No love for American Adjunct Lagers?

I got love for the PBR! By far tastier then BMC & quite a bit cheaper in my area too! It's my go to broke beer!

 

Schlitz and Miller High Life aren't bad at all. And as much as it pains me to say it, neither is Budweiser.

One of my big craft beer wishes is that the smaller breweries start making good AALs. So far it seems the blonde ale, cream ale, amber ale and amber lager are the typical gateway beers most craft breweries are making to try to lure the macro-drinker, but I really want them to buy some corn or rice and brew up an adjunct lager.

The expense of the lagering process probably scares them away from it, no?

 

My uncle worked at yuengling for years and he said the difference between lager and ale is a few shots of whiskey dropped into a batch. Now that the lager has changed from when he was alive I doubt this is still true.

 

Naragansett Lager is the best AAL I have ever tried

 

"I only drink beers that I think are amazingly good/the best/etc." is perfectly okay.

"This beer is not amazingly good/the best/etc., therefore it must be undrinkable garbage/the worst/etc." not so much.

It's the second category I'm talking about as being "unfortunate"... the tendency of people to lump everything into two black-and-white categories, "super amazing beer" and "undrinkable garbage beer," as if nothing ever fell somewhere in the middle of those two... even though in reality most things are probably going to fall somewhere in the middle. Everything can't be either the best or the worst... average and decent and good-but-not-great and kinda-bad and not-undrinkable-but-close are all out there too (and which is which is going to depend on the individual, what with everybody having different taste buds and all.)

I'm not saying people should drink beer they don't like, but it's ridiculous to treat a beer that hovers in the range of "average" or "not outstanding, but there's nothing at all bad about it either" as if it was crap with no positive qualities whatsoever.

 

If you put 5 different AALs in unmarked cups and I tried them, there's no way I could tell the difference. They all taste exactly the same to me, and I think they're okay. I think that's part of why people look down on them (lack of variety in taste), but They're great when it's hot and you want a beer without thinking about it. I've developed a serious love for craft beer the last few years, but I have no problem with an AAL from time to time

 

Whoa. WTF... Who's the "old people" in this comment - Dick Yuengling Jr's only 72 or so.

So, let me get this straight - I disagreed with you about a beer (one I guess from your reply that you did not drink in the 1970-1980s period that I'm discussing?) and you respond with profanity and personal insults? Since when is backing up one's opinion with contemporary quotes "lecturing"?

I routinely read people on these forums complain that a beer "isn't the same" as one they drank 30 days ago much less over 30 years ago. Changes in recipes over decades are relatively well documented in the macro industry, while specific recipes are closely held by breweries.

(I guess this is why I stay away from "reviewing", and tend to avoid all those "Favorite" and "WBAYDN" threads ).

More from the head horse's (Dick Yuengling Jr's) mouth:

I'd say switching the yeast from a top to a bottom fermenting one alone qualifies as a "change" in recipe - and, yeah, I'd say ANY US brewer's claim that their beer is the same recipe - same ingredients in the same proportions using the same brewing processes - as one used over a century ago, is "BS". Certainly any US brewing historian would love to see that 1829 recipe.

Yuengling's claim that, in the US in that "pre-lager yeast availability" era, they brewed a bottom-fermented, filtered/crystal clear, US-style golden "ale" with typical modern adjunct levels of 30-40% corn grits (decades before the arrival of Anton Schwarz in the US) - or possibly corn syrup, forced carbed to "lager" levels (long before common usage of that process), with pelletized hops, maybe high-gravity brewed and (when packaged) pasteurized is pretty much unbelievable.​

 

I'd say it's a recipe change too, but you'll note that Dick says they changed from bottom-fermenting in oak vessels to top-fermenting in the 60s (and I'm reading that to also say they had changed to steel by then) - prior to your claimed change in taste from the 70s until now.

Dick also says there was no taste or character change. You say there has been. Are you right, or is the brewer? I know who I'd believe, even if the brewer is just trying to sell me on the notion that his beer tastes the same now as it did 30 or 50 or even 188 years ago. Sure, the 188 years claim stretches credulity, but 30 or 40 years? I'll buy that, at least over the word of some dude on BeerAdvocate who "swears the beer tasted different back then."

Because surely there aren't any other factors that might cause 2015 you who is in your 50s, to perceive a beer differently than 18-year-old you did in the late 70s? Everyone else's taste is subjective and prone to error particularly over time, but yours is perfectly recallable close to 40 years later. Now THAT'S a claim, perhaps not quite as outlandish as Yuengling saying they brew a 188 year old recipe, but not too far off!

 

I quoted the 1999 MBA Dick, Jr. comment in response to your links in which Yuengling claims Chesterfield Ale is "one of two original recipes that date to the founding of the company" (assuming the other being their Porter, which also made the top>bottom ferm. yeast change).

