The most popular solution to this problem is to inject CO2 back in, but that adds its own set of headaches, chief among them an unpleasant flavor with sour, metallic overtones.
Basically, beer’s flavor is a delicate thing, the result of countless complicated factors and compounds that can’t help but be altered when a brewer mucks around with its basic components. Hope may be on the horizon, however. Modern science, always working hard to make us happy, has uncovered a way of extracting aromatic gas compounds from regular beer, condensing them, and injecting them into NA beer, thus more closely approximating that old-fashioned flavor.
THE MOST POPULAR BEERS ON EARTH
United States: Bud Light
Canada: Budweiser
Mexico: Corona
Argentina: Cerveza Quilmes
Brazil: Skol
Venezuela: Cerveza Polar
Jamaica: Red Stripe
England: Carling
Germany: Krombacher
Poland: Zywiec
Romania: Ursus
Russia: Baltika
Italy: Peroni
Czech Republic: Pilsner Urquell
Belgium: Chimay
Ireland: Guinness
Scotland: Tennent’s Lager
The Netherlands: Heineken
Denmark: Carlsberg
Norway: Ringnes
Iceland: Víking Gylltur
Finland: Karhu
India: Kingfisher
Pakistan: Murree
Israel: Goldstar
Turkey: Efes
China: Snow
Cambodia: Angkor
Laos: Beerlao
Singapore: Tiger
Thailand: Singha
Kenya: Tusker
Indonesia: Bintang
Japan: Asahi Super Dry
South Korea: Hite
Philippines: San Miguel Pale Pilsen
Ethiopia: St. George
South Africa: Castle Lager
Australia: Victoria Bitter
A BEER FOR EVERYTHING
Beer for dogs! Sharing a six-pack with your dog is a pretty horrible idea, not least because hops are toxic to them. So what’s a dog lover to do when seized by the urge to pop the cap off a bottle of beer and pour it into his or her favorite furry friend’s dish? Enter Bowser Beer, a rather disgusting-sounding concoction that blends meat broth and malt barley into a nonalcoholic, noncarbonated, beef- or chicken-flavored beverage that your dog will be able to pound without getting sick. At $20 for a sixer, it’s probably not the kind of thing you’d want to buy every day.
Beer for kids! You probably know that Europeans tend to be far more relaxed about drinking than Americans. But in Belgium, beer has a long tradition as a family drink, specifically tafelbier (“table beer”), a brew made with such a low alcohol percentage (anywhere between 1 and 3 percent) that it’s generally thought of as a cousin to root beer. Tafelbier has fallen out of favor somewhat with younger generations and has been largely replaced by soda, contributing to an increase in juvenile obesity that alarmed some Belgians enough to propose serving tafelbier in schools. The proposal was actually tested in one school in 2001. Unsurprisingly, many kids said they preferred tafelbier to soda, but parents still couldn’t abide serving beer at school to kids, and it didn’t catch on.
Beer for breakfast! For most of us, “beer for breakfast” is the exclusive domain of trembling alcoholics, but there’s actually a small-but-serious school of thought that argues there’s absolutely nothing wrong with cracking a cold one to start the day. To that end, some brewers have marketed breakfast-friendly beers with slightly tongue-in-cheek names. For example, there’s, uh, Breakfast, the since-retired cherry wheat cereal-like lager once sold by New Zealand’s Moa Brewing Company. In the U.S., morning drinkers can look for beers such as the Santa Fe Brewing Company’s Imperial Java Stout, whose can comes helpfully emblazoned with the image of a coffee cup and the legends “before noon,” and “not for use with donuts,” or Founders Brewing Company’s descriptively named Breakfast Stout.
More beer for breakfast! For the somewhat more traditionally inclined, there’s Colorado’s Black Bottle Brewery, where owner Sean Nook made headlines in 2014 by buying up every box of Count Chocula cereal in the Fort Collins area and using it as part of the recipe for a brew he dubbed Chocula Stout. Previous Black Bottle cereal-themed brews included beers that incorporated Golden Grahams, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, and Honey Bunches of Oats.
