Tell us why you hate AAL beers

I don't drink AAL because they don't do anything for me. "It don't got any gas" -in other words. Waste of $ and alcohol consumption. I like to contribute to local/smaller breweries to.

 

Interesting, I was reading through some reviews on BeerAdvocate and the terms sweet corn, corn flavor, cream corn, and corn water are used quite often when describing the flavor profile of AAL beers.

 

Sometimes the AAL has its usefulness... there is no potable water nearby and I am thirsty and it is hotter than hell and I want something cold. And I better drink it fast... can't let it warm up or it will be come "work" to finish. And not "work" in a peppered Green Flash impy stout way (which is pleasant). In a make-this-end way.

 

I am not a brewer of beer but I understand how flaked corn and corn syrup can be beneficial in the brewing process. I remember reading the excerpt from that book before. I also remember reading Pliny the Elder uses corn syrup for the same attributes in the brewing process stated above.

In my op, my comment was “I don’t like beer brewed with corn that tastes like corn.” In my experience and many others have had the same experience/bias here on BA most AAL beers have a corn like flavor. Maybe it’s a flaw in the brewing process like DMS to my palate idk but I have no bias towards AALs. And yes I try to avoid high fructose corn syrup as much as possible

 

Would you be open to trying well made local examples of the style?

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A thread observation that still holds I think is that people, rightfully so, cannot help but equate AAL with bud, coors, HS beers, college beers, etc. I am curious if this stigma will slowly go away or at least diminish as more brewers seem to be embracing it. Still not a ton, but heck years ago there was not a single local craft example of this style, at least that I can think of, but there are now.

This is partly why I hoped our next tasting would be an AAL one, I said my piece over in the suggestion thread. There has been so many threads where this style has been discussed lately, have a tasting and lets "combine" all the discussion and include beer. I think one of the more divisive styles on this site would lend to some good discussion over the course of a weekend tasting.

 

HFS imparts a sweeter flavor to UNFERMENTED foods, compared to typical corn syrup. It is slightly more expensive than regular syrups, and contributes no more alcohol. High fructose syrup (HFS) doesn't make any sense as a beer ingredient. Even if it was used, it would not exist in the fermented out beer, having been converted to alcohol and CO2, just like glucose and maltose. .

 

I appreciate your response. I understand the difference between the two and know hfs isn’t used in the brewing process. To be fair I didn’t answer jack’s question. Of course I have tasted a corn syrup product before.

 

It's definitely not the same character traits as DMS, but it's also not always the tortilla chip flavor I experienced.

That said, after so many years of drinking adjunct beers with corn (pre craft brewing), it's easy to distinguish its use.

 

I suspect that one of the reasons AALs are so profoundly disliked has little to do with their flavor, or lack thereof. To be brutal, it's a class thing. Wine, at least in the US and UK, has always connoted connoisseurship, cultivation, international travel, France (gasp!!), yuppiedom or just upper-middle class ism. It's had to be imported: the rich (like Jefferson, Washington) stockpiled it in their cellars. Beer is the opposite; working class, it all tastes the same, tastes too bitter (yucky), doesn't taste bitter enough (it's watered down), etc. It's "swill"--a word everybody seems to agree on, but that means nothing. It's Stanley Kowalsky spewing his beer vs. Blanche Dubois being repelled (by beer and by Stanley). You don't drink it for the flavor, but just to get drunk. And since, for many years, "beer" in the US has been essentially AAL, AAL has become a symbol of all that is wrong not with beer itself but with a drink that is by definition common.

The turn to "craft beer" was a turn not only to a (long overdue) greater intensity and variety of flavor, but to a repositioning upwards of beer on the social scale. Beer, suddenly, became something one savors, and advocates, a marker of the distinction of one's taste--like wine! And why not? btw, This downgrading of beer is ancient. In the book History of the World in Six Drinks, author Tom Standage notes that the ancient Romans were wine connoisseurs, and that, when they encountered beer in their northern provinces, they were repelled not only by the (supposed) horrible taste of the stuff, but by the lack of refinement of the drinkers (who were, after all, literally barbarians). Beer has been a downmarket drink, in other words, for well over 2000 years.

 

Different people, different motivations. But if I could find a cheap AAL that I really liked, I would drink it. A good selection of the specialty beers in the 70s were AAL, if you define AAL as a lager with adjuncts (as Horzempa calls Lord Chesterfield now). Most of the ales in the 70s were "bastard" ales brewed with lager yeast, and most used adjuncts. ( exceptions Schmidt PA, Matts, Genesee made real ales) . I happily drank Ballantine Ale, McSorleys, Chesterfield, . . . then. Most of the prestige lagers probably used adjuncts. I think Michelob,, and probably Andeker did, and maybe even Augsburger. I enjoyed Augsburger and Andeker a lot. For me, it's not a class thing, its flavor and value.

 

Sure. There are many products that have that corn syrup taste with the added flavor of artificial ingredients. Candy, soda, pancake syrup, barbecue sauce…

 

I haz a questions: since High Fructose Corn Syrup is in many commonly consumed foodstuffs, what other foods (besides beer), do y'all get a corn flavor in? I don't drink coffee, but I have a cold Coke for my morning drink. Every day. Coke is mostly HFCS and water, and never once, in decades of drinking the stuff, have I ever tasted corn.

Is my palate that bad, or, perhaps, are some folks letting their knowledge affect their taste buds?

 

Falstaff at Narragansett claimed to use top fermenting yeast for the numerous ales and porters they brewed in RI (Ballantine XXX - Brewers Gold - IPA, Croft, Pickwick, Narragansett, Krueger, etc).

Both the brewers of Black Horse Ale (Champale and Koch) claimed to use top fermenting yeast in the GABF programs in the early 80s, but other sources from around that period implied the Koch version (then owned by the UK's Vaux) was a bastard ale. It's unclear what yeast was used for the version of Black Horse Ale found in New England from Diamond Spring Brewing Co. (aka Holihan Bros.) into the early 70s, but that brewery primarily brewed ale into the 1940s or so IIRC.

Jackson in the '80s cited Augsburger as being 80% malt (the same percentage as Michelob) and Huber (GABF 1982) said they used "liquid corn" but the next year the GABF program (1983) said it used "pale malt and special dextrine malt", quoting Huber calling it "the heaviest bodied lager beer in the country". A later version from Stevens Point (they licensed the brand from Pabst, which got it when they bought the Stroh/Heileman portfolio in '99) was all-malt.

Pabst followed the lead of AB's Michelob when they began bottling Andeker in the 1960s and began using, in their case, corn adjunct. It was an all-malt draught only beer prior to that and Pabst would tweak the recipe (and packaging) often during the 70s-90s, at some points the recipe was returned to an all-malt one.

Here's how Pabst, #3 in 1973, explained the difference between PBR and Andeker (which then used "extra rich malt and selected grains")... and some other brewers' beers (Schlitz #2 and Miller #5, from the looks of the short cuts).

 

Good to know.

 

I can drink Miller Lite or Coors Banquet, when it comes to the macros. But the other bigs, Bud Light, Bud, Coors Light...I just can't.