Founders announces Solid Gold Lager

Other than profit from inferior brewing ingredients, is there any other reason to make an adjunct macro brew?(with brewers rice or corn) I believe Sam Adams now falls into this category.

 

The reason is to make an adjunct macro brew, an AAL. There's no way to make it traditional without the use of rice or corn. And I think the new Sam '76 is an American Pale Lager, which does not use corn or rice adjuncts. Cheers!

 

Grain adjuncts like corn and rice are not inherently "inferior brewing ingredients". If they are used properly they result in an improved product.

North American 6-row barley (the dominant barley grown for brewing in the past, and even today?) was high in protein. The brewers (many of them from Germany back in the day) learned (with the education from Anton Schwarz) that by using some adjuncts along with the North American 6-row barley malt the would obtain a beer that had improved beer stability, better appearance (i.e., no chill haze) and a lightness in color and body which resulting in a more pleasing product for their beer customers.

It would appear that you have a real 'issue' with adjuncts?

Cheers!

 

Agreed. I think if a brewery like Anchor adapted their recipe for California lager to include six row and corn grits, or for simplicity's sake flaked corn, alot of people would get a different impression of a beer using adjuncts. It would still be a different beer compared with an all malt beer, but the faults which are most commonly associated with the use of adjuncts (light body, very little hops) comes down to recipe design and execution and is not inherent in the adjunct used. When American lager beers of the late 1800s and early 1900s were said to be lighter in body than the European beers they were not comparing those beers to 11.3% OG, 4.8% modern German pilsners, but rather all malt lager beers of 12-15% OG (i.e Bohemian, Vienna and Bavarian lager beer) of comparatively low degree of attenuation. A late 1800s American 12-14% OG adjunct lager beer (pale or darker colored) with an abv slightly below 5% abv is a different animal compared with today's beers using high gravity brewing, higher attenuation, post fermentation dilution etc. Today's brewers are brewing for lightness, but they could brew a fuller bodied beer, and they could use more hops if they wanted to, and the result would be a different tasting beer.

On the question of fullness you could take as two different examples Bitburger Pils at 11.3% OG, 4.8% abv on the one hand and on the other Egerer pils at 11.9% OG and 4.9% abv. Or Lagunitas Pils at 12.5% OG and 6% abv and Riegele Commerzienrat at 12.8% OG and 5.2% abv.

As a thought experiment if one were to give these four breweries (Bitburger, Egerer, Lagunitas, Riegele) the task of producing two different beers from a 12.5% and 13% plato wort (roughly equating to the gravities of a typical American draft beer and a higher class bottled beer circa 1900) from their regular base malt combined with 30% flaked corn, whilst keeping the mashing process, fermentation process and cellar process the same, using the same yeast strain as for the beers above, as well as keeping the same hopping rate (for simplicity's sake), I think we would find that we would get 8 quite different beers. Other variables could be tweaked of course but for the purpose of this thought experiment I think the two different gravities chosen and the use of 30% corn would prove the point quite well. They would not taste like a Miller Genuine Draft or Pabst Blue Ribbon of today.

 

Given the relatively low price that Founder's is suggesting for "Solid Gold" I think it's fair to say that their price does somewhat reflect the fact that they are selling it in a segment that is below normal "craft" pricing. Many "bang for your buck" craft buyers often complain of under 5% beers being priced at the same level as higher ABV beers (even though actual cost of ingredients for such beers is a very small percentage of the total retail cost - for macro breweries its often claimed to be under 10%) but Founders isn't doing that.

For small brewers, labor and other production costs, raw material, packaging and transportation expenses are often higher than those of "macro" breweries given the latter's economies of scale... so whatever tiny benefit they might get from using corn or rice in place of some barley malt is no doubt insignificant on the final cost of the beer.

Because those sorts of beer make up 80-90% of the total beer market and people seem to like them?

Hundreds of non-macro* US brewers have brewed adjunct beers - including many of the current "craft" brewers who survived the post-Repeal shake-out in the industry, like Spoetzl, August Schell, F X Matt, Straub, Yuengling, Stevens Point, etc.

As others asked above, not sure what your are referring to here.

Yeah, that one's hard to figure out. There's an interesting pdf from the American Malting Barley Association (obviously a sort of slide presentation so any actual more indepth audio info is missing) but much of the statistical info is for all barley (feed + malting) or its broken down into the percentage of specific varieties (so that one would have to go in and figure out which are 2-row and 6-row, based on the list on pg. 38) but this very basic graph (pg 26) sure seems to show that US-grown (so, not counting Canadian or Mexican harvests) malting barley is now predominantly two row.


Also interesting, note on page 36 in which Two-Row Malting Barley is further broken down into "Adjunct Two-Row" and "All Malt Two-Row".

