The Calorie Conundrum

If the shoe fits...

 

theres an early post about skipping drinking on here if you are worried about calories.
you talk to any dietician, muscle head, fitness guru - whatever you want to call them dropping alcohol is one of the first thing you have to do.
otherwise find the happy medium. watch what you eat, watch what you drink, watch what you eat when you drink (or dont eat when u drink its a waste of calories)
and just hit a work out whether u gotta do weights cause thats your thing or some kind of cardio
forget light beer, light craft, BMC just use self control - enjoy what ever, and if the only goal here is the buzz maybe reevaluate again
-this is a bit of a rant but thats my thoughts ha.

 

Hanzo, you make some valid points. I don't know how people believe craft brewers are just "not interested" in making a light or low-calorie beer. I'm sure there are craft brewers who would love to tap the light beer market.

HOWEVER, a craft brewer would have a monumental uphill battle with public perception and knowledge about light beer. The average beer consumer understands very little about what light vs. regular beer even means, apart from ad slogans they've been assualted by their entire lives. For example, an astonishing number of people believe that a darker colored beer must have more more calories. Beer recommendations by "health" magazines and mainstream media certainly aren't helping either. For a flavorful light craft beer (like milds, berliner-weisse) to crack that market a craft brewer would have to educate consumers, most of whom probably don't care to be educated. I'm not saying light beer drinkers are stupid and not capable of being educated, but people just have other priorities in their life that may be more important to them than the beer they drink. Keep in mind also that by federal law nutrition information cannot be displayed on alcohol products, so a brewer can't even put real calorie information on their products at the point of sale.

The only craft brewer I could possibly imagine with enough resources to successfully launch such a massive educational marketing campaign is Sam Adams. I could also imagine a day where Guinness might try to market the low-calorie aspect of their beer, which could do wonders for public misconceptions of "dark" beer.

 

Might want to mention that to some of the BMC producers as I have seen calories as well as the amount of fat carbs and protein listed on the cans... unless it is something more recent as I have not bought any in a while.

 

If I drank Michelob Ultra I would end up having more of them (because they are like water) so my calories would even out in the end anyways. 6 Michelobs are roughly equal in calories to 3 GI Pale Ales. Why not drink the beer that tastes better (which I enjoy more anyways) then, which would be the GI Pale Ale?

 

Many large scale craft breweries make light versions of their beers. Sam Adams, Shiner, Yuengling. In my opinion these are all more along the lines of introductory craft beers. So yes your target audience of light beer drinkers are being reached, but only by the larger breweries with more space to produce light beers. I would never want my small local breweries to sacrifice the quality and quantity of beer produced to reach new craft beer drinkers. Once they get past the light stage they will enjoy the things smaller breweries offer regardless of calorie content.

On the subject of exercise and beer http://draftmag.com/beerrunner/scott/ saw this article fits in here pretty nice.

 

Lol I also vaguely remember someone running a beer marathon in San Francisco, where he blogged about running a marathon while having a beer every mile (kind of). That was mildly entertaining.

 

One can live a healthy lifestyle while consuming craft beer. I should know because I've managed to do it.

 

I don't believe for one minute that craft beer brewers are ignoring the light beer market. They just have chosen not to pursue it for reasons that others have already chimed in with. Also, a good percentage of craft beers are ales and excuse my ignorance if I'm wrong, there aren't many craft light ales around. So...making a craft light ale sounds like a great opportunity but with many of the craft brewers at their full capacity or close to it, they don't have the facililties to produce a light beer and if they did so, they would have to stop producing one of the beers they are producing now. So it's a business decision.

 

I don't give a shit about calories when it comes to beer. I burn a shit ton of calories in the summer, anyways.

Beer drinking and counting calories don't belong together.

 

Why would you (or anyone else) assume that light craft beer means bland watery lager? Hops have no calories, the residual sugars left behind after fermentation have little, the only difference really is alcohol and how its marketed (light vs. session) - and I agree with Hanzo on this - to gain inroads to the light beer drinkers, you have to talk their language, not some foriegn (pun intended) concept that doesn't really fit our beer drinking culture.

 

So someone wants to have an intelligent discussion - (yes, I find Hando's points intelligent and interesting) - and you result to name calling? Its no wonder beer websites like this are riddled with single, group think.

I find it weird that people who are so open minded that they will purchase very expensive weird ingredient/expirmental beer on faith, yet so close minded when it comes to beer drinkers who don't think like they do....

 

to go along with this:
have only one of your favorites for one session. everything in moderation, right? and be active throughout the week. its nice that we can talk about beer on a forum like this and yeah, I might be on here a lot, but at the same time, I'm still outside makin' sure I don't get a michelle obama butt. oh, and its not necessarily the calories, but look at the ABV, the higher the ABV the good chance your metabolism will slow down. if you're drinking lower ABV beers and working out, who cares about calories (people need a certain amount of calories a day- I can't remember what it is). you'll still sleep good at night with just a tad of ABV in your diet to wind down at the end of the day. sleep 8 hours a day, and eat nothing, or drink nothing 3 hours before you go to bed and you'll find a world of difference.

 

You're surprised that someone with the username "iwantsomerocks" and that avatar resorted to name-calling?

 

Oh my god. Because if you actually read the thread you'll see that it was pointed out many, many times that there are tons of low-ABV flavorful beers that already exist, and for some reason that isn't enough for OP. I still don't really know what the flying fuck the OP wants brewers to do, but if it's not something that they're already doing then making swill is the only remaining option.

 

Ummm... You misspelled LITE.

 

I think the point here is why isn't craft beer marketing these low abv flavorful beers as light beer with flavor to those who drink light beer but may be looking for something that tastes better? Craft brewers are still trying to woo macro lager drinkers with crossover beers in wheat, amber, brown, pale ale, and "summer" styles, yet seem to be missing the largest segment of macro lager drinkers by not capitalizing on the market angle already implanted in these drinkers heads. Instead they are using some vague term that the general beer drinking public has no clue what it means and those that have a clue can't agree on its definition. Its almost as if they are afraid of being lumped together with the big conglomerate brewers by using the same terms as they have in the past. Funny how there is almost no talk about balance and drinkability in craft beer anymore since the big brewers used those terms for their marketing purposes.