THE UNITED STATES OF BEER, PART 2
Georgia: Commercial craft brewing in Georgia dates back to 1993, when the Atlanta Brewing Company (now Red Brick Brewing) got its start. There’s also the Terrapin Beer Company, founded in 2002 by a pair of Atlanta Brewing defectors. After setting up shop in Athens, Terrapin enjoyed immediate success, taking home the American Pale Ale Gold Medal at the Great American Beer Festival in 2002. Other standouts include their 7.3% ABV Hopsecutioner IPA, and, of course, the Peach Farmhouse Ale.
Hawaii: You’re probably more apt to imagine colorful cocktails with little umbrellas in them. But there’s beer in paradise, too. Hawaii’s most exported beer is Kona’s Longboard Island Lager, which is fine, but doesn’t offer the unique flavor characteristics you can find if you’re lucky enough to sample some of Kona’s less widely known beers, like its Rift Zone Ale, brewed using yeast found in the rifts at Volcanoes National Park. That same spirit is embodied by the Maui Brewing Company, which brews Liquid Breadfruit, made with the titular ingredient and papaya seeds.
Idaho: Idaho’s Grand Teton Brewing Company didn’t start out with that name…or even in Idaho. Founded in 1988 as Otto Brothers, the company spent a decade in Wyoming before making the move; today, they sell more beer than any other brewer in the state, led by their hugely successful Ale 208, which boasts “100-percent Idaho-grown grain, hops, and pure Idaho spring water.” In some parts of the state, they’re outsold only by Bud and Bud Light.
Illinois: If it looks like a craft beer but is owned by a multinational megaconglomerate, is it still a craft beer? In the case of Chicago’s Goose Island, purchased by Anheuser-Busch in 2011, the answer is yes. The new corporate overlords didn’t change a thing; if anything, the deal freed up Goose Island to expand its offerings, which include Matilda, a Belgian-style pale ale, as well as a reintroduced Nut Brown Ale, which had to be phased out before the sale because Goose Island didn’t have enough facilities to produce it.
Indiana: The apparent favorite in the John Cougar Mellencamp State is Munster’s Three Floyds Brewing Company. Founded in 1996 by brothers Nick and Simon Floyd, along with their dad, Mike Floyd, the company boasts not only the highest rated beers in Indiana, but some of the most beloved (and well-named) small brews anywhere. A partial list: Dark Lord Russian Imperial Stout, Dreadnought Imperial IPA, Behemoth Barleywine, Baller Stout, Permanent Funeral Double IPA, and Zombie Dust American Pale Ale.
Iowa: The Hawkeye State’s preeminent brewer is undoubtedly Toppling Goliath, whose towering stature on the relatively young Iowa craft brew scene befits its name. Purveyor of signature brews like the Assassin, Kentucky Brunch, and Mornin’ Delight Imperial Stout, as well as lighter offerings such as the Light Speed Pale Ale and a wide variety of single and double IPAs, Toppling Goliath is a favorite among Midwestern beer connoisseurs. They’ve got emerging competition from local favorites like Backpocket Brewing (try the Slingshot Dunkel) and Peace Tree Brewing, known for their Hop Sutra Double IPA.
Kansas: The Free State Brewing Company’s offerings are led by their well-loved Owd Macs Imperial Stout, Old Backus Barleywine, and Cloud Hopper Imperial IPA. But they’ve got company, including the Tallgrass Brewing Company, whose burgeoning lineup includes a sought-after porter dubbed the Zombie Monkie, the Ethos IPA and Oasis Ale, and a sweet stout named Vanilla Bean Buffalo Sweat.
Kentucky: The Bluegrass State is known far more for its bourbon than its beer, and in fact, you can come by quite a few bourbon-barrel-aged brews in Kentucky. That isn’t all the local craft beer scene has to offer, h
owever—just take a look at what’s pouring out of Louisville’s Against the Grain Brewery. Co-founded by brewer Sam Cruz, whose love affair with beer goes back to his teenage efforts to get around the legal drinking age by brewing his own at home, Against the Grain is home to a vast array of highly rated beers that includes its 70K Imperial Stout and Brett the Hipman Hop American Wild Ale.
Louisiana: The state offers a plethora of delicious and distinctive choices, including beers from the Parish Brewing Company (try their Farmhouse IPA), Bayou Teche (their Miel Savage is a vanillasoaked delight), and NOLA (New Orleans Lager and Ale). But the cream of the crop might be the Abita Brewing Company, which not only offers some of the best beer in the state (including their Bourbon Street Barrel Aged Imperial Stout), but are admirably civic-minded, plunging a portion of the proceeds from their S.O.S. Weizen Pils back into restoration of the ravaged Gulf Coast.
