Ah, some American Lager, crisp refreshing and full of adjuncts, or not.
American Lagers of today have high adjunct percentages and low bitterness. It was not always so, and the CAPs and PrePro Pilsners hade less % adjuncts and more bitterness. They
were crisp and refreshing, and tasted like beer! The adjuncts reduced the protein from the North American 6row, which made for clear beer. Here is an article by my fellow AABG member and friend Jeff Renner.
https://www.homebrewersassociation.org/attachments/0000/1298/SOzym00-Pilsner.pdfThe Bushwick section of Brooklyn was a brewing center at one time. Those breweries made Pilsners with Adjuncts, except for one, Trommer’s. That was all malt.
https://www.morebeer.com/brewingtechniques/library/backissues/issue2.1/jankowski.htmlI have not read the Jennifer Tally book, but the description of the beer has a couple of clues that stand out. An all malt session beer at 1.040 will naturally be lighter in body due to the lower gravity. New Glaris is know for their lagers, as Dan Carry got his brewing education in Germany and brews many beers to the Reinheitsgebot. I don’t know what base malt was specified, but you can brew clear beers with North American 2 rowPils malt.
One other thing needs to be stated. Rice is used in Budweiser labeled brands, it says so on the cans. Busch Brands use corn syrups from what I can tell (AB used to have a corn processing plant in Lafayette Indiana way back when I was going to Purdue). Some breweries still use corn grits, and you can see the cereal cooker at Yuengling’s new brew house in Tampa.
As to a currently produced all malt 5% beer, August Schell’s Pilsner fits the bill.
http://schellsbrewery.com/beer/pils/