The dark side of light beer

An open letter Mr. Arch Stanton:

I read your letter in the September 1997 All About Beer Magazine telling my genial editor that you'd subscribe "as soon I see (an) article on American light beer." My gawd, you drive a hard bargain, Mr. Stanton.

An article about light beer? Would you ask a food writer to babble on about the benefits of Velveeta or CheezWiz, or extol the delights of Folger's Crystals? Would a music critic salute the beauty of Muzak? Is there a wine writer who will celebrate the joy of Gallo's Thunderbird Wine?

Gimme a break! I know a lot of people who drink "lite" beer, but I've never even heard of one who likes it. What's to like?

Get your money out, Mr. Stanton, because here's that article; I accept the challenge. I may not be the writer you'd choose to write about light beer, because I've never had one good word to say about that dismal beer type, but you might be curious about why no one else wants to write about the style, either.

You said there was a medal awarded in that category at the Great American Beer Festival. That is indeed the case. Moreover, I have judged the category a number of times in that competition, something I usually don't admit.

Mr. Stanton, you might be interested in the method we judges used in determining the three medal awards (gold, silver and bronze). There was only one criteria we considered: taste. If we found any, we rejected the beer. The awards went (in every case I judged) to those beers with the least taste.

It is a category that beer judges avoid like a plague. Why is that?

A light history lesson

Let us examine the sorry history of this melancholy beer type. There are two reasons why it came into existence: first, the reduction of calories so one does not gain weight from drinking it, although few drinkers drink it for that reason today. And, second: This beer type, and others of its ilk (dry beer, red beer, ice beer, light dry beer, light red beer, light ice beer, dry ice beer, etc.), were promoted, invented, or adopted by the US megabrewers to take up valuable shelf space in order to keep the new microbrews (those new, tasteful, beers you apparently disdain) out of the market place.

The above-listed beer types have little or no taste to them. They are fakes, designed to delude beer lovers into believing that they have substance and are worth buying. I cannot deny, however, that light beer is very popular with mainline beer drinkers. Sad.

Those trendy beers, and light beer in particular, are really malt liquors. Malt liquor is not a normal beer style. Malt liquor is a beer type Germans would shun as ersatz. That word describes the beer style beautifully. "Ersatz" is German for "poor substitute."

Malt liquor is a poor substitute for beer because it is engineered to be stronger than normal. True strong beer is brewed by adding more fermentable goods to the mix, creating more color, taste, and alcohol content. Malt liquor is strong because it uses enzymes to "force ferment" (engineer) the beer, reducing the color and taste but enhancing the alcohol content. The result is tasteless strong beer.

Clement Prechtl, a brewing scientist associated with the Wallerstein Laboratories, let the cat out of the bag in a 1972 technical paper presented to an MBAA brewers Convention in Winnipeg. In his paper, he described the process used to brew malt liquor and light beer. I've taken the liberty of adding to and explaining his technical dissertation.

I quote: "The second and the preferred way [to brew] is to prepare a special brew of about 50 to 60 percent malt [which is 60 percent fermentable], 30 to 40 percent corn grits [about 75 percent fermentable], and 10 to 20 percent dextrose [corn sugar about 86 percent fermentable] to an original gravity (OG) of 12.5 to 14.5 degrees Plato [percent of fermentable sugars in the beginning beer wort] (after which is added) a fungal alpha amylase [an enzyme that changes unfermentable sugar-starches called dextrins into fermentable sugar. These unfermentable dextrins are what give beer its wonderful flavor]. ·Fermentation is carried out at (the high) temperatures (usually) associated with ale fermentation." [The result is a beer with minimal body, or taste, and increased alcohol content].

Mr. Stanton, honest, I'm not making this up.

Prechtl goes on, at great length, to describe US "low calorie" beers (which were invented by the Europeans) as table beer and diet beers (for diabetics; later reinvented by the Japanese as dry beer). Low calorie beer, it turns out, is weak malt liquor, with an original gravity of 8 or 9 Plato (instead of 12 or 14 above). The result has even less taste than malt liquor, but the only real difference is in alcohol content and body.

The first light beer (Gablinger's Diet Beer) was produced by New York's Rheingold Brewery in 1967. It didn't sell. Gablinger's had 107 calories per 12-ounce bottle, almost all of them (93) from alcohol. Budweiser (itself not particularly taste enhanced) is a normal beer (about 150 calories) with that same alcohol content but with more dextrins. It is much more flavorful and satisfying. The first successful light beer (in 1972) was an offshoot of Meister Brau Lite of Chicago, which also was unsuccessful in 1967. It was bought by Miller, somewhat reformulated, and introduced as Miller Lite. The rest, as they say, is history.

Mr. Stanton, the problem I have with light beer, and the reason I hate to write about it, is that it is poor beer with almost no flavor, too much alcohol, and no body at all. These beers would all benefit from substituting taste and body (dextrins) at 4 calories per gram for alcohol at 7 calories per gram.

Look at Miller Light: 4.2 percent abv, 96 calories, but only 1.1 percent dextrins. Bud Light has 3.3 percent abv, 108 calories, and 2.9 percent dextrins. That's better, but not enough to give it even the limited flavor we expect from regular Bud. Forget Coors Light with 100 calories, 4.4 percent abv, 2.3 percent dextrins, and nearly as pale as water at 1.9 srm. Don't tell anyone I said so, but if you must drink this swill, go for the Bud Light -- more flavor, decent balance, and more color at 3 srm.

Henry Ortlieb of Philadelphia's now defunct Ortlieb Brewing Co., said it all when he produced a TV commercial in the mid-1970s that told viewers: "You want light beer? Just add ice cubes to my beer, it's cheaper."

This column was written for the January 1998 edition of All About Beer Magazine.