Dungeon Master set up. Excelsior! Jim's hiding behind a row of wooden wine crates. So, we're blind tasting. Roger, what are we blind tasting? We are going to walk through light beer today. Why, you may ask? You know, you're always asking what are the trends, what's new in beer. Somewhat bizarrely, a lot of breweries lately are making either what they call a premium American lager or they've been making now low-calorie or light beer. Old-style light. It's a thing. Obviously, the beer industry is a little rudderless right now. I think we're in the doldrums of... Going back to the old standbys. Playing the hits, right? So, we've talked about this on the show before. We've joked that a lot of the craft beer got very dessert-like. So, what's the opposite of your really thick, creamy, stouts and Imperial IPA's? A very light, crisp, crushable, light beer. Do they know that you can buy a 12-pack of High Life for like $5.99? So yeah, that's the... That's $8.99. For a small amount of money. That was why I wanted to do this experiment. So, I mean, if you have somebody walking into your tap room and you want to offer them something like this, it's just either light in body and or also low calorie, I get that. But if it's going to be on the shelves of Binny's, it has to compete with the people that have been doing this since the 70s and whether you like it or not, have kind of perfected the process. It's not necessarily easy to make a light lager. One might argue it's one of the most challenging beer styles there is because you need it to be... There's literally nowhere for any mistake to hide. No flaws. So if you screw it up, you're going to be able to smell it and taste it. It's laid bare. I totally agree with you, Roger. It makes sense for them to make it for the tap room, but they're jumping into some deep waters there. From a financial standpoint, it's tough, right? So I mean, especially with the low-calorie ones, you're not necessarily going to be able to compete in that same sandbox of, these are budget beers that are sold at very thin margins. They're very economy-driven products, and Kraft has always been the opposite. It's been about spending more on better ingredients, better pizza, Papa John's. So, you know, I wanted to do a blind taste test. As we've said before, the most honest way to do it is to taste these things blind. And we basically put together a list of 12 different beers. 12? It's a mix of... Make your own 12-pack. Don't worry, it's the one I like drinking 6. They're all from the United States, but it's a mix of some craft, some craft-adjacent, and then some good old, what we call, macro, or the big guy, often, you know, big corporation-owned breweries that crank out the most recognizable stuff. Okay, Jim, reverb me up. Barrel to Bottle, Light Beer Tasted Blind. Hey, you are listening to Barrel to Bottle The Binny's Podcast. And hello, I'm Greg. I do communications at Binny's. Hey, I'm Chris. I do wine stuff. I'm Dan. I do spirits. And I'm Roger. I do beer. We've all had light beer though, right? I honestly can't remember the last time I just ordered a light beer. I was just saying before we started that in the last few months, when I go to a bar, if they have Coors Light on tap, I'm just like, give me one of those. It's like, it's happened like three times. So it's not like a real trend. Coors Light? It's just weird. I don't know. I haven't drank it since like college, but. It's the Silver Bullet. Yeah, it's bizarre. Well, it's in here. It's in this roundup. I'm not going to be able to recognize it. See if you can spot the Coors Light. This is not it. I'm telling you that right now. Number one. Okay, let's start with this one. Okay, we have a beer. We don't know what it is. Some parameters here. So like I said, these are all made in the United States. So there's no import light beer. I wanted to keep this at a reasonable number of beers. There's no specifically marketed as low carb beer. So none of these are like McUltra or things like that. Okay. No, none of the active lifestyle beer brands. Right. I mean, this right away, the color has a respectable golden color. It's not too pale. It is pale gold. Yeah. There's a delicate lacing of very fine bubbles and it smells like beer. Yeah. A little bit of like grainy corn or something. Oh my God. I got to recalibrate my palate for this. It tastes like beer. It's beer flavored beer with a little bit of fruitiness and a little bit of crispiness from hops, but otherwise- It has like an end, just like a touch of bitterness. Yeah. I think a lot of these you're going to notice, one of the byproducts of fermentation is a chemical called acid aldehyde. Acid aldehyde often presents as green apple. It can also, when it's really getting intense, be latex paint and or raw pumpkin. So think like, I know lots of people don't necessarily eat, you don't eat raw pumpkin, yes, but you've carved a pumpkin. Oh, but the smell of a raw pumpkin is very distinctive. Right. So that's something to look for as we're tasting these. A lot of them are going to taste very similar. So this is definitely the deep end of beer tasting, really trying to suss out the subtle differences here. Yeah, we're looking for the absence of, it's almost, dare I say, in some ways, like drinking, doing a vodka tasting. Yeah. Like you don't want too much flavor. A little bit of background on light beer real quick. Like every single story in beer, I feel like has arguments about, well, that's not really when it happened. It happened in this time. So short of some murmurs of maybe Coors invented this, well, really long time ago, the most agreed upon origin story of light beer is that, in 1966, this chemist came up with a process of using an enzyme to produce a low calorie beer. And that was at a brewery called Rheingold. And it was a beer called Gabblingers. And that process was then subsequently used at a brewery called Meisterbrau. And Meisterbrau made a beer called Light, spelled L-I-T-E, and trademarked that. That's where this is headed. And then Meisterbrau came on hard times. And in 1972, they dissolved and were purchased by a little brewery called Miller Brewing Company. And Miller reformulated Meisterbrau Light. And they launched Miller Lite in 1973 and fully released it in 1975. Many of you might remember they had all those slick Christopher Walken narrated commercials last year for the 50th anniversary of Miller Lite. I'm glad we don't have to say Meisterbrau. Right. I think arguably the most interesting thing about Light Beer is that when they launched this as a low calorie thing in the 60s, it flopped. It didn't do well at all. And the success story for Miller Lite was actually positioning it as, all right, we're going to target people who sit in bars and drink a ton of beer. And we're going to get sports stars, these big burly athletes to be like, I drink Miller Lite, this low calorie beer, because it tastes great and it's less filling. It's super macho. You read between the lines, it's like, I can drink 10 of these. It's not necessarily like, oh, we're health conscious. Like, we're drinking light beer because we want to save up in calories. It's like, I can get more of this into my body. You're