying them, but maybe we'll get lucky.

    Honestly, I may not like the macro products, or what I assume will happen to beers from companies like Goose Island when they get acquired by the big guys, but the only potential complaint I have is the use of legal-but-unsettling business tactics that people say (and is probably true) the big guys use (i.e. bullying distributors and using legislation to keep the craft guys down). To me, everything else is the evolution of business that makes America great. Marketing and advertising, what's wrong with that? They have as much right to advertise as anyone else. Buying smaller companies? That may be a bummer for people who love those smaller companies, but what can you complain about? If the small guys want to take the big buyout paycheck from ABI, that's their business decision and ABI has done nothing wrong. If the small guys want to grow slowly so that they keep majority control of the company, I'll love them all the more, but again just their personal business decision. Despite the big guys, our selection of varied and fantastic artisan beer only seems to grow every year, and as long as we keep that demand alive and growing, I don't see the selection going away. The guys who make a great product with market demand and know how to run a business will stick around, and the ones who can't do both will fail.

    *I should note that as a chemical engineer, I have an almost reverence for the technological skill and business sense of the big guys, whether or not I actually like the product. Bias stated.
     
  9. drtth

    drtth Initiate (0) Nov 25, 2007 Pennsylvania
    In Memoriam

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  10. dpnelson1978

    dpnelson1978 Initiate (0) Jul 20, 2009 Minnesota

    Sure, if you confuse quality with consistency.
     
  11. TheHammer

    TheHammer Pooh-Bah (2,050) Feb 15, 2009 Canada (ON)
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    You know, what, that is a fair comment to make, and I retract my statement about chemcial preservatives. I will instead say I doubt he had access to the tools needed to pasteurize and "Beechwood Filter" his beer, which may be contribute to it's awful metallic taste. I assume that unnatural, awful metallic taste was as a result of preservatives.
     
  12. Optifron

    Optifron Initiate (0) Aug 17, 2012 Minnesota


    This is where I think people have issue, is saying they make a terrible product. Can you really say a product with that much demand and market share is terrible? Do I enjoy it? No, absolutely not, but clearly a TON of people do. In the eyes of much of the market, it is clearly the product they want, be it because of taste, or price, or whatever else, this is what they buy.
     
  13. dpnelson1978

    dpnelson1978 Initiate (0) Jul 20, 2009 Minnesota

    It doesn't necessarily taste like garbage... it usually just doesn't taste like anything at all.

    The taste is inferior. The only people that would argue against that without simply trying to be argumentative are people who really aren't drinking the beer for the taste. They want it to be a water substitute that can get them drunk.

    But if you and Optifron want to be impressed by technology there are some great bottled water producers I can point you towards.
     
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  14. hopfenunmaltz

    hopfenunmaltz Pooh-Bah (2,611) Jun 8, 2005 Michigan
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    The definition of quality will apply to all beers, weather mass market or the ratest of whales. If you have ever work in a manufacturing setting you get this. The system know as DFSS has to do with finding out how to reduce variation and adjust the mean to produce a consistant quality product.

    Some of you misuse "quality", and apply it to only aspirational or prestige products. You can make a quality widget that sells for a fraction of a penny, for example.

    You should read what Dr. Bamforth has to say about beer quality someday.
    http://www.amazon.com/Standards-Bre...=UTF8&qid=1351964870&sr=1-3&keywords=bamforth
     
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  15. Biffster

    Biffster Initiate (0) Mar 29, 2004 Michigan


    True. Consistency does not, in itself, equal quality. Quality is the result of both consistency and and accuracy. What does this mean? This means that someone manufacturing something makes exactly what they set out to make, and gets the exact same result every time. It has NOTHING to do with whether it is interesting to you, or appealing, or if they use expensive enough ingredients to suit someone's taste. Sorry, but it has NOTHING whatever to do with taste. The market will take care of that, one way or another.

    They very consistently and very accurately produce exactly what they set out to produce. Anyone who has ever actually produced a material product for any length of time knows exactly what I'm talking about.

    This whole trainwreck of a thread boils down to two different meanings for quality. Some of us are talking about quality in the quantitative sense. Some of us are talking about quality in the qualitative sense. Two entirely different meanings of the same word.
     
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  16. hopfenunmaltz

    hopfenunmaltz Pooh-Bah (2,611) Jun 8, 2005 Michigan
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    The Beechwood aging is in the lagering tanks. Strips (they call them chips) of beechwood are laid in the tanks before they are filled. The beechwood has been steamed so as to impart no flavor. The reasons for the strips is to give more surface area for the yeast to settle on, which exposes more of the yeast to the beer, giving the yeast time to clean up the off flavors from the primary fermentation. This may help speed up the lagering process, maybe not.
     
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  17. hopfenunmaltz

    hopfenunmaltz Pooh-Bah (2,611) Jun 8, 2005 Michigan
    Pooh-Bah Society

    That sums it up nicely.

    A Honda Fit would be an example of an entry level car with high quality. Not an aspirational car.
     
  18. rlcoffey

    rlcoffey Initiate (0) Apr 20, 2004 Kentucky

    As I said at the beginning, the definition of quality as used in industrial processes is wrong.

    Quality Assurance/Quality Control are misnomers. I dismissed that secondary definition at the beginning.

    I also would point out the root of qualitative vs the root of quantitative. Consistency and accuracy are quantitative. As is sales. If quality was quantitative, it would be called quantity instead. Oh wait, that word already exists.
     
  19. hopsbreath

    hopsbreath Savant (1,133) Aug 28, 2009 Florida

    American Adjunct Lite Lager producers set the bar for their product and achieve it every time. Wether you call it quality control or consistency control it's just semantics. The end result is the same.
     
  20. rlcoffey

    rlcoffey Initiate (0) Apr 20, 2004 Kentucky

    Semantics are imporant.

    What often happens when the same word is used for two different things is that the two get confused in people's minds. Hence why its important to use the word consistency when you mean consistency.
     
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