Craft Beer Decides Adjunct Lagers Are Cool, Actually

They saved us from having a dozen of the same beer by giving us a couple hundred of the same beers!

 

Hi, my name is Motueka R Secret and I feel both left out and personally attacked by your post.

 

Yeah, those were all from brewers who typically used some form of corn for their adjunct beers. Ballantine Ale from P. Ballantine and Falstaff used corn grits (as did their IPA). Corn grits were also used in Yuengling's Chesterfield and Rheingold's/Schmidt's (assume Ortlieb's, too) McSorley's Ale.

Early promo for Henry Weinhard's said they used "a higher percentage of malt" (2-row), so likely corn-adunct. Huber's Augsburger was 80-20 malt/corn, so one assumed their flagship had a higher percentage of corn.

Andeker began life as an all-malt draught-only beer, was converted to corn adjunct when it was first bottled in the 1960s and was - briefly - all malt again according to Randy Sprecher, who worked at Pabst before starting his own Milwaukee brewery was quoted:
"In 1981, I brewed an all-malt version of Andeker which had real character but it did not last because of the corporate guys, who did not like the fact that it was not a perfect clear color."

The first US-brewed version of Tuborg's ads boasted it was brewed with "2 rowed barley malt grown in the U.S....Only one other American brewer* uses as much 2-rowed barley malt." (* AB, no doubt.) When they reformulated it a few years later as Tuborg Gold (to make it closer to the European version) Carling-National noted they switched to using "100% two-row" and that the early version was 50-50 two-row, six-row, but no mention of corn - which implies it was still there, otherwise, like other US brewers, they'd have proclaimed it "ALL MALT".

I covered F. & M. Schaefer's use of corn in a previous thread.

For people who wonder which US brewers, besides Anheuser-Busch, who used rice as an adjunct (though some would eventually switch to cheaper corn) in the post-Repeal era, see my page
Rice adjunct in US beers

 

Much rather have a Pilsner Urquell or a Rainier (if camping). But I do sometimes wish "Dry" style lagers would make a comeback.
Liked them back in the day

 

I love AALs but the adjuncts aren't necessary for the "regular American beer" style (see: Michelob).

I agree that there's nothing wrong with adjuncts in beer. I consider corn to be a pleasant part of the Mexican Lager style for instance.

As for Craft AALs, I haven't noticed their presence other than Founder's Solid Gold. I've been hesitant to buy it since it's only 4.4% ABV and I've heard criticisms that it use hops more suitable for Pale Ales than AALs.

 

Yep. I'm 27 and have been drinking beer (both craft and non) for 12 years. Lately I've been bored with the craft beer scene due to it being so IPA heavy. I mainly buy Coors Banquet, Budweiser, and sometimes Modelo for home consumption.

Modelo is also exploding in popularity, which is also expensive and is now sold for the same price as Corona.

 

There is a reason why I would rather drink a Banquet or Hamm's over many craft lagers (even not factoring in price).

A lot of American breweries make their pilsners way too hoppy, so for me it's not enjoyable to session like a German or Czech pilsner.

I used to love Coney Island Mermaid Pilsner. But either my tastes changed, or they made it hoppier. Because now it tastes more like an IPL to me than an actual pilsner, and I'm not a big fan. I'm happy to drink American craft pilsner when it's not too IPA-like though. I'm also a big fan of American Amber Lagers/Ales, but it seems like there are not many of them unless it's the flagship of a brewery that has been around for a long time.

 

I shake my head and chuckle to myself when I encounter Japanese Rice Lager priced at $15 for 4x16oz cans. I actually remember seeing a "dry hopped American lager" just yesterday from a brewery I did not recognize. I didn't look closely to see what made it an American lager but I'm guessing some sort of corn product.

 

To be fair, some of the more respectful breweries will call their IPL/American hopped pilsner a dry hopped American Lager. It's better than calling them pilsners in my opinion.

 

I suspect that most people associate dry hopping of lagers as being a somewhat recent thing but American brewers did dry hop American Lagers 'back in the day'. Some examples from the website that @jesskidden maintains:

• Lockport Lager
  
• Neuweiler Hockberg
• Lord Chesterfield
• Souvenir

https://sites.google.com/site/jesskidden/dry-hopping-in-the-us-in-the-pre-craft-era

I recently purchased a 12-pack of Lord Chesterfield and while this beer is indeed dry hopped it is a very subtle addition. There is just a slight hint of hop aroma in this beer for my palate.

Cheers!

 

Used to maintain. Google "improved" their free websites, and it takes me hours to fix one page. (I guess when it gets too hot to work outside today, I'll play around on that one. "You get what you pay for..." as my ol' man the Ballantine XXX Ale drinker used to say.)

That is, er, was HOCHBERG...