specifically countering the health, like the fear of appearing dainty and health conscious. It's like the American version of like English beer though, right? Where you're sitting down for a session and instead of. Yeah, you want to not, yeah, they are a little bit lower in alcohol. They aren't quite as low as I think some people think they are. Like, typically light beers are around 4.2 percent, whereas the normal version of these beers would be about 5. So, like, you're still getting about the same alcohol, but you definitely don't feel as bloated and full. Ironically, these are some of the most highly carbonated beers, so I would argue you do get kind of full compared to some other beer styles, but apples to apples, if you're comparing the carbonation level between a Miller Lite and a High Life, like, they're both highly carbonated. So, which is why, if you want less carbonation in your beer, pour it into a glass. Number 2. Did you guys talk about number 2? I said it was fruity. It's fruity. A lot of you are going to be... It is. It's fruity and it has more character. There's like a touch of malt, maybe, on the nose, or something I had perceived as malt. I'm guessing this one's Kraft. They can't help themselves, but add a little bit of flavor. Right. That could be the case. It could also be, sometimes, like, what the Kraft versions of these have a lot of similar, like the old school ones, like the pre-Lite stuff, like High Life and Old Style. They'll have a little bit of that. Like, they kind of share character sometimes. Yeah. You guys get, like, the green apple thing from this? Yes. I do. Speaking of which, as a reference point, and just to broaden this acetaldehyde thing out, this is the signature aroma and flavor of sherry. Yeah. That's why you get all that green apple and quince and whatnot out of Fino Sherries. Number three. Midnight Orange. This tastes like next day after party. This one does? Number three? Just like old beer. I think this is coors lighter. No, it's too tinny. Dirty beer. Oh, it is. It's tinny. I bet it's Montucky. Yeah, I could see that too. Tinny. Ingredients wise, what makes light beer? One of the signature things of light beer is that it uses adjuncts. So adjunct meaning anything that is not the traditional building blocks of beer, which are malted barley, water, hops, and yeast. We sometimes throw around the word adjunct when we're talking about things like Midnight Orange, these big stouts that use things like cinnamon, chocolate nibs, coffee. OG adjuncts before the craft movement were things like corn, corn syrup, rice. Famously in the wars, I'm sure you all saw the Bud uses rice and Miller uses corn syrup, which was one of the craziest ad campaigns I've ever seen. That was so weird. Because they were the same company yelling at each other. That was so weird. And then Bush answered by putting out a packaging that looked like corn cobs. Yeah. It's like, well, Bud Light uses rice and Bush Lite uses corn. It's the same company. And then they had to start explaining to the consumer, like, oh, it's not high fructose corn syrup and none of it's left in the beer. We just use it to ferment out. So that's the key takeaway I want listeners to understand, is that when they use corn syrup, it's just so that the yeast can eat it up and make alcohol and have no body as a result. Because we want these things, well, the companies that make them, want them to be super light in body as well. So if you're not using grain and you're using something like corn syrup, you're going to boost the alcohol, but you're going to have no residual mouth feel or body really from it. Very economical, too, I would imagine. Yes. How much do they use? That's the trade secret. People estimate that it's upwards of 40 to 50 percent. 40 to 50 percent adjunct sugar sources? Yes. What? What? You know what's interesting about that is yeast doesn't care where the sugar comes from. That's true, but it's only conversion to alcohol. You would think you would want it, I don't know, like vodka. You want a clean source that doesn't impart a lot of weird flavors. That's what rice is. Is that corn syrup? I think the cleanness of the base is more important in beer because you're not, I mean, distillation, you're concentrating flavor to a degree, but when you get to the vodka level, you're stripping out all flavor. So I think it's probably less important. Yeah. I bring it up because I think you can get to a point where you over did it with the thin. I mean, this third one tastes thin to me. Like there's nothing here. So I would imagine this is something that's made with a huge percentage of adjunct. I'm going to try not to be cruel, but this gets a meh. Although if I was standing outside and my neighbor handed me this in a package, I would drink it. Right. Light beer also is the famous, you go to some bars and they have the degree listing of how cold their beer is. Coldest beer in town. You're getting it under 32 degrees. It should just slush the minute we give it to you. That is a great feeling. When you get the icy, icy mug and don't come at me about my pint glass because I'm just drinking light lager and when it has like ice flakes in it because it's that cold, I don't care what the beer tastes like. That's the idea with these. Like you want them as palette numbingly cold as possible. Number four. I can barely smell this one. That means it's Coors Light. They can't all be Coors Light. Speaking of the temperature, I was fortunate enough last year to go to the UK a couple of times or the British Isles, I should say. And a lot of bars there, you can get, they have two Guinness tabs, one is Guinness and one is Guinness Extra Cold. And you can choose between what you want. That's kind of interesting. The Burger King of bars. Well, you're definitely going to get, so everything we've been describing, just like with the Guinness, where you're getting more expressive, caramely, roasty notes. With this, there's almost no hop character, malt character is minimal, so you're really getting like byproducts, products of fermentation. So it's a little bit spicy. This one. Really? I don't know. There's a touch of sweetness here. I like this one. Yeah. I think this I'm going to make a bold proclamation. This is a big brand. It's just clean and it's like easy. And you could have like 10 of these. Yeah. Again, not a ton of flavor here, but I like that it's clean. You got like green pepper, a little green pepper in there. No. Hear me out, Dan. I think it's whatever the sugar source is interacting with, like the touch of like hop extract is giving like a raw vegetable flavor. