[rungdalek]

i got confused by looking at the title, i thought you meant differences between homebrewing and macros. but macro vs macro, yeah of course.

without googling anything ie "What barley does coors/inbev/heineken whatever use?"

i know that a big limiting factor in making sake is that the commercial sake producers buy up all the special types of rice that are exclusively for sake production. theyre fairly standardized, yamada-nishiki for example will be a type, but then location it is produced in will change the price within that type. apparently if you cook it as food rice it doesn't taste good, but its qualities are for making alcohol.

so i know that ive heard that budweiser will contract harvests of barley year by year. based on my knowledge of budweiser they are probably choosing grains primarily for maximum efficiency/starch ratio over flavour.

i think one thing that would be interesting between breweries would be how they make their non-pale lager beers. guinness ships some kind of dark concentrate (unhopped?) around the world to breweries they contract to brew regional guinness. lol, im drawing a blank on any other non-pale lagers that are massive scale and international, though i know there are some. i cant even google it as popular craft beers come up and id assume they are simply brewed how we'd expect and then exported.


anyone know what types of hops budweiser uses now?

I agree custom barley varieties or different barley varieties are another difference.

[rungdalek]

Dilution percentage might be another factor.

Besides the type of adjunct rice/corn how can one tell these beers apart?  Given a series of these beers brewed with corn how can they be distinguished?  There must be subtle recipe / process differences.  (i.e. Think blind taste test between like miller/busch/pabst/old milwaukee/coors, etc... could you taste the difference and tell them apart?).

Or it may be that recipes are shared between brands.

I can pretty much guarantee that the recipes ate not shared between brands.  All the beers you mention taste different.  Have you tried them?

Yea, I've tried all of them and agree that there are sometimes subtle differences.

Sharing exact recipes may not happen as consumers might catch on (this tastes like that) but then again a lot of them do have similar tastes and might differ by only one variable, yeast type, dilution percentage, adjunct percentage, etc...

IMO, What would be amazing would be to compare the original with current, like 1800's recipes vs today's recipe.

At any rate if the actual recipes were known IMO it would be amazing the subtleness of the differences.

another thing, i think the regularity/taste consistency is overstated a bit with the macros. truly macro cheap/standard price american lagers are f##king terrible metallic, corn syrupy, vegetabley, paper bag tasting messes and it having been a long time since i regularly drank them, theyre things i just try to choke down and rarely even finish when i have them now.

i dont think extreme consistency is required with these things, as really their existence is based on marketing and brand name more than anything. i mean that is likely the majority of the cost of the beer in the can.

I'm not sure about consistency but I'd think it's rather difficult to maintain the same taste year after year with differences in ingredients....  e.g. Taste a Bud Light now vs. One from the very first batch.

[fredthecat]

I'm not sure about consistency but I'd think it's rather difficult to maintain the same taste year after year with differences in ingredients....  e.g. Taste a Bud Light now vs. One from the very first batch.

lol dude, no offense but i would just search for discussions on this topic or do some reading first. "one from the very first batch"? lol what?

[HighVoltageMan!]

Budweiser has their own malting plants where they produce a good percentage of the malt they use. I know for a fact that they also buy malt from Rahr regularly.

Are you trying to brew an American lager or just curious? Some say the differences between Miller/Bud/Coors and Pabst are subtle, but to me each beer stands out. Miller has a sulphur component that stands out, Bud and Coors are closer, both have a red apple character, Pabst has more malt character and is the cleanest of all of them. Now others may disagree with this, but buy a six pack of each in cans as fresh as you can get them and do a side by side. It's remarkable how different each of these beers are, at least to me.

I brew American lager and compete with it. I'm usually pretty successful. The best advice I can give is to try brewing it with both American yeast such as 2007 and then try with German yeast like 34/70 or even 833. I prefer German yeast. If hold back on the malt character and use 833, it comes out like Pabst. The best malt I've found for American lager is Rahr Premium Pilsner.

That's my 2 cents

[fredthecat]

Budweiser has their own malting plants where they produce a good percentage of the malt they use. I know for a fact that they also buy malt from Rahr regularly.

Are you trying to brew an American lager or just curious? Some say the differences between Miller/Bud/Coors and Pabst are subtle, but to me each beer stands out. Miller has a sulphur component that stands out, Bud and Coors are closer, both have a red apple character, Pabst has more malt character and is the cleanest of all of them. Now others may disagree with this, but buy a six pack of each in cans as fresh as you can get them and do a side by side. It's remarkable how different each of these beers are, at least to me.