It was not meant to bolster my comment about how I perceived a change in the taste of the beer between the mid-80's - when I moved out of the NY/PA Twin Tier region and stopped buying it regularly - and the mid/late 1990s - when I started to occasionally revisit it.

 

Some do, but it's a losing game. As far as drinking experience is concerned, the results are in the same ballpark as the bigger competition, but in regards to price, freshness, availability, etc, they can't compete. So when you put those two realities together, it's just not a winning formula. On top of that, I've seen the look on craft fans' faces when they try such beers: "Gross, it tastes like Bud." It's practically a bad PR move for the brewery to even try it. If you're thinking along the lines of a small community brewery, I wonder if the average one has the means to successfully pull one off.

An all-malt pale lager (as opposed to an AAL) made by a prestigious craft brewery, such as Anchor's California Lager, seems to be a dark horse formula that can work with the public. Note that Anchor is a brewery that values the American past rather than trying to sever ties with it.

 

For awhile there I was keeping track of all the revived brands, but it got to be too much. A "few" others (dating back to the early "craft" era):

Champagne Velvet in IN
Weidenmeyer in NJ
Huerich in DC
Frank Jones NH
Ortlieb’s in PA
Sheridan in MT
North Coast's Acme
Fall’s City
Greisedieck in MO
Pickwick (Harpoon)
Duquesne and Ft. Pitt in PA
C. H. Evans
Lemp's
Fitger's
Walter’s
A-1 (Arizona)
Krueger (NJ)
Fauerbach (WI)
Great Falls (MT)
Nueweiler
Wooden Shoe (OH)
Gerst
Haffenreffer Private Stock Malt Liquor
Ballantine India Pale Ale​

...but, you know, I have checked the last days...

 

You're out of your depth, sonny.

 

I guess in my mind an AAL made by a good craft brewery would be so much better than the average macro-brew AAL that it *would* be a winning formula. But if not, then your point makes perfect sense. Why would I spend $9.99 on a six-pack of beer that is an exact copy of the $5.99-$6.99 beers? I wouldn't, and I *like* Bud, Schlitz and Miller High Life.

I've had some really good American pale lagers, including California Lager. For my money, California Lager is the best beer Anchor makes -- I could drink it exclusively and be happy, I like it that much. And it's many, many times better than the best AAL I've had, which again backs up your point that even a good AAL is still an AAL.

What I haven't had is an AAL made by a craft brewery. There's at least one made here in Texas (Twisted X), and I'll get some next beer run.

 

It's all about the hops. When they are done 'right', with snappy bitterness and noticeable noble hop aroma, the style really quenches and keeps your interest at the same time. The one that Jack mentioned at the start of this thread, Lord Chesterfield, falls into that category. So did that CAP I mentioned earlier in the thread, although these kinds of beers are usually more in the domain of the older regional independent breweries like Yuengling rather than smaller craft breweries. Different audiences that they are catering towards, it seems.

 

The beer you're describing reminds me of this one:

http://www.beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/383/1061/?ba=Premo88

Live Oak is best know for its hefeweizen, but they specialize in all things German/Czech. Their pilsener is very good and has a subdued malt profile, tasting more like grain or a cracker than bread. It's what I envision a good craft-brewery made AAL possibly tasting like.

Man ... I'm getting thirsty ...

 

There are a few local breweries/brewpubs near me who make a beer akin to an AAL, and it's amazing what even just a relative degree of freshness does for the style. I was recently at a new brewery in a small Canadian city (population 90,000 or so) and their standard AAL was, paradoxically, simultaneously unremarkable and yet absurdly delicious. I even bought a six-pack of it. Particularly in that market, I think it's necessary for a new brewery to offer a beer in this style (because the city is small and relatively rural and full of BMC drinkers), but it's really interesting how superbly they do the style.

I think BMC actually understand this, too. I was talking to an AB-InBev sales rep the other day, and he admitted that one of their sales strategies was to do tastings right off the bottling line, unpasteurized.

 

Sounds like you've got the itch, so pick that one up. Maybe it'll be exactly what you are looking for. Try having that beer on it's own, and then later alongside a common brand.

In my case, there are two "craft" beers that are springing to mind that I'm guessing are made with adjuncts (I don't know for certain). For me, one was no different than the bigger brands, and the other was nicer than the bigger brands. The nice one is difficult to obtain and I don't remember it having a date on it. I could buy an Anchor Cali 6 pack for roughly the same price, or I could buy a PBR 12 pack for less (or a 12 pack of Bitburger for a little more). That "nicer" craft beer was definitely not over 2x nicer than a PBR... more like slightly nicer, and that doesn't even factor in freshness and gas money. In other words, better didn't equal better, but there's still something alluring about it anyway. For some consumers, the idea of their money going to a small or local brewery might push them in the other direction. I hope your results are more positive.

 

No, no love for watery liquid corn piss.