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. So nuanced. So subtle. When we talk about these, it's like where did this style populate from? A lot of the people came to the United States and were interested in making beers, beers came from countries like Germany, Bohemia, which would eventually be the Czech Republic. These areas of the world tended to make beers like the Pilsner became the leading lager beer, and we've done podcasts about Pilsner before, so please listen to those if you're interested. But the Pilsner beer style is arguably the hoppiest of the lager style, so they're extremely expressive on the hop character. A Czech Pilsner in particular will use boatloads of saz hops, they'll be really spicy, they'll be aromatic. Those aren't for everybody, and lots of people think they're too hoppy. Basically, the American brewing industry took styles like a German Helles, which is similar to a Pilsner or a traditional Czech Pils, German Pils, and they just kept dialing them back. It's like we want these to appeal to a larger and larger audience. We're going to keep reducing the amount of hop bitterness. A traditional Czech Pilsner might be 40 IBUs. Some of these light lagers clock in at seven. A marshmallow has more IBUs than that. I don't understand how this happened. Not only was somebody like, okay, let's dial it down a little bit, but then they were like, and we're going to make an infinite supply of this product, and everybody's going to drink it for 100 years. Yeah. What? I know. Okay, well put. It's insane. Number five. Apart from tasting exactly like the previous four beers, this one's a little more. I feel like there's some hops in this one. Yeah, I saw the hop spice. I timed that perfectly. I agree. There's a little floral edge to the nose. Well, it just ends with a little bit of hop spice, but then this metallic finish. A little metallic. High Life? High Life? Like I bit my tongue. Is High Life in here? Yeah, that's a good description. It's just a minerality. I don't have much else to say about number five. I don't hate it. I kind of like it. I mean, there's that minerality. When I was doing this experiment with the tasting panel, I had everybody taste a La Croix, the plain one. This is what sparkly water tastes like. That's an excellent baseline, actually. Yeah, and it was hilarious. I looked over to Tommy, he looks at me, he's like, it's not that far off. But I mean, I've often quipped that, you know, when you describe what a light beer should taste like, it should be refreshing and spritzy and highly carbonated and crisp. That sounds a lot like you're describing seltzer water. At their worst, especially with things like low carb beers, I've often jested that these kind of taste like beer flavored seltzer water. Don't give White Claw the idea to make a beer flavored White Claw. Hop Water. Bud already did it. Bud made that beer Bud Light next. That essentially is what that is. And somehow it's still around. I'm kind of surprised. But number six. Once again, this smells like nothing. I get a green apple for sure. Spray paint? Maybe. Oh, there's the latex coming. Coming in hot. Yep. Smell the glove. There's a fine line between clever and stupid, right? What's wrong with being sexy? More spinal tap quotes, guys. How much more black could it be? None more black. I don't know. I've already forgotten what this beer tastes like. This has more flavor than the others. In my sense, ability, I don't know what's the right word. I feel like it's got more flavor. It's sharper. And I think it's a little more carbonated. It's giving me that latex paint. Yeah, definitely. I'm putting a little stars next to the ones that I don't mind. This one doesn't get a star. That's not to say it's bad, but it just doesn't get a star. This, to me, on the finish, maybe there are some hops, though, which is kind of interesting, but it's not particularly pleasant. I mean, this definitely leaves an aftertaste. Are you able to tell the difference if someone is using hop extract versus hop? I would say, in general, it's hard to tell. I mean, hop extracts, the problem is that they're used for multiple reasons. The assumption is that, especially when we're talking about macro beer, that it's just like a cost-saving measure. But all hop extracts aren't created equal, and some are actually quite expensive. It's hard to just paint with a wide brush as to, how is this going to express? A lot of people love Founders All Day, for example, and part of the secret of that beer and its shelf life and stability is that they use a lot of hop extract in it. But it's also a combination of the two, and I think this is proprietary, so none of these breweries tell you what percentage they use or if it's all hop extract or not. I would imagine that the majority of it is, but- Right, and how can you really expect to tell at this level of hop? Because there's like, exactly, there's like nothing. With some of these hop extracts now, you could impart a little bit of aroma or flavor without any of the bitterness if you don't want it. And maybe some of these beers would benefit from that. Yeah. Like a touch of, they can make hop extracts from traditional hops, like a lot of it's the new cool cultivars that tastes like fill-in-the-blank tropical fruit. But if you could add a little bit of old school herbal character to these without the seemingly the struggle is the bitterness, I'd rather taste that than the apple. But I don't know. We're at halftime here, guys. We're halfway through. I don't know, this is over a decade ago, back when the Ram in Wheeling was open, which was a great craft brewery restaurant thing. I remember hanging out at the bar once, and there was like a after work party room group. They were all chilling out, a bunch of people. And then when they cleared out, I'm sitting at the Ram at the bar, and in the party room, they left this like massive stonehenge of empty aluminum bottles that all said Miller Lite on them. So I can appreciate why breweries need to do this. Yeah. But it just seems so tragic to me. It's got to be somewhat infuriating. And at the time then, they had all sorts of different beers at that brew pub. And I think brew pubs in general did a good job of that, of what kind of beer do you want? Like we've got everything from light to dark. Back when you could get a red ale and a brown ale. What I think is happening now and why some of these craft breweries are jumping in this is that they had only been making IPAs and nothing else for the last 10 years. And people are like, yeah, I don't really want an IPA. And now we bizarrely have jumped into, well, can I offer you a low calorie lager? Like I don't necessarily want that. But so it's strange times. But I think there's good, people are starting to bring back some stuff in between the two. Number seven. This one was to me, frosted flakes on the nose. Yeah, it's very grain forward. I stepped my nose in it. So I'm trying to smell it. Cereal grain. Then some, I was getting green apple flavor. More latex. And then plastic on the finish too. A metal, a dime, tastes like a penny. This is so metal. I don't know. 30 years people won't even know what a penny tastes like. Taste them while you got them or just try this beer. Number eight. Doing the risky passing the beer over the mixing board. It's amazing that we've had the same mixing board since the beginning. Like we haven't, there's no red wine in there. What's cheaper, a small table to set off to the side or a mixing board? You're really jinxing it here. I can't believe we haven't talked about a no hitter. We're talking about a no hitter right now. Okay. Number eight. Number eight. Hooray. I like this. A little bit of sweetness, no blood. This is Coors Light. If I say it on every beer, then