Anheuser-Busch Resurrects Faust

Yep and I bet they could rock 1. I bet most if not all home brew. Brewing is about the water, clean and repeating the same thing over and over to get a standard product. But what goes in come out. Start with crap you get crap. IMHO.

 

There has been some discussion about the use of crystal malts in brewing. There are three aspects that crystal malts bring to beer:

· A higher final gravity due to the dextrins (unfermentable sugars) that crystal malts add to the wort/beer. This higher final gravity brings the qualities of more body and increased mouthfeel.

· Flavors: these flavors can run the gamut of toasty, biscuity, caramel, chocolate, …

· Color: depending on the level of kilning and amount the color of the resulting beer can be anywhere from golden to dark in color.

If a brewery wants to create a beer with a higher final gravity they have the option of mashing the base malts at a higher temperature to create more dextrins (unfermentable sugars) in the beer. The resulting beer will have more body and increased mouthfeel.

If the brewery wants to add some color and flavor to the resulting beer they have the option to use darker kilned base malts like Munich Malt.

Let’s say that a brewery wanted to create an amber colored beer with body and some additional malty flavors then can take two approaches:

· Use a combination of Pale and darker base malt (e.g., Munich Malt) and mash at a higher temperature (e.g., 158°F for a single step infusion mash)

· Use a combination of Pale and crystal malt(s) and mash at a lower temperature (e.g., 150°F for a single step infusion mash)

Which method a brewery uses is dependent on what types of flavor(s) they desire in the resulting beer. Crystal malt(s) provide a lot more latitude in tailoring the overall flavor profile.

Cheers!

P.S. Needless to say but the brewery also has the option to combine Pale Malt, darker base malt(s) and crystal malt(s) depending on how complicated they want the grain bill to be.

 

I agree with your points, of course.

 

What the hell are you refrencing?

Cheers!

 

@steveh and @TongoRad so I've tried to answer my own question based on what information I can find through Google searches.

It appears that in 2013, Budweiser US brand sales were 16 million barrels (Bud Light 38 million barrels, plus all of the other brands). I also found an article from 2014 that stated the Budweiser brand was 16% of InBev's North American volumes. Assuming just the US is at a similar percentage to the rest of North America, the total US volume of InBev should be about 100 million barrels.

Divided between 12 breweries would be about 8 million barrels per year produced.

Sierra Nevada's stated output from their CA brewery is stated as 800,000 barrels annually (the NC brewery isn't open yet).

So it appears that on average, each InBev brewery is probably producing about 10 times more per brewery than what is probably craft beer's current largest single brewery (I know Boston Beer is split between several breweries).

 

The discussion on the first page about whether the Faust beer was all-grain / used crystal malt, etc. and the historical accuracy of such.

Before the discussion moved to business practices.

 

Ah thank you so much ha-ha! I was so confused as it was not posted in reply to anything!

Cheers!

 

My first sentence was: "There has been some discussion about the use of crystal malts in brewing."

Cheers!

 

Yea i didnt realize it was on the first page of the thread haha

 

Not sure if it was on here or reddit on an ask me anything post as it was a while back but someone discussed the pilot brewery. I know it's pete(?) Wolfe on here, a hop or brewing scientist, may of been the same guy doing the ask me anything thread on reddit really can't remember. But it was actually a pretty good read, and not too trolled (shockingly). Either way, I'm sure a lot of ABs master brewers put out some insanely good beers when home brewing

 

I guess what I'm saying is that some (and I'd certainly hope most) craft brewers do not consider getting filthy rich off of their breweries to be their primary goal.

 

I believe Faust and another old A-B label or two (can't remember the name(s)) was released in the 1983-1985 time frame around the holidays. I remember buying it in bottles when I was legal so that was after the 70's.

 

Thanks for the info! Looks like my back of the envelope math wasn't too far off.

I would agree there are probably too many variables to figure out the actual batch sizes, but in general it looks like there is a whole "order of magnitude" difference in what AB's breweries are doing compared to even the largest craft breweries. I would assume that would have a large effect on the brewing process, and therefore the ability of scaling up more "complicated" beer styles might indeed be difficult.