Sometime in the late 1980s-1990s Yuengling dumbed down Chesterfield Ale* - used to be quite hoppy for a US pre-craft era beer. Takes these quotes from M. Jackson's World Guide to Beer (1977) and Pocket Guide to Beer (1982) respectively:

* Been a while since I mentioned it but it is an "ale" by US TTB definition as well as common US pre-craft era industry usage, since the type of yeast is not specified.

 

Golden Age recently embarked on the "American adjunct lager" -

 

I’m working my way through my first 15 pack of Founders Solid Gold. IMO this is a fantastic summer beer, great price for a craft lager, and not too hoppy at all. Not sure why 4.4% would be a problem for you when buying a lager but I like that it’s low in alcohol. If I want a high ABV I’ll get a DIPA or imperial stout.

 

4.4% isn't a dealbreaker but if a beer is full calorie, I personally prefer it to be closer to 5%

 

But, historically, US AALs tended to be under 5% ABV, it's only the last few decades (perhaps not uncoincidentally, around the time the Feds started allowing alcohol content to be listed on beer labels...) that 5% became the conventional standard for macro AAL.

Coors Banquet, for one random example, was "3.6% by weight...4.5% by volume" according to the Coors promo publication 1977's A Handful of Questions About Coors - so, closer to 4.4% than 5%.

Both AB's Budweiser and Michelob were usually said to 4.8% at the time. Is it any wonder why Coors took their lawsuit against the ATF all the way to the Supreme Court - imagine, AB salespeople were claiming their beer was more alcoholic! It was, by 0.3%. Be careful with that high-test stuff!

 

Another low alcohol oddity from the past is that the Canadian beers were supposed to be stronger, since they announced 5% (abv) on the labels. Since US labels (with very minor exceptions) were silent, guesswork was used here. Rumors were that US lagers were between 3.5 and 4.0%. But since most people didn't know those numbers were abw rather than abv, the myth of strong Canadian beer took hold. At some point (late 70s?), Oregon required abw on the labels for brews over 4% abw (labeled by law as ale, stout, or malt liquor). Those rules controlled sales in the state. Most of the malt liquor labels I looked at said nothing (less than 4) or something like 4.5. Olde English ML stated 8 and Rainier Ale 6.

 

I wonder if anyone has looked up the pertinent Canadian legislation for back in the day? A coalescing around a certain abw or abv limit would lead me to believe that there was likely a law in place limiting the abw/abv, rather than the industry itself reaching an equilibrium, or a taxation treshold that kept most beers below a certain limit for taxation purposes. If there was a legally mandated limit in place, I would imagine that there was also a legally allowed tolerance of error. So a "maximum 4% abw" or "maximum 5% abv" beer might have a tolerance of error of +- 0.3 or so percent.

The 4% by weight appears in a 1964 article on American/Canadian brewing:

"In Canada there is about
50/50 ale/lager production, all types being
served at 45-47° F. However, the actual
makeup varies from the East coast with 90%
ale to the West coast with 90% lager. All
over Canada the standard beer has approxi
mately 4% alcohol by weight, anything
higher being at a premium over the standard
price."

"Anything higher being at a premium over the standard price" to me suggests a taxation-based price differentiation was in force in the market, lest the Canadian brewing industry was in lockstep with itself. I know that around 1990 in Sweden for a brief period of time parts of the Swedish brewing industry came to a voluntary agreement to keep the abw of the beer brewed to a maximum of 4% abw, even though the law allowed for 4.5% abw maximum (and the labels still said "maximum 4.5% abw"), yet the biggest seller in the market didn't adhere to this agreement and remained at the legally allowed maximum. So it would not be unheard of for an industry agreement, but if it lasted for more than a short while I would expect there to have been a legal basis, and for that legal basis to have allowed for a certain amount of leeway.

Perhaps one of our Canadian users can shed some light on the history of Canadian beer legislation/taxation?

 

Even before Canadian brewers listed alcohol content by ABV, there was "Proof Spirits" around the time of US Prohibition and then Repeal.

Resulting in ads like these in the US (left) and Canada (right).

Before the Feds put a stop to it in the early days of Repeal, one could see some US beers advertised like this in the US.

 

I can comment on the Ontario Beer Store stocks during the late 70s. Generally, the big 3 (Labatt, Molson, Carling) dominated the market, with imports, and possibly out-of-province, beers relegated to the state liquor store. Standard priced beers and ales were all 5%. Some higher alcohol beers (Brador, maybe Labatt IPA) and lower (economy priced) brands were available. The big 3 owned almost 100% of the beer store, and went so far as to require identical returnable bottles. The market concentration in Ontario, at least, suggests to me that the brewers took cues from each other and minimized aggressive competition. Now ABInbev and MolsonCoors are the big 2, cross province border shipping is permitted, the micros have emerged and smaller conventional brewers are more visible, so the competitive landscape has changed. The Beer Store carries more variety now, but craft beer distribution there is limited.