For part 3, turn to page 201.
BEERS NAMED AFTER MUSICIANS
Bitches Brew. Part imperial stout, part African mead, Dogfish Head’s limited-edition brew sounds potentially punishing at 9% ABV, but it’s a lot more complex than you might suspect. Miles Davis’ Bitches Brew is kind of like Miles Davis’s Bitches Brew, the classic album the jazz trumpeter released in 1970. Brewed in 2010 to commemorate the album’s 40th anniversary, it’s a solid choice for those who’d like to try something different and contemplate the experience while they’re doing it…kind of like the album.
Porkpie Hat Brew. Given that jazz legend Lester Young was crippled by profound alcoholism that put him in the grave at age 50, naming a beer after him may seem insensitive. For fans of dark German lager, however, Angel City’s Lester Young Porkpie Hat beer proved stellar—although, like Young himself, this brew is no longer with us.
Wilco. If you take the folks at Lagunitas at their word, this “rich, smooth, dangerous, and chocolatey” beer wasn’t actually named after Wilco, Jeff Tweedy’s beloved indie rock band. According to the brewery, they were just looking for a way to justify giving their 2010 springtime “recovery ale” a name that boiled down to the acronym WTF. Their original choice, Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, wasn’t allowed because brewers can’t legally put the word “whiskey” on a beer label. It’s also got an extra Wilco connection in that “Foxtrot” references the band’s seminal 2002 album, Yankee Hotel Foxtrot.
Sleighr. Ninkasi’s holiday ale might be fudging a bit, because the name happens to be a twist on the name of metal gods Slayer. But on the other hand, it’s a brew that comes with an umlaut—Ninkasi refers to it as a “dark doüble alt ale”—and what’s more metal than an umlaut?
Brother Ale Thelonious. Like Thelonious Monk’s jazz, North Coast Brewing Company’s selection is robust and not for the amateur. In fact, at 9.3% ABV, you may want to take a nap after you finish the bottle. It’s also civic-minded, as North Coast donates a portion of the profits from every sale to the Thelonious Monk Institute of Jazz, an organization dedicated to jazz education.
Ozzy. Naming your beer after a celebrity can help raise a brew’s profile in a crowded marketplace and merit a mention in a silly beer trivia book, but the thing about famous people is that they tend to get a little cranky when you try to cash in on their celebrity without asking. The folks from Brewer’s Art found themselves under legal assault from Ozzy Osbourne after bottling a Belgian-style ale they dubbed Ozzy, packaged with a logo depicting Osbourne’s signature “OZZY” hand tattoo. Without much of a legal leg to stand on, the company made a name switch, redubbing the offending brew Beazly. Not very metal, but neither is getting sued.
ZOMBIE BEER
Some old-time beer brands are still around in name only. They’re not really the same beer, brewed under contract, somewhere other than their original brewery or city of origin.
Schlitz. It’s “the beer that made Milwaukee famous,” but it isn’t the same beer that was first brewed in 1849. The Schlitz company also owned Stroh, both of which were sold off to Pabst in 1999.
Ballantine. In 1878, the Ballantine Brewing Company of Newark, New Jersey, began producing Ballantine IPA, one of the first India pale ales available in the U.S. Initially quite popular in the northeast, sales slowly dwindled until it disappeared by the 1970s. Pabst bought the rights to Ballantine IPA in 1975…and resurrected it in 2014.
Lone Star. The first major brewery in Texas was the Lone Star Brewery, built in San Antonio in 1884. That building is now the San Antonio Museum of Art. Lone Star Beer (“The National Beer of Texas”) is produced by new owner Miller from a plant in Fort Worth, Texas.
Henry Weinhard. After 135 years as a low-cost favorite in the Pacific Northwest, its Portland brewery closed down in 1999. SABMiller bought the name, and the beer continues to be brewed at Full Sail Brewing in Hood River, Oregon.
Blatz. The Milwaukee brewery closed in 1959 after 109 years. It’s still made, by Pabst, under contract by the brand’s rights holder, Miller.
Rainier. This light lager is still available, and the Rainier Brewery still stands in Seattle…but Rainier beer isn’t made there. In 1999, the company was sold to Stroh, then to Pabst, and Miller makes it today. The Rainier Brewery is now a processing center for Tully’s Coffee.
