Why is American beer weaker tasting?!
Answers: I know this has been asked but not in the same way. What I am wondering is how come a beer such as Budweiser in the U-S has the marking of 5% alc. on it, yet a Budweiser brewed and bought in Canada, also has 5%, and tastes much stronger. The bud in the U-S tastes lighter than a Bud light in Canada, no word of a lie. It is because the alc. level is measured differently?
Well, clearly its impossible to contest the alc content of each, if they are the same.
There may be small differences in the amount of hops used in these brews you are sampling. Hops is what gives beer its distinctive "beer" taste. Most American and Canadian cheap mass brews use rice as the main malting ingredient and add hops as an afterthought. Perhaps the Canadian versions are slightly hoppier in formula.
Of course, I must say, having lived in Canada myself for a few years, that Molson, Keith's, and some of their other larger brewers taste roughly the same as American beers of the same quality level.
well canadas beer is always dominate lol
but i thinks its a regulation in usa to not have so much dence in alcohol unless you add more to it
you have no knowledge of beer. many us brewers...sierra nevada & yazoo in particular brew world class beers
This started at Prohibition. When liquor was outlawed, the art of brewing was neglected and several masters abandoned their craft to move on to other careers.
Once Prohibition was repealed, much of that knowledge and experience wasn't regained, and the resultant p*ss-poor products were weak and very inferior to prior brews.
Americans, having no other inexpensive alternatives, took to the weaker flavors, as any booze was better than no booze.
This shouldn't be the case now, as microbreweries are quite popular, and discerning tastes have been reestablished.
Unfortunately, Bud, Miller, and other mass-marketed brands haven't tried very hard to improve their quality; they focus instead on market domination.
Has to do with the ingredients. If you could get away with using cheaper ingredients and still have a strong base of people to buy your product, wouldn't you go ahead and do it? Means profit margin is higher, cut your overhead, and you show a nice profit.
edit: Jenrok you rock. My vote for best answer. American craft brewers are the best, especially the West Coast ones.
Budweiser is a weak beer in general, but it may taste stronger in Canada because of storing techniques.
I recently had a pretty skunky tasting Samuel Adams, but that was simply because it was a little on the warm side. Normally Samuel Adams is a very solid brew, but because it was stored in a warmer setting, it tasted bad.
Its not. Its sounds like you are basing this statement off of nothing more than the big BMC beer like Bud, Coors, etc. There are literally thousands of other smaller breweries in the US that make very fine craft beers. I don't think it is fair to make a blanket statement about all of the beer in a country based off of tasting one generic big brand like Bud who's sales are based off of nothing more than a multimillion dollar marketing budget. Once you taste several hundred different beers from dozens of different breweries I think you would agree that "all American beer is weak tasting" is an ignorant statement.
If a bottle of Budweiser is labeled 5% then it is 5%. If you think it somehow tastes stonger in Canada even though it is shipped from the exact same Brewery, I would have to say it is psychological. Maybe you have convinced yourself that "all American beer is weaker than in Canada" so even though you are drinking the same thing, your mind convinces you that it tastes differently based on your pre-conceived notions.
Percentage also depends on beer style. For instance, an APA (American pale ale) runs on average between 5-7% whereas an Imperial IPA on average runs fro 8.5-11%. The same way that many stouts range from 5-8% and most Imperial Stouts range from 8-13%. If you drink generic american lagers (which Budweiser is) you are going to see mostly 4-5.5%. Maybe you should try some IPAs or stouts or something other than BMC lagers.
BTW, I have many Canadian friends and they all talk about how the American craft brewers (ie microbrews) are some of the absolute best in the world. So your "ask any Canadian" statement is very strange to me since I have asked them and they all rave about how great the American craft beer is.
i have found many american-brewed beers to be full of flavor, but the rice/pilsner brews are generally somewhat bland. hence the cheap price.
budweiser isnt even worth drinking. its ****. (same goes for most light beers and other various pilsners)
why not scope out various american breweries (breckenridge in colorado, new holland in michigan...fat tire somewhere...etc) and try some of their brews?
more water less alcohol
ummmm STOP DRINKING!