I'll be right. Yeah. I was like, yeah. Turns out they actually are all Coors Light. Just different ages, different vintages of Coors Light. We've got last November's Vintage. This January's was lovely. Says like a little bit of honeyed sweetness. It's soft and plush. Still crisp. Still crisp. This is fine. It's fine. I could drink this. I might have to drink any of these to be honest. Yeah, this is for me. All of these are fine, but the last few have been a little raw. This is much cleaner. It doesn't leave an aftertaste. It's just there and then it's gone and you've had a beer. I'm not even detecting alcohol. It's very mild, but it's again, this would be one you could definitely describe as refreshing. Yeah, yeah. Okay. That's a good one. Sign me up. Does it come in a tall boy? Sign me up for a six out of this. He's not going to give you any hints. I know. Okay. Number nine. Number nine. Midnight Orange. Darker color. Is it? Is it because the pour is just a little bigger? No, it actually is a darker color. It's definitely more golden. So we kind of, another podcast that we did that you should listen to is we did a similar tasting with what we would call just like American or sometimes they throw on the word premium American lagers, Kraft Pabst, as I like to jokingly call them. This to me reminds me of, I would mistake this for a normal beer, not light. Yeah. So get some credit for that. Look, bubblegum. I'm getting some malt. More character. I like this one. There's some real grain in here, I think. Yeah. Maybe. I could be wrong, but they've figured out how to make it taste that way. I mean, like in intensity, percentages of intensity, this goes from five to like six and a half. It's that much more, but it's got some character. Yeah. I mean, color-wise, this is how silly I think this category gets is that they had the guts to make this a little darker. So I think that's a win, honestly. There's definitely a different malt in this, to give it that color and this perceived flavor. So the two pitchers go on the table with the bar, and one is this crisp, golden yellow and the other one's a little darker. Which one are you reaching for? Well, it's me. I know what you're getting at. Yep. People are like, no, the closest to water, please. Yeah. Well, so Sam Adams, I think, is kind of the test for that. Their light beer, for years, was about 110 or 115 calories, and it was definitely darker, and it was head and shoulders above most light beer as far as character and flavor. And yeah, plenty of people were like, nope. Neither it was the stupid like, I would prefer if it was under 100 calories. Thank you very much. It's like, oh, you're watching your calories that tightly. The 15 is a make or break for you. Don't eat that tic tac. You're already in an Applebee's order. I'd like the chicken wings. Yeah, with ranch. Chicken wings, cheese fries, going to be like 3,000 calories. That was like Miller Lite. I'm saving all my calories for ranch dressing. Thank you. You gotta prioritize. Oh yeah, this category is SRM and IBU racing to the bottom, right? The lowest possible number you can find. Okay, well, I like number nine. I like this one. It gets a star. That's a fun little guy. Yeah. I have a couple of those. Malt character. Yeah. Malt character. Yep. Yeah, surprisingly. Number 10. Hey, this beer smells like beer. Same as it ever was. Oh, but it tastes like sulfur. Oh, does it? Tastes like creamed corn. This is Miller Lite. Is it? Move on. Is it? No, I highly disagree. So like this is probably a craft because it's like a macro wouldn't have this sulfur. Yeah, exactly. This is an obvious flaw that would never make it through. I'm getting creamed corn, which is what I get when I drink Miller Lite. Yeah, creamed corn from the Socket of Davis. Yes. And that would be... I got that one on vinyl. Yeah. Because it's DMS. Right. What is DMS? Why are you doing a boncacos? So DMS is naturally occurring in grain. It's something that all brewers have to deal with. And you just rest the beer and eventually the DMS is going to get reabsorbed. Loggering. And cleaned up by the yeast. But if you don't do that correctly, it stays in the beer. Thymethyl sulfide. Correct. We haven't even talked about beechwood aging. Now that adds character. Yeah. A clarity. The tour when they talk about that is somewhat hysterical. They're like, you know, we don't even have to do this anymore. But we do. It really doesn't make any sense. It's a waste of money. But like, you know, we do it out of tradition. It's like it imparts no flavor. It's just there for to clear up the beer. It's like they filter it now. I remember that. And that whole conversation happens. And you're standing under a tank that holds 18 Olympic swimming pools. A tank? And the same tanks stretch in all directions as far as the eye can see. It's a pretty cool tour, really. And the Beachwood guy comes along with a sliver of about two inches by four inches wide and just dips it in. It's like smaller than a measuring stick. Oh, no. They get in there with rakes and stuff. I've never been. I get nervous around those tanks. I feel like it's going to be like a Boston molasses flood. Right. If there was some dangerous explosion in there, we'd all be like drowning here in light lager. It's a terrifying amount of liquid. Let's just say that. All right. Number 11. The end is nigh. Jeremy, stop giving us the same beer. Why do I keep nipping my nose in there? I'm so desperate to get some aroma. That's it. Yeah. Maybe if I go in there, it's somewhere in there. Okay. I'm getting your green apple on this one. Yeah. Big time. Yeah. Like somebody left the Jolly Rancher in the tank. Yeah. That's particularly prominent in this one. I'm going to finish. Big time. I feel like I've had this before. It's like the defining character. Is this like a lime flavored or something? This is why so many people love that the kids are drinking the Baple, the Bud Light Apple. Before you said that, I thought this might be Bush Light. It's a great way to cover up this flaw. This batch is going into Baple. It's like not even a flaw in this beer. It's like a prominent note. Yeah. It's like the defining character. I feel like the beer I drank until I started Humbering, honestly, was Bush Light. I feel like I've had this before. It also, it's like a slightly acidic. I get this more from Coors beers like Keystone Light and Coors Light, but especially Keystone. Keystone is not in the mix today. Tried to pick things that we sell a lot of. We sell a lot of Keystone in a couple of stores. Yeah, I used to work in Illinois. Central Illinois. Okay, that's not getting a star. It also has like a limestone feeling in my mouth. I don't know, that's a little weird. You'd love that if it was a dry French white wine. Why not like that? Yeah, exactly. It turns out that this is from the Loire. Okay. Number 12, the Dirty Dozen. No-Nose. No, there's something there. Just like a touch of that latex-y green apple thing. Sweetness, really like corn flakes. Yeah, like a corn cereal kind of. Yeah. No, not a favorite. It's got a weird acidity at the end. I say acidity, but it just tastes sour. Well, remember that in-acid alcohol, it literally refers to