Elevating Premium Lager

What makes an AAL any more challenging than any other pale lager?

 

Due to its extremely light flavor profile it requires the ultimate in attention to brewing processes and process decision making and ideally a top of the line QC/QA lab.

AB has a pilot brewery at their headquarters (St. Louis) and it is popular in articles to discuss the novel beers that are brewed there. And while they do indeed permit the brewers of the pilot brewery to be creative and have some fun with various 'off the wall' batches of beer their primary job is to conduct continuous evaluation of brewing ingredients. For example they will brew with specific lots of malt, specific lots of rice, specific lots of hops, etc. and based upon their findings they will provide data to the various AB production breweries on how best to tweak/utilize these varying lots of ingredients in order to produce consistent product year-round at each of the breweries.

Cheers!

 

This is what I was getting at earlier, the ability to consistently make bud light identical over tens of millions of barrels (which inherently requires ingredients drawn from a lot of different harvests) is an achievement. Brewing that same style of beer at a volume of tens of barrels each year eliminates most or even all of that ingredient variability challenge. The technical side of process decisions and control seems like it would require the same level of skill as many other styles that rely on a delicate balance of subtler flavors.

This may be a part of the reason we've seen this segment of the market recede to the largest breweries though. There seems like there's a large middle ground in production where you're going to need ingredients from enough different lots to have to worry about recipe tweaks for consistency, but you may still have too little ingredient lot diversity to be able to tweak a given batch into the perfect parameters. Or you may not quite be able to afford to invest in the pilot system you described, so you're left with doing tweaks on paper and doing your best.

 

Certainly a good discussion and debate on this topic so far. Not really a clear consensus either. I think both price and flavor will be important factors if this style will succeed. I have a feeling that if this does become, a trend it will be coming from the large macro breweries. They can keep the costs lower and keep consistency, although there may be at least some price hike for the "premium lager".
At the end of the day much of it comes down to economics and I wouldn't be surprised if this type of beer has no role in the macro or craft beer market. Not every style does. It seems to me that it sort of tries to blend macro and craft brewing and I'm not sure it fits as a solution for either.

 

I believe I 'get' what you are discussing here, let's consider this within the context of AB and the Michelob brand. In the recent past the macro breweries would categorize their lagers in three classes. For AB:

• Popular lagers: Busch
• Premium lagers: Budweiser, Bud Light
• Super-premium lagers: Michelob

Well, AB just very recently decided to discontinue Michelob. I presume due to poor sales but I personally have no recollection of AB doing much to promote the Michelob brand. Back in the day they would run TV commericals with the tag line "Weekends were made for Michelob" to characterize Michelon as a Super-premium product worthy of being splurged for special occasions (i.e., weekends). In contemporary times if AB decides to no longer promote a beer like Michelob as being special/super-premium should there be any surprise that sales will decline? A non-Dilly Dilly thing?

To my mind there is are segments of the craft beer market which I discussed previously in this thread:

• Larger, distributing craft breweries
• Smaller, on-premise craft breweries

Maybe a beer like a Classic American Pilsner is better suited for the smaller, on-premise craft beer market?

Cheers!

 

Recent posts discuss the "problem" of maintaining consistency and quality that the larger brewers face, but not the advantages. They have first call on ingredients that they want to use. The beers they make with those ingredients generally don't have a distinctive flavor that uses particular ingredients (hop varieties, malt, corn, rice, corn syrup). They make many, many batches and, if necessary, can blend out any variations that are outside their specifications. They can build (or retrofit) a chain of breweries that can produce product that doesn't vary from location to location. I don't think craft brewers can maintain consistency as easily or as cheaply, given the economies of scale.

 

Another advantage that the mega-breweries have, as I discussed above, is they have "a top of the line QC/QA lab".

While taking a tour of the Sierra Nevada brewery in Mills River, NC you can see the lab through large glass windows. I have never seen the lab at an mega-brewery so I have no reference point for a comparison but the Sierra Nevada lab appeared to be fairly substantial.

Cheers!

@SierraTerence

 

Does this qualify as "elevating"?
Heineken Silver

 

Maybe a situation more like Devo!?!

 

You might have revealed the wall (or walls). What craft brewer can afford to make something their number 3 priority that will also take decades to build?


This thread pushed me to buy this take on “American lager” by a hip craft brewery. It was $6 for the can. To a certain extent, beers like this are competing with much lower priced beers, and to a certain extent they aren’t - and to me this is part of the issue. Such beers are not really aligned with anything in the marketplace. They aren’t going to satisfy the hip IPA crowd, and they aren’t going to satisfy someone wanting a macro lager - in terms of cost and flavor.

Many state that people won’t pay significantly more for something that the macro brewers offer for less money. Personally, I think BMC beers are unique. Craft versions don’t taste like BMC to me. Not even close.

Some would say that the added price is the entry to a “better” beer (rather than an imitation), but for my tastes, craft versions are typically a less pleasant drinking experience. This Vitamin Sea beer was no different. I actually thought it was unpleasant. In the end, it was priced as a boutique IPA, but the drinking experience was significantly worse than a boutique IPA or a High Life. If it is competing in either category, it is doing so poorly (for my tastes). Add in branding that conveys some cynicism with itself, and its fate is sealed. This could be seen as too anecdotal, but the situation was totally unsurprising.

 

Michelob Ultra is the most successful beer that the company makes, so maybe trying to promote regular Michelob just didn’t make sense because of the contrast in messaging from their runaway success, Ultra.

 

Well, not really. The most successful (as in top selling) beer for AB is Bud Light at the moment. I suppose given current conditions we should monitor the sales of Bud Light in the future to see if that changes.

Cheers!

 

Actually I said what I said. Michelob Ultra is a more successful brand right now and doesn't need a zillion SKUs to prop it's numbers up.

 

Yes you did!

I suppose the 'issue' here is the definition of "successful". Oh well!?! ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

Cheers!

 

I had one yesterday at the brewery. I'm not sure I got more "corn chip" flavor. Corn chips are usually made from white corn. Blue corn has more protein and higher starch. The recipe you can easily find online has <10% Blue Corn. The Blue corn is roasted at the source, so that is something different.

 

Yes, but the corn chips I buy are made from Blue Corn:

 

I like blue corn chips. Corn chips are from white corn, tortilla chips are made from nixtamilated yellow corn.

There are other heritage corn varieties. One that is said to be flavorful is Bloody Butcher.

 

Trying to bring out a craft AAL beer seems like a losing proposition. But who knows? Look at the success of Corona. The range of acceptable flavors is minimal. That brings up the problem of differentiating one brand from another The solution is a big marketing campaign that needs to be a key to success in the AAL market.