Rice vs. Corn Syrup in Beer

I also saw this commercial and thought it was really odd and a double-standard. I think it's cashing in on consumer ignorance about corn vs rice, but they are far from the first marketers to try to manipulate ignorance for their benefit. I think there is a general backlash against corn syrup these days that Bud is tapping into, especially among the younger theoretically health-conscious people. Corn is associated with many generally negative feelings/opinions of HFCS, sugary soft-drink controversies, obesity, GMOs, organic foods, factory farming, environmental issues, paleo diets, food allergies, political lobbying, etc....it's hard to put a finger on the specific problem society has with corn, but there is an underlying negative current or zeitgeist... (but eating at Chipotle and sharing your taco tuesdays creations on social media is still cool
)

I suspect the aim was not to convert the die-hards, but at younger drinkers who haven't made up their mind on brand alliegance yet. Exploit a pre-existing bias against corn to push them towards Bud, and maybe they will become life-long die-hard Bud drinker.

 

Do you think those ads were geared towards the craft drinkers, like on this site, or the general beer drinking population...or both?

Personally, I think the ads were aimed at the younger generation. Many still drink macro but want to feel like their brands are special or socially/ethically aware.

 

Hit the nail on the head with your assessment of 'corn' in our cultural zeitgeist. I work in the farming industry and sweet corn farmers often talk about how corn popularity has gone way down with the health conscious / liberal / 'enlightened' crowd...even though the GMO/grain corn situation is totally separated from sweet corn. "Corn is bad" seems to be the overall feeling.

 

They also had an ad touting their use of wind energy.

Going green, not using corn syrup. Next they're gonna be sniffing their beer before drinking it.

 

And that would be a problem because?

 

Didn't say it was? It's a marketing strategy, like many other food and beverage companies are doing, to appear 'clean' and 'healthier' based on the campaign against GMOs. It's a huge movement in food. The beer industry is now catching on.

 

They should drink PBR like good hipsters then. At least it tastes ok. And it's cheaper

 

BA backfire: I was going to scoff at drinking beers made with corn syrup until the commercially clearly showed me that Coors and Miller use the classier barrel aged corn syrup.

 

The negative connotation about GMO corn has more to do with "Round-up Ready" corn. The two issues are conflated and impossible to untangle. Consumers can't separate the two. Watch the documentary Food Evolution (free on YT and other sources now) to see just how intertwined those two things are in the general population. Simply put, people don't really know what they disagree with, except that Monsanto is bad, mmm-kay? and FaceBook "science" is better than real research.

Corn syrup has been evil for a while, probably even before Michelle O. We switched back to 100% sucrose in everything we make quite a few years ago - it's cheaper and tastes better, but is still under the "worse than crack" catch all of added sugar. The refining of corn syrup into high fructose corn syrup seems especially heinous to some segments of the population because it implies a processed food. Oh...but evaporated cane juice is "natural" and "healthy" even though it is basically liquid sucrose.

So, if I am not mistaken, nobody's drinking beer with corn syrup actually in the beer, right? Corn syrup would be fermentable and serve the same function as the AB rice syrup, right? NOT an ingredient one actually consumes. But I would bet dollars to donuts most people don't know that and that there Bud Lite label plays right into and perpetuates that confusion to AB's advantage.

@JackHorzempa - not sure about that labelling, honestly, although I know a little about it from a different industry. We bring in dry sucrose and dissolve it, so we label it as sucrose - we do NOT have to label it sucrose syrup, which is essentially what we "make" in-house. Of course, we are not transforming one thing into another, which is likely where the rules might change? Is rice the ingredient as it rolls in off the rail car, or is "rice syrup" the actual ingredient since it is what the rice is converted to - good question - and does it matter is another good question. And what about the barley? Technically speaking, neither grain nor rice would be an ingredient in the beer since it doesn't end up in the bottle either - seems logical to me and follows what I know from my industry. I can't label a bottle of our products with water, sugar, fruit. I have to say it is fruit juice and further have to state that fruit juice from concentrate this way - "fruit juice (water, fruit juice concentrate)" for any juice component in the bottle. Even if I were not using concentrates, I could not label the bottle with "fruit" unless there was actual ground up fruit in there...hmmm...so is this beer nutrition panel a bit jacked up? I don't know the answer there.