 

To add to 2-row vs. 6-row discussion. The reason for using 6-row was mainly the higher Diastatic Power (DP). Barley breeding programs have resulted in 2-row varieties that rival the DP of 6-row, I have seen some that have a DP of 160 Lintner, which equals some 6-rows. The large brewers would switch to 2-row due to the 1 to 2% higher extract, which would equal cost savings.

More 2-row is grown today. Briess Malting stopped producing 6-row malt products a few years back., 2015 IIRC.
Some articles.
http://www.inside.beer/news/detail/us-brewers-switch-from-6-row-to-2-row-barley-malt.html

http://ambainc.org/media/AMBA_PDFs/Press_Releases/Transition_to_Two-Row.pdf

 

Yeah, that's the AMBA PR I went looking for this morning and only turned up the above Powepoint presentation.

Locally have you picked up any (more) info on the form of corn and malt/adjunct ratio Founders is using for Solid Gold? They seem kinda tight-lipped about it - understandable, given the geekery's lingering adjunct-prejudice...

 

No. I will see if my west side of MI friends know anything.

 

Corn is not necessarily a bad thing, but there is a ton of genetically modified corn I would not want in my brew. Namely Monsanto proprietary (round up) corn.

 

Many craft beers use natural flavoring adjuncts which I have no problem with. But the core grains I believe some are inferior. For example "brewer's rice is basically down to inedible grains, but OK for brewing? No need to mention the corn again.

I don't believe cereal grains are considered traditional, unless you are talking about North American Macro brew.

 

Traditional Cereal grains like Barley and Wheat?

 

Where are you getting your notions?

Rice that is used in brewing beers such as Budweiser is of high quality.

You can learn more here:

https://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/bmc-rice-source.146840/page-2#post-2139883

Cheers!

 

I have read the ingredients of inferior dog food and it seems Brewers rice is a common staple. I am not a rice expert. I am sure any brewer that uses it will tell you it is top shelf. Maybe I am being too cynical about Macro brewers.

 

FWIW I think you are on target with your assessment here.

Cheers!

P.S. I would recommend that you read (re-read?) post #224 above by @Crusader. There is nothing inherently 'bad' about the ingredients of corn and rice in brewing beer. How they are used in contemporary brewing along with the plethora of other brewing practices (e.g., extremely low hopping rates, etc.) may result in beers that you (and others) deem to be non-good beers but it is not because of the ingredients of corn/rice per se.

 

Unless an ingredient is significantly adding fermentable material to the brew, either a form of sugar or starch from sugars, syrups, unmalted grains, etc., it is not an "adjunct" under brewing terminology definition.

How old does a brewing process or ingredient have to be for you to consider it "traditional"? Brewers in the US and in Europe have been using sugars or unmalted grains for the past two centuries - and, not just "macro" brewers - almost every US brewer from the mid-19th century up the "craft era" brewed some of their beers using rice or corn as adjuncts to their barley malt.

 

^^^ This.

 

Yeah.

There was a time when I held nearly the same negative opinions of corn and rice stated by @Claude-Irishman. It was learning the history of US brewing [mostly from @jesskidden and I was admittedly a slow learner] which made me realize these ingredients are not inherently bad and are a part of American brewing history that makes our beer different from other areas of the world.

Relatedly, American Bourbon is by definition a minimum of 50% corn, and is respected and desired around the world. Corn's use in bourbon arises from historical traditions, as it does in American beer. But beer snobs take up arms over a much smaller percentage of corn [or rice] in a beer. It's not a logical stance to take.

I don't mind anyone saying they don't like the flavor of corn or rice in their beer, but critics often say little to nothing about flavor, while heaping on their derision.

 

Bourbon has to at least 51% corn by law.

 

oops... yeah I missed that 1 percentage point.

 

I think most of us did at one time, either via German import ads, homebrewing books, early BBC/Jim Koch interviews, Brewers Association 'Craft' definition, etc.

I remember the first time I sort of doubted it was when Schlitz, with much ballyhoo, released its all-malt Erlanger around 1980. "That's it?" I remember thinking after my first sixpack. (30 years later the same sort of thing happened when AB returned Michelob to an all-malt recipe, and it was underwhelming... "Damn, they took out the rice ---- but didn't replace it with anything?")

See, I would say that I tend to doubt many people who say they can really "taste" the flavor of corn or rice in beer --- but I would never say it in a BA forum thread 'cause I don't want the blowback (but I believe it).

What gets me is that rice and corn are attacked as being "cheap" (altho', as often noted, rice isn't always) yet craft brewers openly admit to use hop pellets and hop extract to save money, that they avoid lagers because they're more expensive by taking up tank space for long periods, etc.