the acidic. Yeah, there's a sharpness, but there's no hop. There's nothing. No fl No fluttered out. Just kind of like goes away. Okay. There's like a tang. All right. Does this come in powdered form? Space beer? In gummy form. Seems like something you'd want to eat. You guys ready for the reveals? Usually, I can kind of remember, but I'm just gonna have to go by my notes. Put stars on one, two, five, and nine. That could be random on a different day. Yeah. Well, I will say none of these were beers. If I had a pint of this in front of me, I would drink any of them. Yeah. Really? I mean, I'm a slob, Roger. I don't know about that. There were a couple that were pretty rough. But I mean, it's not like... I saw a reel recently of a guy pouring a craft beer that had the consistency of melted ice cream and looked like melted ice cream. And I would rather have any of these than that. All right. You know? Yes. It wasn't an Illinois brewery. It's not anything we carry. Any standouts? Let's go around. So, Greg, what would you say is one that you really liked? Number nine. Yeah, me too. Yeah, Bubble Gum Malt Actual. That was one we were saying is a little darker in color. Yep. I think nine and two. I was a little bit aligned with you. Nine and two. Two is a little sweeter. Nine and two, I thought. I went back and tasted one so that once my palate got used to it, I didn't mind it on the second. What about four? Do you guys like four and all? Yeah, I remember being pretty clean. Just easy. I liked four, eight, and nine. Four, eight, and nine. Eight? Soft and plush. Yeah, eight's completely inoffensive. I agree with Dan. I wouldn't not drink any of them. I wouldn't pour any of them out and say, how dare you serve this to me? Well, even 10 and 11. Real quick before we do the reveal. No. Garrett Oliver, friend of the cast. He had him on here. That was like eight years ago. He's now an enemy. I often am talking about that we need more people curious about beer and reading about beer. If you're going to pick up a book about beer, Garrett Oliver, Brewmaster's Table. If you don't want to read and you just like listening to things, Google him. He has a Ted Talk, I believe it is, where he uses this really interesting analogy where he's talking about what happened to American beer and he compares it to bread. I think that analogy is worth thinking about and very apropos. When we think about this kind of style, he talks about you can think about a really nice artisan bread loaf, crispy on the outside, the texture, everything. Then there's things like Wonder Bread, which Wonder Bread is very shelf stable and it's very plain Jane. You might really grow to appreciate it and like it at times. It's not necessarily bad, but it's incredibly different. When these companies are trying to appeal to this gigantic audience, I think it parallels very much so that concept of something is like iconic as bread for one of the most staples of life. That you can have something like Wonder Bread that literally the crust on Wonder Bread is like not really crust. It's brown. Yeah, it's browned. But I think that's what we've seen happen to beer in a lot of ways. Whereas if you're listening to us trying to describe these and we didn't necessarily have a ton of descriptors at times, that's kind of the nature of the style in and of itself. So there is a time and a place for these maybe and maybe we've emphasized that these are sometimes described as lawnmower beers or something that you're just really reaching for when it's refreshing. But- Let's take that analogy even further. Some of these craft breweries, man, they're only making cinnamon rolls. Yeah, exactly. What kind of bread is this? It's cake. Yeah, exactly. Extra frosting. Well, can I just get a French roll or maybe some pumpernickel? Not here. All right, Jim, let's do the big reveal. Number one, Miller Lite. Miller Lite. That's pleasantly surprising. I didn't hate it. Yeah. Miller Lite was the original light beer as they like to point out. First trialed in 1973, officially launched in 1975. This is 4.2 percent ABV, 96 calories, and 3.2 carbs, which is basically low-carb territory. What is a unit of a carb? Grams. A gram of carb? Yeah. Okay. I never knew. Yeah. The high-quality ingredients are water, barley malt, yeast, hops, hop extract, and corn syrup. Okay. Brewed with pure high-quality water, sourced from deep ancient aquifers. You're forgetting an important detail. From the bottle, brown glass. They want to make you know that Frederick Miller carried this yeast, keistered, from Germany in the 1850s, and it's never changed in over 160 years at Miller Brewing Company. Just imagine him like cradling this Petri dish. No, I think he just infused his beard. I was thinking beard. I dipped his beard into the- Proud of it. All right, we're good. So this yeast goes back to the old country, huh? Yeah. Wow. One thing that's kind of interesting, Miller is one of the only people that talks about the hops. So they have a specific strain of Galena that they use. I know this because we've talked about this before in the podcast. The photo-sensitive nature of hops, where when hops are exposed to light, they can produce that off flavor that we equate with skunkiness. You'll notice that Miller High Life is in clear bottles. So how come, you know, you haven't had skunky Miller Lite? Miller has actually developed a specific strain of Galena hops that won't skunk. So they use that in this as well. And then they also use some Noble Saws hops. So for as much as it's somewhat funny that they call Miller Lite a Pilsner beer, it does use the most iconic hop, just maybe in infinitesimal amounts. Just 3.4 of them. Just a dash. So Miller Lite comes in 12-pack canner bottle, $12.99, or of course flats of $24 for $21.99. Number two. What? Local's Light. What is it? That's Short's Local's Light. Local's Light by Short's Brewing. Yep. Short's is up in Bel Air, Michigan. Then they built a much larger facility as their production facility. Out Rapids. Nearby. This beer is huge in Michigan. They're selling boatloads of it to the point where it's influencing other regional breweries to try doing this and for this category. Short's Local's Light comes in a 12-pack. They're $15.99. This was first released in 2004. As much as this seems like a new phenomenon, they've been making this beer for a long time. That even predates the sale of Shorts to Heineken. A lot of people don't realize that, but Heineken bought Shorts after they bought Laganitas. This is just selling like crazy in Michigan in part because of this pre-attractive price point. It's often on sale for even less. Heineken helps make that happen. This is one of the major reasons that a lot of breweries that are trying to figure out a way to crank something and that beer that will save them type deal. They're looking at sales of Local's Light. The first time I went to Shorts was probably 2004 or 2005. That was right after they opened, so they've been making this since the beginning, I think. This definitely follows in the footsteps of a Sam Adams Light and that they weren't afraid to go above the 100 calorie threshold. It's also higher ABV. It's the highest ABV on the list. It's 