I brew American lager and compete with it. I'm usually pretty successful. The best advice I can give is to try brewing it with both American yeast such as 2007 and then try with German yeast like 34/70 or even 833. I prefer German yeast. If hold back on the malt character and use 833, it comes out like Pabst. The best malt I've found for American lager is Rahr Premium Pilsner.

That's my 2 cents

i promise you, i am not being dismissive. but im interested in your apparent seriousness regarding american (adjunct?) lager, what is the appeal? Why? Any interesting things youve learned about it?

[BrewBama]

They all mill, mash, lauter, boil, add [a form of] hops, cool, pitch yeast, ferment, clear, package, and ship. The devil is in the details of each task and task step. The how is much more important that the what.

The man calls a plumber who inspects and taps a pipe with a hammer. He turns to his customer and says that’ll be $100. The customer complains that all he did was tap a pipe with a hammer ...that he could have easily done that himself. The plumber says it’s only $1 to know what to do, it’s $99 to know how.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[rungdalek]

I'm not sure about consistency but I'd think it's rather difficult to maintain the same taste year after year with differences in ingredients....  e.g. Taste a Bud Light now vs. One from the very first batch.

lol dude, no offense but i would just search for discussions on this topic or do some reading first. "one from the very first batch"? lol what?

Take a can of Bud made today and compare it to one from the very first batch of the same recipe?  They're probably very similar.  Is that funny or difficult to comprehend?  Basic reading comprehension skills dude! lol!

[rungdalek]

They all mill, mash, lauter, boil, add [a form of] hops, cool, pitch yeast, ferment, clear, package, and ship. The devil is in the details of each task and task step. The how is much more important that the what.

The man calls a plumber who inspects and taps a pipe with a hammer. He turns to his customer and says that’ll be $100. The customer complains that all he did was tap a pipe with a hammer ...that he could have easily done that himself. The plumber says it’s only $1 to know what to do, it’s $99 to know how.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

Given that most of these recipes claim to be original "Original Budweiser" "Original Miller" "Original Pabst", etc... and are from the mid-late 1800's and are brewed on modern LO systems, modern fv's, etc... I think the how is pretty much standardized on such systems, it's really the what that stands out...

[denny]

i got confused by looking at the title, i thought you meant differences between homebrewing and macros. but macro vs macro, yeah of course.

without googling anything ie "What barley does coors/inbev/heineken whatever use?"

i know that a big limiting factor in making sake is that the commercial sake producers buy up all the special types of rice that are exclusively for sake production. theyre fairly standardized, yamada-nishiki for example will be a type, but then location it is produced in will change the price within that type. apparently if you cook it as food rice it doesn't taste good, but its qualities are for making alcohol.

so i know that ive heard that budweiser will contract harvests of barley year by year. based on my knowledge of budweiser they are probably choosing grains primarily for maximum efficiency/starch ratio over flavour.

i think one thing that would be interesting between breweries would be how they make their non-pale lager beers. guinness ships some kind of dark concentrate (unhopped?) around the world to breweries they contract to brew regional guinness. lol, im drawing a blank on any other non-pale lagers that are massive scale and international, though i know there are some. i cant even google it as popular craft beers come up and id assume they are simply brewed how we'd expect and then exported.


anyone know what types of hops budweiser uses now?

AB used to grow their own barley and hops.  I assume they still do.

[ravenwater]

Don't know that this adds anything of worth to the conversation, but I'll chime in anyway...

Miller Coors uses corn syrup, at least in Coors Light & Miller Light, which was the basis of the ad campaign a few years back that led to Miller Coors suing AB Inbev who put out what were labeled purposely false and misleading ads announcing that Miller Coors uses corn syrup, leading the public to confuse this with high fructose corn syrup which many folks think is somehow evil or bad for you, when in fact Miller Coors uses dextrose syrup as their adjunct - same as the dried dextrose us homebrewers make use of. Budweiser uses rice as their adjunct.

I know for a fact that the effort that goes into batch-to-batch consistency at a Coors plant and a Bud/AB Inbev plant is extreme - they have staff dedicated to focusing solely on this - in house tasting panels, food scientists on staff, etc. I have known folks who worked in this capacity for both companies in Colorado.

At least a goodly portion of the barley that goes to the Colorado Coors brewery is grown in Colorado on contract specifically for them - some "high country barley" variety.

The Bud folks prize their proprietary yeast for the apple-like flavor note which has been mentioned elsewhere here.

The aging on beechwood chips done with at least the "original" Budweiser is unique to their process among the macros, I believe, for the purpose of providing greater surface area in the tank for yeast flocculation. It is not done for flavor - the long chips are steamed thoroughly ahead of time, which I was told at the brewery virtually removes any character from them. They tout this beechwood aging, perhaps purposely meaning to imply it somehow changes the character of their beer when in fact flavor shift occurs from the aging, not the beechwood.

