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Originally posted by Gustofer:

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Originally posted by chellim1:
You beer snobs can say what you want about the taste of Budweiser... but they sure know how to market their products.

And given that Bud Light is the number one selling beer in the US (by double its nearest competitor) and Budweiser is number four, I guess about 100 million people are wrong.

I like a decent craft beer as much as the next guy, but let's not kid ourselves. They sell a metric shit-ton of beer because it tastes better than the rest of them, goes down like water, is cheap, and they have great marketing.

Any guess as to what the number one selling hamburger is in the U.S.?

I like trying new beers. I will be on the lookout for this one. You never know, it might be really good.

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Originally posted by Leemur:
Plenty of craft brewers have done batches inspired by Washington and colonial era recipes. AB keeps trying to lure craft drinkers while simultaneously insulting us in their marketing. I drank plenty of their beer in my younger days but in the last 15-20 years something happened and I can’t drink their brands even if I wanted. It makes me sick before I can finish a pint. A friend thinks I developed an allergy to beechwood.

AB also buys one decent sized craft brewer in a region, and then tries to use its muscle, marketing, and relationships with distributors to squeeze the remaining craft brewers out of business. They know there is a market for craft beer, and they try to be the one to supply it, even though an AB product is, by definition, not a craft beer. My guess is that the AB "craft beers" will eventually succumb to the mega-beer corporate mindset, and lose quite a bit of what makes them appealing.

I tried the 1933 reserve. It was decent for what it was. But Bud, Michelob, Coors, Miller, etc. is just undrinkable to me.

I mean, you have a choice when you go in to the store. Sam Adams, Lagunitas, Sierra Nevada, Urquell, Bitburger etc. and you walk out with a case of Bud. Is it price?

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Originally posted by smithnsig:
I tried the 1933 reserve. It was decent for what it was. But Bud, Michelob, Coors, Miller, etc. is just undrinkable to me.

I mean, you have a choice when you go in to the store. Sam Adams, Lagunitas, Sierra Nevada, Urquell, Bitburger etc. and you walk out with a case of Bud. Is it price?

There are several forces at work.

1)You have prohibition, killing all the small breweries across the U.S. Before this, there were many breweries brewing styles other than "American light lager". They all died. Only the big breweries survived by making baking products.

2)After Prohibition, we have a good amount of our men fighting over seas and women in the workforce making war materials. At home here, the ladies liked the light lagers. The beer breweries that survived switch back into beer making mode.

3)The American light lager became predominate, forcing out other beer styles. This was enforced by friendly neighborhood distributors who determined what beers would available in stores. When I came of age and would walk into a party store in the 80's, I would typically see one quarter of the fridge filled w/ A-B, 1/4 filled w/ Coors, 1/4 filled w/ Miller.
The last bit was fought out by imports and small breweries at the mercy of the distributor.

I don't so much blame Bud, Miller, Coors as I do the beer mafia distributors. They were a big part of the problem when it came to allowing shelf space next to the big 3.

To this day you have "beer drinkers" thinking real beer is American light lager. They can't tell you if the beer they are drinking is made w/ corn, rice, potato or tree bark. I'm willing to bet most don't know what the main ingredient of beer is. They do, however, know all the commercials.

But times are changing.