I would seriously doubt that AB has made a legal faux pas that would be pretty serious. I am gonna hazard the guess that regardless of what they are doing, it's all some how technically "legal". But I have to wonder - what are the actual "ingredients" when it comes to creating a nutritional panel for beer? Too me, it would be simple - what's in the bottle versus what was used to make what's in the bottle that has undergone transformations. Or does beer nutritional /ingredient labelling, like a lot of other stuff in the brewing industry, depart significantly from what I live with every day in food world? Why is my serving size 8 ounces and theirs 12 ounces - because it's convenient to be a whole can versus a serving from a bigger container? Or because an 8 oz serving for my product looks better from a calorie POV (as I sit with a label for a diet product on my desk). Arrrrgh....it'll make your head spin...let's give up and have a beer

 

The way I read TTB Ruling 2013-2 - Voluntary Nutrient Content Statements in the Labeling and Advertising of Wines, Distilled Spirits, and Malt Beverages, ingredient listing like that shown is not part of the "Acceptable Statement" designs, just something AB added, so the rule doesn't cover how they list ingredients or describe them.

They can say "hops", for instance, and don't need to specify whole, pellets or extract and further don't note "barley malt". For many years brewers who used flaked corn, corn grits or corn syrup have just said "corn" or "grains". Its never been covered by any ATF/TTB regulation that I'm aware of.

I suppose, given the other changes that have been made after InBev took over, they may have also changed the form of their rice adjunct. Anyone take an AB brewery tour lately - are the cereal/rice cookers in AB breweries still being used? (That was an early sign for Miller's switch in, IIRC, the 1990s. The cereal cookers in the breweries were mothballed.)

AB has to follow TTB regulations (Ruling 2013-2, linked above), which specifies "Serving Size" for beer based on ABV:

 

I bet that ABInbev is counting on the average beer drinker being unaware of how brewing works. And that they are increasingly questioning the use of sugar. If they hear corn syrup they think sugar, if they hear rice, they think food, or maybe starch. But what happens to rice, or starch, during the double mash process? Do people realize that it turns into sugar? And do people realize that the sugar coming from both the syrup and rice is consumed by the yeast during fermentation, that that is the whole point of brewing, of generating sugar and fermenting that sugar? Maybe not. So if they can plant the idea that Miller and Coors add sugar to their beers like you would a soda, they (Bud Light) might come away looking like the better alternative with people who can't bother to learn how brewing actually works.

 

And that pretty much sums it up. It's corporate, it's advertising.

 

I think it's this in a nutshell. That and they know that it's only hypocritical if one reads between the lines. There's a longer cut of the commercial that has them going to Rodenbach's castle too.

 

They already do
ABInBev -TAP INTO YOUR BEER - BEER TASTING:

 

Yeah, it's up to the viewer to interpret the information provided through their own knowledge or ignorance, they are just putting it out there and stating a fact . Personally though I am much more of a fan of ABInbev using rice and actually conducting a double mash over using syrups (which I realize that they do use for other brands), I appreciate the link to brewing history and the effort put into it. In the same way I thought it was nice to hear that they were using whole hops (was that for Budweiser only?) until the last few decades. That was also a nice touch I thought (to learn about after it was abandoned). Modern brewing could probably be pushed to be nothing but syrups: liquid malt extract, liquid adjunct, hop extract etc., and they might even be able to produce an end product which would be hard to distinguish from the previous versions using malt crushed in the brewery, adjuncts cooked separately, and hop pellets boiled with the wort instead of having extracts added post fermentation, but I think something is lost with each step towards such a process. But maybe that's just me being sentimental .

 

While I can see where you're going with this, and I understand, I have to step up and say that Bud Light is BY FAR not "the worst beer in history". There are plenty of worse beers brewed by small American breweries on the market, and then there are all of those piss-poor beers brewed in small countries across the globe. On top of that, I don't think that Bud Light is even the worst light beer on the American market. You need to do some tasting.

 

Name 1. Challenge

 

CAMO Genuine Ale
Olde English "800" 3.2 version
Waterloo Brewing "PC 2.5g Low Carb"
Tecate Light
Keystone Light
Sleeman's B-40 Bull Max 8%
Jinbali King Benefit Lager
Earthquake High Gravity Lager
Meister Brau
Crazy Ed's Cave Creek Chili Beer
Jacob's Best ICE
... ... ... ... you asked for one and I gave you more than ten.