5.2. That's just like standard beer ABV. It has the highest IBUs of any that were listed. Most of these didn't even list it, but it has 11. It's an all malt beer. It's made with Pilsner Malt and Perola Hops. I am not surprised that my main note here was a real malt character and a bit fruity. Yeah. A little weedy. This beer, especially when it's fresh, is good. I mean, they put a pretty generous code date on it, I think a little too long. But when you can get this super fresh, it's a pretty good beer. Like it. Number three, Montucky Cold Snack Coors. Hey, I called that one. I wrote Montucky Tinny. Oh, it is snacking. I've never had this before. I included it the last time we did this when we did the Kraft Paps kind of thing. And it's because this is a light beer, but they don't even really market it that way. I stand corrected. I have had it and I don't recall. This, again, is the biggest driver of this category, is the success of Montucky. Started by a pair of friends. They were out skiing out in Montana, I think, and noticed that everyone was drinking paps and thought, why can't we make a beer like this? We'll put this kind of wacky appeals to the youngins color scheme. We'll put a horse on it. It looks like it should be on the side of a conversion van in 1974. There's a penny in the bottom of every can too. We sold a lot of this down in Champagne. We have given the spirit too many words. This is 4.1 percent ABV, 103 calories, 5.9 carbs. It is contracted. They don't have a brewery or a brand, and then they brew it at different breweries. It's contracted in La Crosse, Wisconsin, home of Old Style. The City Brewing is the current brewery name, and a couple of the other beers on our list are also brewed there. La Crosse is a nice place. Sure. This comes in six pack Tall Boys. Their bar to capita ratio is very high there. So a six pack of Tall Boys is $9.99. That's part of the success of this. People seem to like that. The 12 packs are $14.99. They're sometimes extremely cheap. See, we've had them for like $11.50. This brand is doing enough damage that Gallo just bought them. Gallo. Wow. Isn't that wacky? That's diversification. Number four, Coors Light. Oh, I guess that too. That was my first guess at Coors Light. Actually, Montucky was, but then you quit the change to two Montuckys. Yeah, once I got that metallic finish on the Montucky, I was like, I mean, I was doing research down there, and everything that was popular, I had to try. I did a side by side of Keystone Light and Natural Light. As one does. And Natty. Natural Light preferred, because it didn't taste like much, and Keystone tastes like something. Yeah. I like this. This was one of my favorites. Clean, touch of sweetness. Coors always does well in these kind of blind taste tests. Yeah. It has more character than I recall. In the light beer wars, Miller Light was king for years, then Bud Light overtook it, then Coors Light. Now, we're in low carb territory and ultra is king, but for a good chunk there, Coors Light was one of the most popular light beers in America. It is 4.2 percent ABV, 102 calories, five grams of carbs. It's made with 100 percent American grown, high country Moravian barley. Again, totally referencing the old country here. Rich Corinthian leather. That's what gives the beer its brilliant golden color. They say they use hop extract, made from a unique, it sounds like they imply they either make them or they have them made specifically for them. Just kind of interesting. And then corn syrup. This is available, same kind of standard macro pricing. These are the everyday prices, $12.99 a 12-pack, $21.99 a 24-pack, but often on sale. These brown bottles, man. Is that Moravian corn syrup? I hear that's the good stuff. You know that Peroni is brewed in Wisconsin now? Really? And they say that it's made with Italian corn. So they import the corn from Italy. No way. Yeah. Isn't that hilarious? Only the finest Italian maize, and they call it maize. They're like a maize. Yeah. You got to cut that out. Roger, it's audio medium, but Roger did most of the talking with the handbag. I can do that. I'm Italian. Oh, okay. We're just buying Polenta at the grocery store. Number five. Number five is Old Style Light. I wrote down Old Style Light, then crossed it out, because I thought the next one was Old Style Light. This is also made at, like I said, City Brewery, the Pabst Brewing Company. Long gone as an actual brewery. It's been a holding company for years. They famously, they approached Miller Brewing Company, and Miller had been contracting their beer for a couple decades. To their credit, they grew Pabst Brew Ribbon from a totally insignificant retro brand to the Miller, you know, was like, yeah, whatever, we'll make your beer. To them, Miller realized, uh-oh, these guys are serious competition. I think at the time, PBR was only available in like seven or eight states. Now it's in all 50 states. Pabst kind of their MO was to buy all these retro brands. So they have the rights to a bunch of things. Old Style, Platts, Schlitz, PBR. So Old Style, of course, super affiliated with the city of Chicago, the Chicago Cubs. Formerly Chicago Cubs. Well, you're never going to divorce with the fans thing. Obviously, evoking kind of the Bavarian old Bohemian tradition with the artwork and stuff. This is the can that everybody's aping when they do these old timey looking packages. This one got to start for me. I like this one. And I think it's stunning that this comes out of the same brewery as Montucky Cold Snack. They really switched the recipe up to crank out that other stuff. So a little note for the Paps Company. Old Style has no website. So maybe spend a couple bucks and get somebody to whip up a website for you. No website? Yeah. I literally have no information on this beer. Is this Crowley? 4.6% ABV and it's contracted at City Brewing since 2023. That's literally all I have. I don't think it's croissant, labor-intensive, old school process that would produce some natural carbonation. That was the old slogan about Old Style was that it was fully croissant. That would not be cost-effective for them to bother to croissant it. The majority of the beer that you buy is force carbonated. So instead of waiting for the natural fermentation to take place under pressure and capturing that within a pressurized tank, they just pump CO2 into the beer. You might remember during the pandemic and the supply shortage, people were freaking out because they literally couldn't buy enough CO2 to carbonate things. If we could get some of our next round of scientists out there, if it was more cost-effective to capture and clean CO2, breweries make tons of CO2 when they're fermenting, and they just let it blow off into the atmosphere. Okay. Old style light comes in 30-pack racks for $18.99. There you go. And they're off and on sale. Nice price. Yeah. Number six, Miller High Life Light. Really? From a can. That's surprising. I really like this beer. Last time I did this exercise. I wonder if it's different from a bottle. Miller High Life Light, it disappeared for a while, and it has enough of a hardcore fan base that they brought it back. Again, it disappeared during the