Rice vs. Corn Syrup in Beer

Ad execs I've known told me the purpose of a commercial was to get people to try the product. I know my own tastes well enough not to be swayed but the images are arresting. I mean, I still remember the Budweiser Frogs and the Swedish Bikini Girls parachuting in with chilled cans of Old Milwaukee but neither ad changed my buying habits. Of course if the girls would make a personal delivery, well . . .

 

Lol! I only saw a Surly reference.

 

It seems like Bud Light has really been playing up this angle since after the Super Bowl, as I’ve seen ads elsewhere such as the automated online ones that push the same line about rice over corn syrup. It’s getting exhausting.

 

Well, I've been thinking of putting together a page for Post-Repeal US beers other than Budweiser that used rice as adjunct (there were quite a few, many well-known, including Coors - also noted above in post #14 - Rheingold, Stroh's, Yuengling, etc.) but since I had the info available, I threw together a century's worth of Anhueser-Busch info on their rice usage - RICE IN BUDWEISER.

Well, Pabst (in the 1970s) did note that they used cooked cereal grains, not syrup and bragged about being the only brewer that "milled much of its own corn". And by the 1970s, Schlitz claimed to use rice or corn.

 

Personally corn and rice in beer don't worry me, but Miller and Coors would be wise to point out that rice has higher levels of arsenic in it than corn to really get this beer war revitalized.

 

It's called a "knee-jerk" reaction for a reason .

 

Too many midnight movies?

 

Related news.... https://www.agweb.com/article/farmers-smeared-by-smirnoff-over-non-gmo-label/
[Brief Summary: In late 2018 Smirnoff launched a marketing campaign highlighting that it is non-GMO. A Kansas farmer who also owned a liquor store decided to stop selling Smirnoff, and has received local and nation wide support]

There is an cultural undercurrent against corn and other aspects of modern farming, but US farmers are also standing up for facts and science.

 

I don't really understand why there is a question about whether rice is better than corn syrup. If you don't want any adjuncts in your beer, fine. Don't drink them. No problem. Rice is used to some degree of frequency in craft brewing as well. I'm not sure that I have ever heard of craft beer being made with corn syrup.

The simple point of distinction to me is this. I would gladly sit down and eat a bowl of rice. It is a whole grain, grown in the ground, and uprocessed. None of this can be said about corn syrup.

 

What evidence do you have that the Busch brands are made with corn syrup? I can find information from less than reliable sources that suggests they use corn, but I can't find anything that says they use corn syrup.

 

The earlier skirmishes in the rice vs corn wars were about the grains and not rice vs corn syrup. High fructose corn syrup (HFCS), which I think is the target now, began penetrating the market in the 1970s and did not achieve dominance until the 1990s. HFCS makes an easy target because all kinds of claims of health problems have swirled around it since it entered the market but I can not imagine how any of the alleged claims could have any impact on it once the yeast gets ahold of the stuff.

 

@JackHorzempa posted this link above. InBev list ingredients for all of it's drinks
https://www.tapintoyourbeer.com/become_beermaster.cfm

 

I grew up in Farm Country and still work in an AG related business. I didn't care for the ad, but it's not all that surprising.

I grow tired of AB-Inbev and their hypocritical ads. When I toured the brewery in early 2000's, I'm pretty sure they told us that Busch and Busch Light are brewed with corn syrup. So I would think it would make more sense to keep the corn syrup on site and use it for Busch than it would be to send it all the way to Colorado for Coors . . .

But then again, this is the company that makes ads mocking craft beer, all while buying up craft breweries.

 

It's just gmo rice instead of gmo corn syrup, congrats Bud on being so much better than Miller/Coors and your other owned brands. Obviously a marketing scheme to make their product look better somehow. Not necessarily so imo.

 

Nice can't wait to see the Miller/Coors add that riffs this and has someone tell them "no that isn't ours, take it back, it is for your Busch and Bud Ice production line."

 

There were a lot of posts on the Bud Lite twitter page from some group complaining about how bad corn itself is for the environment and commending them for not using it in any form. Maybe InBev should go all in against big corn...