MAKE IT A LITE
About 50 years ago, 30 percent of American beer drinkers—overwhelmingly blue-collar males between the ages of 18 and 49—drank 80 percent of the beer produced in the country. That meant that every major U.S. brewery had to attract the same customers…or try to reach out to niches not traditionally serviced by the beer industry.
DIM LITES
One big demographic: people who liked beer, but didn’t drink it because it was too high in calories. As sugar-free sodas like Tab and Diet Rite allowed the health-conscious to drink something resembling Coke or Pepsi, several breweries in the mid-1960s began pursuing the idea of low-cal beer.
• In 1964, the Piels Brewing Co. introduced Trommer’s Red Letter, “the world’s first diet beer.” It lasted a comically short six weeks in stores.
• Three years later, Rheingold Brewing Co. of New York introduced a low-cal brew called Gablinger’s. Each can was stamped with “Doesn’t Fill You Up” and “Contains 99 Calories Less Than Our Regular Beer.” Very few beer drinkers (which, again, didn’t care if beer made them fat) sampled Gablinger’s, which one critic described as “piss with a head.”
LITES OUT
Rheingold withdrew the product and actually gave away the instructions for how to make light beer to a Chicago brewery called Meister Brau. MB found that the diet beer tasted similar to its flagship Meister Brau, and so launched Meister Brau Lite—in doing so inventing a food and marketing buzzword.
However, MB marketed the beer explicitly as a product for women. Meister Brau Lite flopped so badly that the company nearly went bankrupt, forcing the brewery’s owners to sell to Miller Brewing. Miller planned on discontinuing Meister Brau Lite entirely, until an executive stumbled on a bizarre sales report from the recently acquired company: Meister Brau Lite sold extremely well in Anderson, Indiana, a steel town dominated by the same blue-collar workers who were supposed to hate “diet beer.” Why did they like Lite? Curious, the company sent representatives to find out. The consensus was that Lite didn’t fill them up as much as regular beers did…enabling them to drink more.
Miller test-marketed “Lite Beer from Miller” in three working-class areas: Springfield, Illinois; Knoxville, Tennessee; and San Diego, California. The result of those tests was that people “can drink more without getting full,” which was good, but the beer itself didn’t taste so great. In other words, the product would need to be—as its advertising would later claim—“less filling” but “taste great.”
THE RIGHT LITE
Miller president John Murphy decided it was worth a try. He ordered his brewmasters to come up with a beer that tasted like other Miller brands, but still cut the calories per can from around 150 to 96. It took them a little over a year.
Meanwhile, ad people went to work on positioning
Lite as a “manly” brew that beer lovers could drink without being ashamed. They decided to build an advertising campaign around professional athletes…except that federal law at the time prohibited using active sports figures to sell alcohol. Miller was stuck.
While riding on a New York City bus, Bob Lenz, the ad executive in charge of Miller’s account, came up with the answer. He noticed a poster of former New York Jets star Matt Snell, and it occurred to him that although advertising codes prohibited Miller from using active athletes to sell beer, there was no reason they couldn’t employ retired ones. He called Snell.
LITE BRIGHT
Miller ultimately signed up dozens of exathletes for their ad campaign—from baseball players like Boog Powell and Mickey Mantle to bruisers like football’s Deacon Jones and hockey’s “Boom-Boom” Geoffrion.
As it turned out, using ex-jocks was a master stroke. Because they were a little older (and paunchier) than their active contemporaries, they were easier for beer drinkers to relate to. Plus, they had nothing to prove—they were established heroes. If they said it was okay to drink diet beer, no one was going to argue. And every TV spot ended with the celebrities heatedly arguing about Lite’s best quality—was it that it’s “less filling” or that it “tastes great”?—followed by the tagline: “Everything you always wanted in a beer. And less.”
TURN ON THE LITES
When test marketing of Lite exceeded sales projections by an unprecedented 40 percent, it was attributed largely to the advertising campaign. Blue-collar workers not only felt comfortable drinking a light beer, but they also understood that “a third fewer calories” meant that drinking three Lites was only as filling as drinking two regular beers. So rather than cut calories, most Lite drinkers drank more beer, and the sales figures showed it.
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