Do you think Miller/Bud will ever brew a proper Pilsner?

If you are able to brew a light american adjuct lager (bud lite) with no (off-)flavors, you are able to brew a great pilsner.
As said previously, the BMC drinker would not like a normal pilsner and a lot of answers on this thread show that a lot of "craft" beer drinkers would not even try a beer from them, so why would they brew one? For example:

A lot could be said about the "craft" beer industry and marketing...

 

They are the "King of Beers".

Aint nobody there got time fo dat !!

Cheers

 

Yea,
I mean, yea no they won't!!

 

I would love to pay $5.99 for a 6 pack of excellent Pilsner from the evil BMC corps vs. the $9.99 I have to pay for SA Noble Pils, Victory or the various top German offerings (Spaten, Weistaphaner etc). At least Becks, St. Pauli etc. are sort of inbetween at about $1 less than the top tier offerings and taste respectable to me anyway. I'm guessing that is what the OP is looking for...one of the big dogs to roll the dice and switch to a lower price/bigger flavored pilsner vs. the WWII era swill adjunct recipe they are still brewing. Like others mentioned though..its just too high risk.

 

Oh. Was just try'na be funny.

 

Budweiser does makes Budvar. The best Czech pilsner I've reviewed to date. Very hard to find however. Can they mass produce this in the US for a low price point? Not sure.

 

“I would love to pay $5.99 for a 6 pack of excellent Pilsner from the evil BMC corps”

Fat chance of paying $5.99 for an “excellent Pilsner”. I was recently at my local Wegmans Supermarket which has a beer store located within it. Since there is an ongoing thread about Blue Moon (which is MillerCoors) I looked to see what a six-pack of that costs: $9.50. I thought to myself: wow, that is a lot to charge for a ‘crafty’ beer! I did make a beer purchase: a six-pack of Dogfish Head 60 minute IPA for $9.50.

My guess is that the evil BMC companies would charge at least $9.50 for an “excellent Pilsner”.

Cheers!

 

No they don't. ABInBev does now own another brewery in the city of České Budějovice (aka Budweis) - Budjovicky Mestansky Pivovar - but Budějovický Budvar is still owned by the state.

Budvar is available in the US and is marketed as "Czechvar", for the past decade or so. Not very hard to find that I've seen, but getting hard to find fresh.

 

Yeah, your right, I went back and checked it out and InBev has no affiliation. The one I sampled 2 years ago was called "Budvar". I haven't seen it since in my area, nor have I seen Czechvar. I'll start keeping an eye out for it though. I thought it was really good for the Czech Pilsner style.

 

Forget pilsner, just start with an all malt Bud

 

“ …just start with an all malt Bud” You can buy that if you are so inclined: Michelob.

“Michelob

THE SAME, PERFECT TASTE SINCE 1896

Michelob Original Lager is a malty, full-bodied European-style premium lager. From its inception to today, it stands out as a distinctive, high-quality beer for connoisseurs.

Our Original Lager is brewed traditionally, using European noble aroma hop varieties and a 100-percent-malt blend of the finest two-row and caramel malts. It is fermented and aged with our classic lager yeast strain, and cold-matured for balanced crispness.”

Cheers!

 

Fair point

 

^
What he said. They have no need to try and make their own craft pilsner. If they develop the want too, they'll probably just buy someone else's brewery.

 

What happened to Michelob? All I see now are the Ultra versions.

 

I haven't seen regular Michelob in forever, really not a bad BMC offering as far as BMC goes.

 

I haven’t seen Michelob Original Lager in quite some time (because I wasn’t looking?) but you can buy it at State Line Liquors in Elkton, MD for a low price (bottle/six-pack/case):

MICHELOB 6PACK CANS #01266 $1.19 $5.79 $19.99

Cheers!

 

Politics aside, in the end, I'm loyal to the beer rather than the brewer. If I honestly like a beer, shut up and take my money. If I don't like a beer, too freaking bad.

 

I offer you "$2.484 billion" reasons why they don't care about brewing a proper pilsener.

 

Of course, Michelob became an adjunct lager beer in 1961 (approx. 20% rice according to some sources), the first year it was bottled. Before that it has been a very limited all-draught product from AB (see Michelob to read AB's PR in the 1950s and before) and was probably the most expensive US beer. 3 years after the bottled product was released, it retailed at $2.25/sixpack in NJ in 1964 - that's the equivalent of $17 in today's dollars, and was nearly twice the price of "premium" beers like Bud, Schlitz, MHL (all @ $1.25).

AB only returned it to an all-malt recipe in a failed, and not very well promoted, attempt to rejuvenate the dying brand in 2007. (And they obviously did not return it to the original hopping rate- the "new" Mich was not even as hoppy as I remember it when I tried a very fresh sample at the Columbus brewery in the late 70s. That was far and away the hoppiest US adjunct lager I'd had up to that point. I was shocked as I brought the sample glass up to my nose. "What the....thems HOPS!")

Yeah, that's what some of the marketing people at AB must say to themselves. (Well, could be the ones who remember are all gone or retired). Michelob was the #1 beer a few years back in what has become an annual "report" by 24/7 Wall St. - Nine Beers Americans No Longer Drink - which noted its sales had gone from 500,000 barrels to 140,000 in the period 2006 to 2011. They should have gone back a couple of decades, when Michelob sold 8.3 MILLION barrels in 1981. Now that's a sales decrease.

 

Michelob in the '70's and early '80's was pretty close. 100% barley malt, decently hopped. It was a premium beer by any standard. Was a good $.50 more than Bud per six pack at the time, glass only. Then it went to shit.


I stand corrected...they did add rice in the '60's. Was still a good beer at the time.