[tommymorris]

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?

I first brewed it for my wife, she bet me I couldn’t brew a beer she liked. I’m an experienced brewer and I took her up on that bet.

It is one of the hardest beers to brew, only a Helles or Pilsner are as tough to get it right, at least to me Like all beers, it easy to brew, but to get it right is tough. I started competing with it after about 2 years of trying. I started winning regularly with it. It led me into  German beers and has made me a better brewer. I brew mostly lagers now.

A decent American lager is really quite good. Over the years the I learned the judges prefer a very clean malt profile, very few esters and crisp finish. It wins every time and it’s delicious. No apple or sulfur, I use German yeast to reduce the apple character.

As far as when brewers started adding adjuncts, that goes back over 120 years. The German brewers added rice and corn to the malt bill to mimic the two row available in Europe. In North American only 6 row was widely available. 6 row had more diastatic power than 2 row and they took advantage of it to lighten the flavor of 6 row.

Care to share your award winning recipes?

I brew this beer with 34/70 and Minute Rice. Minute Rice has a longer shelf life than flaked rice and it's doesn't need a cereal mash. 34/70 can be extremely clean depend on the fermentation method.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/216382/stardard-american-lager-ii

That’s a lot of metals! Looks good.

[rungdalek]

Care to share your award winning recipes?

i didnt reply to your early snarkier posts, that again, made no sense. how would i compare a batch made 150 years ago with one today? after seeing your reply, you seem to have meant batches made only 20 or 30 years ago. uhh i dont think anyone has cases of bud aging in their cellar. and why would i even care anyway? its garbage beer made for profit, they dont give a crap about the taste as long as it isnt entirely horrible tasting. the specifics of these macro brews are basically maximizing profit and efficiency, what exactly could you apply to homebrewing from this?

you sound like a complete tool in the way you have interacted with everyone in this thread. ie. above quote.

You're upset because I asked someone to share their recipe and clarified previous statements which you still don't seem to quite understand?  To that end you would resort to name calling?  You've only damaged your own reputation and made a fool out of yourself.

[rungdalek]

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?

I first brewed it for my wife, she bet me I couldn’t brew a beer she liked. I’m an experienced brewer and I took her up on that bet.

It is one of the hardest beers to brew, only a Helles or Pilsner are as tough to get it right, at least to me Like all beers, it easy to brew, but to get it right is tough. I started competing with it after about 2 years of trying. I started winning regularly with it. It led me into  German beers and has made me a better brewer. I brew mostly lagers now.

A decent American lager is really quite good. Over the years the I learned the judges prefer a very clean malt profile, very few esters and crisp finish. It wins every time and it’s delicious. No apple or sulfur, I use German yeast to reduce the apple character.

As far as when brewers started adding adjuncts, that goes back over 120 years. The German brewers added rice and corn to the malt bill to mimic the two row available in Europe. In North American only 6 row was widely available. 6 row had more diastatic power than 2 row and they took advantage of it to lighten the flavor of 6 row.

Care to share your award winning recipes?

I brew this beer with 34/70 and Minute Rice. Minute Rice has a longer shelf life than flaked rice and it's doesn't need a cereal mash. 34/70 can be extremely clean depend on the fermentation method.

https://www.brewersfriend.com/homebrew/recipe/view/216382/stardard-american-lager-ii

Thanks for sharing and that's a lot of medals!

[denny]

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?

I know it's not a focus of most homebrewers but personally I like the style of an "American Lager" and I brew them a lot in the spring and summer.  They're definitely not Bud Light but I will use pilsner malt (sometimes Euro and sometimes domestic), flaked corn, German hops (low... maybe 20-22 IBUs) and usually something like Diamond, 2124, etc.  It's a style like any other.  Some like it and some do not care for it.

I had heard many years ago that most of the big breweries like this use hop extract in their beers... easier to handle, easier to store, longer lifespan, more consistency, etc.  I had also heard (this was mentioned earlier) that they will brew to a higher gravity and then dilute with water to get to their desired ABV.  They also blend batches for better consistency.  I consider most of these places to be more of a factory than a brewery and the people inside to be more "chemists" than brewers but I don't mean that in a bad way.  To make that consistent product over and over with natural products and have such a deep fan base of people... not easy to do.

I can confirm the hop extract to an extent.  I have seen stacks of 55 gal. drums of hop extract destined for macros.

[jeffy]

Yuengling in Tampa used to go through several 55 gallon barrels of coloring agent a week just to match and be consistent with the beer color.  They put a lot of effort into consistency.

[hopfenundmalz]

The American malts had high protein levels, resulting in haze. The use of corn or rice diluted the protein to a level where haze was not a problem.

Do we know if they introduced corn or rice because it was cheaper?  That's what I had always heard.

The early US lager brewers were Germans. They wanted clear beer. The adjuncts dilute the protein so the beer is clear. The cheaper corn grits can be a savings, they used cereal cookers back then. Brewers rice is said to be more expensive.

Most breweries are using corn syrups today. When I was in College a long time ago Budweiser had a plant in Lafayette IN that made corn syrups for Busch branded beers. It has been sold a few times, and is now owned by Tate and Lyle.