pandemic supply chain, crazy days. Miller High Life Light is 4.1% ABV, 107 calories, 6.2 carbs. It's made with water, barley malt, corn syrup, yeast and hop extract. It was introduced in 1994, and it is a whopping five IBU. One thing I wanted to mention here, if any of you listeners are curious about, so how exactly does the light compare to the original in the stats? For comparison, a normal high life is 4.6% ABV, pretty low, 141 calories, so again, you're only saving... It's two chips. Not much. Again, if you're eating those wings and dipping them in the sauce. And it's 12.2 carbs, so it's like double the carbs, but not necessarily as much of a difference as you might think. Just throwing it out there. Truly earning its place with that many carbs as a key ingredient in the spaghet. Yes, definitely try this as a spaghet. It's the classic hobo no groney. Hobo no groney. That sounds good to me right now. It comes in 12-pack cans or bottles. Of course, the beautiful champagne style bottle that's clear, but don't worry, it uses those light stable glena hops. Or you can get it in a nice big 30-rack. $9.99 for the 12-packs, $19.99 for the 30-racks. Those are the everyday prices, often on sale. Number seven, Shiner Light Blonde. What? This was disappointing to see that this was not good. Shiner usually makes great beer. They've been around for quite some time. This is like a true craft, no adjunct. They've been making this for a while too. First released in 2011. 4.2% ABV, nine IBU, made with two row barley and golding hops. It's only 99 calories, 5.2 carbs. I don't know, sometimes with craft, you might hit a batch that doesn't exactly sing. For years, this was one of my absolute go-to recommendations of light beer. What people should, if they wanted something different, something that was a little higher quality. We need born on dates. It's so key. It's so important to these tastings. Yeah, some of this could be that. I know this is in code, but it's not necessarily super fresh. But if that's what we're buying it from the distributor at, and I know it wasn't in store super long, but that's the realities of beer. We're kind of paralyzed by choice these days. So we're always trying to keep our eye on that and offer you the freshest beer possible. But yeah, I don't know. This one didn't do much for me. And it's sad because they used to be a great beer. Shiner is available in 12-pack cans or bottles, $17.99. Number eight, a not bad one, Garage Beer Classic Light. Is there a not light? All Garage Beer is light, isn't it? Like Montucky? They have a lime. Yeah, they're all light. Okay. Lime light. Garage Beer. Garage Beer is definitely competing with Montucky, doing the kind of like, don't think about it so much. This is just beer. I think they've even tried to trademark beer-flavored beer. This got an influx of fanfare. The Kelsey Brothers have become partners in it. Who? Taylor Swift's boyfriend? Yeah. Now, Taylor Swift's boyfriend's brother is the main. Jason's more associated than Travis, but I think they both are. Man has this exploded in popularity. Yeah. I mean, people did like how he ripped his shirt off, and he seems like the kind of guy that likes to have a good time. The design is on point here. They just took Miller High Life and took off the serifs. That's about it. I thought this was fine. Yeah. I thought this was pretty good. This is number eight, right? Yeah. Number eight gets passed. I said that this was one of the better ones. That is Garaje. Garaje. Garaje. Yeah. It was slightly sweeter than some, had some actual malt character. I wrote pretty good, which is really good for my notes. If I don't read them. In the grand scheme of things. So it's 4% ABV. It's 95 calories. It's only three carbs. So that's pretty interesting. Remember how I was telling you guys no one really divulges how much of the grain bill is adjunct or not? One of the things Garage Beer likes to emphasize is that it's 80% of it is a grain bill. I don't know if that necessarily means it's all barley, but that seemingly means it's not like corn syrup or like syrup. So maybe that's part of the secret of their success to some degree. It is available in 12-pack cans for $14.99, 24-packs now as well for $24.99, but both of those prices are every day, often on sale. These are also going to be available in buckets. Just like a bucket that you crack the lid and you got a bucket of beer? It's like a Menard's bucket full of cans. Yeah. You're imagining the five-bottle bucket at a bar. This is like a paint bucket. I'm imagining a bucket full of draft beer that I can just pour into my face. They crossed off Home Depot. Oh. Good for them. Based on how things are going, I'm betting that the next one is a macro. Oh my. Number nine. Number nine. Yuengling Light, baby. Yuengling Light. Look at that darling can. Special Field and Stream Edition. Yuengling Light, Special Field and Stream Edition. This was a standout, I think. If you're a loner camping by a river, by a mountain. What is it? Is Field and Stream, isn't that like a tier of Range Rover? It's a magazine. It's a magazine. For hunters. That's beers for you. I like that can. This is, I knew that this was going to be Yuengling because of the color. Ah. Yeah, that's just the one that was. Yeah. That's kind of Yuengling's signature thing is that their normal beer is amber. The light is a little lighter in color, but it still has some of that character. It's good. Yeah. I was impressed by this. 4% ABV. It's only 99 calories, which is pretty impressive for the flavor that it delivered. One of the most notable things here, I misspoke, this is, I think, the highest IBU. This is 15 IBU. The highest. Clock it in at 15. I did write real beer character on my note. Yeah, malt. What's interesting with them is that this is 3.2 carbs, and they have a whole separate low carb beer called Flight, which I don't really care for. Again, we're really talking about tiny differences here. I think 3.2, Flight might be like 2.2. Roger, you know the difference. Is that it fits in your skinny can koozie. True. Yeah, yeah, yeah. And it has that, you know, American Airlines branding. Yuengling Light comes in 12 packs. Cans or bottles, including these charming Field and Stream Cans, which are limited edition, for $13.99, a 12 pack, $24.99, 24 packs. Again, those are the everyday prices. They sometimes go on sale. Bring back collectible beer cans. Funny you should say that, Craig. There are a bunch of coming because this year is a major anniversary for Anheuser-Busch. It's also the 250th anniversary of our country. Great. So you got lots of collectible cans coming. That's kind of an all, everything's like, bourbon is going back into like ceramic decanters. You can go into any Binny's and see like five different, like a turkey and an eagle and a- Yeah. That's a throwback. Yeah. My grandpa's basement from here up from waste up was beer cans and they were each unique. They had all the collectible different beer cans and like one little corner had ladies. Ladies on beer cans. Was that old frothing slosh? I have no idea. I was like, hey, Greg's over there at the broom handle. Get away from there, boy. Yeah, but mostly it was like a