Tonight I'm sitting down and doing something I haven't done in a long time: sipping a Budweiser. Ironically, one of the beers I drink least will most likely generate one of my longest reviews. There are several reasons I don't drink Budweiser very often. I prefer beers with more flavor to them, but that's a personal choice. I have always maintained that people have different tastes, and respect people's choices in what they consume.

Another reason I don't usually drink Budweiser or buy Anheuser-Busch products is that I have never been happy with their business practices. They are the biggest guy on the block, and I respect the hard work the company put into getting there. Still, some of their efforts to retain that position have been curiously aimed at the smallest of brewers. Several years ago AB joined with a group of small brewers from Oregon to file a complaint to the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms about contract brewers such as Boston Beer (Samuel Adams), Miller, and Pete's. Boston Beer and Pete's were using the facilities of larger brewers to produce their beers regionally. What AB didn't disclose was that they engaged in the same practice around the world, contracting out production of Budweiser in various countries.

Another strange policy of AB was that of "100% share of mind". This was a strategy whereby AB distributors were strongly pressured not to carry beer brands other than AB's, and many small microbrewers lost business because of this.

Budweiser has a pale yellow color with a light spritzy head and a thin malt nose. The palate is relatively clean and crisp, and the colder you drink it the more that is true. It's a very light beer indeed with just a touch of malt, which makes it very drinkable in large quantities. If you let the beer warm up a little though you'll start to notice some interesting things. First of all, Budweiser has trace amounts of a fermentation product called acetyldahyde. This comes through of a sort of green apple type character. You'll also be able to pick up light smooth notes from the rice used to make this beer milder. Some large brewers use grains besides barley to lighten their brews. Usually, it's corn. These grains in a beer are called adjuncts. Finally, you won't find much in the way of hops in Budweiser, which gives it a rather sweetish finish.

Now to the burning question: why are beers like this so popular? Have the large breweries fostered these types of brews onto the American public through evil marketing campaigns? Have Americans' tastes lightened over the years? Or perhaps is it a combination of factors including both of the above. I suspect the latter. The move towards lighter, cleaner beers began in the mid to late nineteenth century with a massive influx of German immigrants who brought with them a taste for lager beers, a relatively new arrival to the beer world. In 1876, the relatively new Anheuser-Busch Brewery of St. Louis, MO introduced Budweiser to the world. The beer was named after the Czech town of Ceske Budeovice, or Budweis in German (home of Budweiser Budvar, which was actually first brewed after AB's version). At the time, most beer sold in the US was local beer, but AB pioneered the use of refrigerated rail cars to ship their fragile beer nationally, and soon became a brewer to be reckoned with.

Now we jump ahead to 1919 and the Dark Times known as prohibition. Large brewers like AB, Coors, and Miller were far better suited to survive prohibition by making soap, near beer, ceramics, and malted milk than were small local breweries, many of whom never opened their doors again. This gave the large brewers and their light lagers an even greater market share where beer was legalized again in 1933. What's more, during the Second World War these light lagers were shipped to the troops in Europe and Asia who developed a taste for them, a taste the large brewers exploited when the boys came home.

So did the large brewers dumb down our tastes? To a degree. But many signs point to a general societal preference for lighter tastes. The McDonalds effect points in that direction too. Fact is, most Americans prefer Budweiser and lighter beers of this nature. Ultimately, to each individual, that's all that matters.

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