[denny]

I'm not sure about consistency but I'd think it's rather difficult to maintain the same taste year after year with differences in ingredients....  e.g. Taste a Bud Light now vs. One from the very first batch.

lol dude, no offense but i would just search for discussions on this topic or do some reading first. "one from the very first batch"? lol what?

Take a can of Bud made today and compare it to one from the very first batch of the same recipe?  They're probably very similar.  Is that funny or difficult to comprehend?  Basic reading comprehension skills dude! lol!

I don't think any beer made today would bear much similarity to one made 150 years ago.  AFAIK, AB was not using adjuncts at that point.

[rungdalek]

I'm not sure about consistency but I'd think it's rather difficult to maintain the same taste year after year with differences in ingredients....  e.g. Taste a Bud Light now vs. One from the very first batch.

lol dude, no offense but i would just search for discussions on this topic or do some reading first. "one from the very first batch"? lol what?

Take a can of Bud made today and compare it to one from the very first batch of the same recipe?  They're probably very similar.  Is that funny or difficult to comprehend?  Basic reading comprehension skills dude! lol!

I don't think any beer made today would bear much similarity to one made 150 years ago.  AFAIK, AB was not using adjuncts at that point.

That's not what I said!

A can of bud made today compared with a can from the first batch of the same recipe!  Whether the recipe used today is 5, 10, 20 whatever years old!

[denny]

I'm not sure about consistency but I'd think it's rather difficult to maintain the same taste year after year with differences in ingredients....  e.g. Taste a Bud Light now vs. One from the very first batch.

lol dude, no offense but i would just search for discussions on this topic or do some reading first. "one from the very first batch"? lol what?

Take a can of Bud made today and compare it to one from the very first batch of the same recipe?  They're probably very similar.  Is that funny or difficult to comprehend?  Basic reading comprehension skills dude! lol!

I don't think any beer made today would bear much similarity to one made 150 years ago.  AFAIK, AB was not using adjuncts at that point.

That's not what I said!

A can of bud made today compared with a can from the first batch of the same recipe!  Whether the recipe used today is 5, 10, 20 whatever years old!

If I understood correctly,  I thought you meant a Bud brewed now vs. the way it tasted 150 years ago.  If that's not it, I don't get it...and that's OK.

[rungdalek]

I'm not sure about consistency but I'd think it's rather difficult to maintain the same taste year after year with differences in ingredients....  e.g. Taste a Bud Light now vs. One from the very first batch.

lol dude, no offense but i would just search for discussions on this topic or do some reading first. "one from the very first batch"? lol what?

Take a can of Bud made today and compare it to one from the very first batch of the same recipe?  They're probably very similar.  Is that funny or difficult to comprehend?  Basic reading comprehension skills dude! lol!

I don't think any beer made today would bear much similarity to one made 150 years ago.  AFAIK, AB was not using adjuncts at that point.

That's not what I said!

A can of bud made today compared with a can from the first batch of the same recipe!  Whether the recipe used today is 5, 10, 20 whatever years old!

If I understood correctly,  I thought you meant a Bud brewed now vs. the way it tasted 150 years ago.  If that's not it, I don't get it...and that's OK.

When did the current recipe for bud begin to be brewed? 1990, 1956, 1972, 1890, etc... Fairly trivial stuff.

[denny]

I'm not sure about consistency but I'd think it's rather difficult to maintain the same taste year after year with differences in ingredients....  e.g. Taste a Bud Light now vs. One from the very first batch.

lol dude, no offense but i would just search for discussions on this topic or do some reading first. "one from the very first batch"? lol what?

Take a can of Bud made today and compare it to one from the very first batch of the same recipe?  They're probably very similar.  Is that funny or difficult to comprehend?  Basic reading comprehension skills dude! lol!

I don't think any beer made today would bear much similarity to one made 150 years ago.  AFAIK, AB was not using adjuncts at that point.

That's not what I said!

A can of bud made today compared with a can from the first batch of the same recipe!  Whether the recipe used today is 5, 10, 20 whatever years old!

If I understood correctly,  I thought you meant a Bud brewed now vs. the way it tasted 150 years ago.  If that's not it, I don't get it...and that's OK.

When did the current recipe for bud begin to be brewed? 1990, 1956, 1972, 1890, etc... Fairly trivial stuff.

AFAIK, they started using adjuncts during or just after WWII.  That's probably when they started getting close to the way it is now.