[Cliffs]

Yuengling in Tampa used to go through several 55 gallon barrels of coloring agent a week just to match and be consistent with the beer color.  They put a lot of effort into consistency.

the pros seem to place a much larger focus on beer color than us. Coloring agents is huge in the big beer world.

[Village Taphouse]

I find this conversation to be relatively enjoyable as the macro breweries and their products can seem mysterious and misunderstood to homebrewers as we try to envision how they produce their product.  I also like my own homebrewed versions of this style which I think have more flavor and are just made with a little more of a nod towards my own tastebuds.  But I can also see that 2020 is getting to some of you and you may have to try some decaf.  There is no reason in the world to start arguing in an AHA thread about American Lagers.  If some part of the thread is not working for you, plenty of other stuff out there to grab your interest.  Just my 2¢. 

[dbeechum]

Catching up on a few things:

• Adjunct use was, as Jeff pointed out, largely driven by dealing with the high levels of protein and huskiness of American 6-row. Using corn and rice allowed them to get a softer, cleaner character
• Adjunct usage seems to have really stepped up post-Prohibition and WWII here in the US. Desire for lighter, less "heavy" beers with drier finishes really pushed that change
• At least until the purchase by Inbev - the single most costly ingredient in Budweiser was the rice. It's a special golden rice grown exclusively for ABI. Prior to the Inbev merger, AB used to insist on only unbroken grains from it.
• Budweiser and Bud Light are brewed with actual hops - what the hops are changes from year to year to deal with crop changes. When I was last in the Van Nuys plant, they had about 15 varieties sitting in their brewery coldbox
• To this point - the recipes for their beers are less recipes in the sense we think of them and more specs that need to be hit.
• Also, it was funny to see - the way they add the hops is to fill rolling 50 gallon trash can with the appropriate amount of hops, wheel it over to the boil kettle and then let a little crane arm lift and dump the hops. Also, I've seen the same amount of hops used for a 400BBL batch of Bud Light, in a 10 BBL batch of IPA
• The last brewing job that hadn't been truly mechanized in the plant was the shuffling of the giant bins of beechwood chips. They go in these giant drums that look washing machine drums on steroids. 9 per horizontal lager tank. 3 drums are shuffled out each turn of the tank
• The Van Nuys plant - the second largest in the company - produces over 250k BBLs of beer per month - that's more than all but the biggest craft breweries do in a year - and they do it with 6 brewers per shift - 2 each in the brewhouse, fermentation and packaging.
• From a technical point of view, and the amount of data they collect and operate from - it's damn impressive
• Nov. 5th - Pabst officially closed on the soon to be ex-MillerCoors plant in Irwindale for $150M

[HighVoltageMan!]

I know a lot people say their beer is $h1#, but from a technical, logistic and consistency perspective, it's quite impressive. I think a lot people just don't like the style and I get it, but I think it's also become kind of fashionable to say that their beer sucks. I believe they are quite good at what they do and I tip my hat to them.

[erockrph]

There is always something to learn, even from beers that aren't really my cup of tea. Shortly after becoming a homebrewer and starting to understand what goes into producing quality beer,  I stopped referring to macro lagers as "s**t", and rather as "not my cup of tea".

In the rare instances where I find myself drinking a macro lagers nowadays, I try to put my preconceptions aside and actually focus on the flavor. I've found that I still don't like Bud or Bud Light; I don't mind a Coors or two; and I actually enjoy a cold Corona on a hot day (no lime though).

I don't brew an American lager, but my "Gold Standard" lager recipe sits somewhere between American Lager, CAP, and Helles. It's not far from a macro lager, just with the flavor turned up a bit.

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[Village Taphouse]

One reason that people complained or tuned out of this style is that when you walk into a store (this was especially true many years ago) you just saw different brands of the same style.  Why?  Corona, Stella Artois, Miller, Rolling Rock, Sol, Coors, Bud, Landshark Lager, PBR, Lone Star, Red Stripe, Old Milwaukee, Modelo, Dos Equis, Keystone, Busch, Michelob Ultra.  Ugh.  Too much of the same style over and over again.  It's a style like any other but it's been done to death. 

[BrewBama]

Now wait a minute... Lone Star is head and shoulders above everything else on that list. . (Being from Tx I have to take a stand for the Nat’l beer of Tx!).

Lone Star beer and Bob Wills music.


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[Village Taphouse]

Now wait a minute... Lone Star is head and shoulders above everything else on that list. . (Being from Tx I have to take a stand for the Nat’l beer of Tx!).

Lone Star beer and Bob Wills music.

My daughter moved to Austin after graduating from college and not only fell in love with Austin but also Lone Star! 

[rungdalek]

I consider most of these places to be more of a factory than a brewery and the people inside to be more "chemists" than brewers but I don't mean that in a bad way.  To make that consistent product over and over with natural products and have such a deep fan base of people... not easy to do.

So they're not really following a recipe per se instead they're meeting a set of standards (or is that a recipe?).  A homebrewer pretty much just has one chance to "make the beer".  These guys have specialized industrialized equipment for each step, and so can customize and adjust as the process progresses to meet the specs.

The question then becomes what comprises a macro lager recipe or specification?  e.x. Homebrewers don't or can't have specs for their extract - they get what they get or do they....?