trout, deer, things that people want to kill. Some nice Schmitz cans. Okay. Number 10. Bud Light. Bud Light. Well, that was the DMS one. Yeah, I was getting sulfur from this. I didn't like this. In all fairness, I've never cared for Bud Light. I've always thought Bush Light was better. Lately, Bush Light's been crushing it and I'm not surprised at all. Bud Light, again, spent a lot of money and created a lot of very iconic advertising. I think that's really what's helped build the brand. I'm sure you guys at the tip of your tongue have many of their silly ad campaigns. I'm Kid Rock. What's up? The Budweiser Frogs. This is 4.2% ABV. It is 110 calories. It's also 6.6 carbs. So not necessarily the lowest carb or calorie count. This is the one that's made with rice. Rice is usually used to really make it crisp and light. It can also help with like before they could filter everything, it helped make clearer beer. That was kind of part of the initial idea more than anything else. Now it's more employed for the body to make it crisper. The bottle says always brewed with four simple ingredients for a clean, crisp taste. Four? Yeah, rice, water, yeast, and hops. Hops, barley, water, and rice. They're not counting yeast. Oh, barley. Okay, there is barley. Thank you. Kind of blowing my mind there. Yeast never really counts. I think it's probably because of the Rhein-Heizk about so old that they didn't even know what science was at the time. So yeast always gets ignored even though it's hugely important. Listen to how they describe rice. I thought you get a kick out of this. They talk about hops are aromatic. They're a flower. Give it this. Barley, it's an ancient grain. Signature mall character. Water, blah, blah, blah. Rice, grown in over 100 countries and eaten by more people in the world than any other grain. Rice also provides Bud Light with its crisp, clean finish. Thanks for the quick overview on rice, Bud Light. There's a real load of feed days there. Without rice, people would be hungry and thirsty. Rice is, stop making fun of rice. It keeps a lot of people fed. Bud Light, made with the grain that is the easiest caloric extraction per square acre of land. How about rice? We covered price and everything. We good? No, we didn't. Bud Light, it comes in every package conceivable. Yeah, exactly. Every format conceivable in any number of containers. And the price fluctuates wildly. And yes, we probably have it on sale. Perfect. Thank you. Okay. Number 11. Half Acre Light. Half Acre Light. Half Acre Light. This is what I thought was Bush Light. I knew that you were going to have a half acre in here, and I knew it was going to be disappointing. It's not the the craft guys game. I mean, I think we've all kind of seen that, that again, you got to be really careful with these. Any subtleness to it is going to affect. It's going to be perceivable. I didn't think this was bad, but it wasn't a standout. I got tons of acid aldehyde from it. Just kept writing apple, apple, apple. This is new to the market. Just came out. It's 4% ABV, 99 calories. Even though they're a craft brewery, they don't talk about the ingredients at all, which I found very strange. This says it's a modern light beer brewed with care and character. It's built for balance. Expect light body, gentle carbonation, super smooth finish, so leaves you refreshed, crisp, clean, extremely refreshing. Thanks for the marketing copy, guys. Maybe ice cold on draft or something. It plays a little better. I didn't think it was awful, like you said. Again, if somebody brought the pitcher with the ice thing in the middle, you know, that steals a beer out of the pitcher from you, I would drink it and I would eat cheese curds and not think too hard. Yeah. 12-pack cans, $17.99. So again, they're putting themselves in a category where it's all built on economy and price, and they're, you know. Well, that's the thing. The ones that are macro adjacent that are killing it have big companies or they're being contract brewed. How do you scale something like this and make it distinctive enough that anybody is going to want to pay extra for it? Right. Perfectly said. Don't think I have anything to add. All right. Well, by process of elimination. Wait. So what does that mean? Bush light. Bush light. Okay. Number 12. Bush light. Cold and smooth. You don't know that it's cold. Bottle. The bottle is telling me it's cold. Cold. Out of the package. It's so stupid. It does have mountains on it. Head for the mountains. A bush. A lot of mountains in front of us. They're all lined up. I never clocked the fact that I always associate mountains with coors because obviously, but it's from St. Louis. Have you seen the mountains of St. Louis? No, those are clouds. Yeah, good point. The mountains of St. Louis. The mountains. Yeah, so Bush Light has been, sales have been through the roof. It does offer, you know, an economical option. People typically are buying this in big old 30 racks. It is 4.1% ABV, 95 calories and only 3.2 carbs. The interesting thing about this recipe, it is made with water, barley, corn grits, and hops. That's actually a big step. If you're going to use corn grits, you need to like treat them completely separately and use a tank where it's essentially a cereal cooker, where then you are cooking the corn grits to extract the sugars from the starches. So I do kind of give them props that for this recipe, they are taking extra steps. To make this beer. All that and then you put it in a 30 rack for like $15.99? Yeah, 30 rack, well, all beer prices have been going up lately. You know, a lot of different reasons. Aluminum's going up. 30 packs are now $20.99 every day. But, you know, again, look for sales. 12 packs, bottles or cans, $10.99 every day. So still, those are more economical. They sometimes go on sale for less than that as well. But, yeah, I thought that was kind of interesting. That was definitely a standout ingredient wise. It wasn't made with corn syrup or rice. This debuted as Bush Light Draft in 1989. It became Bush Light in 1994. Okay. Well, this is fun. This was a tasting. Yeah. This was an experience. I think it stood out that Yuengling, you know, was one of the few people that used different ingredients and that showed Bush Latte. Today I thought was a little different too. Yay, Corn Grit. I'm pleasantly surprised by Miller Lite and Old Style is a quite pleasant surprise for me. Coors Light. Coors Light, yep. Confirming this weird taste I've had for Coors Light in the last few months. Perplexed by the love for this beer. Still don't get it. Totally. Montucky is just, I don't get it. It's a lifestyle brand. I guess it looks pretty. It is a lifestyle brand. Yep. So is garage beer, but it's solid. Okay, bro. There you go. Get out there and drink what you like. Absolutely. Drink what you like. And buy it from Binny's. There you go. Tastes great. Less filling. Less filling. You guys want to go get like an IPA? Yeah. Hell yeah. All right. We're punching out. Hey, thanks for listening to Barrel to Bottle The Binnys Podcast. I hope you found this enlightening. He's been waiting the whole podcast. That was a good one, Greg. Back in your feed real soon with something great. