The best beer... statistically

Maybe as part of the VIP hour? Those first couple hundred folks who drop the extra $25 to get in early get to do the blind voting between 6-8 beers?

 

as well as the cost and difficulty to obtain?

 

I was speaking more of the competition they have during the festival; blind tasting by judges, not fest-goers -- which would, indeed, turn chaotic.

 

Cost and difficulty in acquiring don’t figure into the enjoyment factor, usually what I’ve found is that I can beers of equal quality here with little or no trouble. It’s nice to scratch an itch, but I’m well past the trading part of this site, it’s turned into a stout whale hunt and I don’t want to play. Hope I read your question right.

 

Not familiar with "Bud Bro" (Bud, Bud Light, Bud Select, Bud Light Lime, Bud Light + Clamato, Bud Ice, Bud Platinum, Budweiser Black, Budweiser Copper, Budweiser Prohibition, Budweiser Zero, Bud Light Lemonade, Bud Light Seltzer - yeah, but still no "Bro" - yet) but domestically at least, Budweiser's market share never came close to the "vast majority of beer drinkers" - peaking in the late 80s at around a ~27% market share, selling almost 50M bbl/yr. In 2001, Bud Light began outselling Budweiser, followed by Coors Light in 2011 and then Miller Lite more recently.

AB started making deals with brewers in other countries (Labatt in Canada, Kirin in Japan) to brew Budweiser under license in the 1980s-1990s but obviously that has increased greatly after InBev bought the company. Many lists put Bud Light and the Chinese brand, Snow, as outselling Budweiser worldwide - although ABInBev has insisted that the Snow figures are for the "Snow family" of beers, so if ABInBev consolidated all their "Budweiser/Bud Light family" sales, they would outsells Snow.

 

That was BBC's Samuel Adams Boston Lager's early claim to fame at the '85 and '86 GABF - along with much disagreement and conflict with other small brewers at the time.

Koch would even trademark the phrase "The Best Beer in America" later in the decade.

 

Mr. Koch? MeToo on line one for you...

 

How do you factor in price? How much do people drink for the alcohol?

Connoisseurs or the not so much?

 

Free can really tip scales.

 

They liked Woodstock with all the stars for free too. And it became legendary!

 

Well, Woodstock tickets were $18 in advance and $24 at the gate, so imagine the mess it *really* could have been for free!

 

Oh, I understand. I was just following up with the fact that Bud Light outsells it these days - which, depending on how one looks at it, is either:
(a) an even bigger joke
(b) a very sad reflection on the US beer market.

 

A lot of times (all ) my mood goes way up drinking what I like.

 

There’s some BAs who I do take their input very seriously on different beers. But I don’t go and research the comments.

 

Oh hell ya, I’m having a problem remembering when popping a Pliny or Heady ruined my day.

 

20+ years ago I used to host annual beer tasting BBQs at my house. Each year was a theme. Everyone was expected to bring one or more beers that followed the theme. We did Beers of the Pacific Rim, Beers Named after Animals, Battle of Britain II: beers of Germany vs. the UK, etc. We widely shared and did some blind tasting. Each set of beers in the blind tasting included the previous year winner and a ringer like MGD or Bud lite. No one had a clue what they were tasting. Some were experienced beer drinkers, others were newbies. Beers were scored 1-5. Every year each beer in the tasting had someone that gave it a 1 and someone gave the same beer a 5. For three years in a row the winner was Newcastle, not because it got the most 5's but because it got the fewest 1s and 2s. Keep in mind this was 20 years ago and the crowd was not predominantly buying craft beers from microbreweries, but the results demonstrated the wide diversity of beer preferences.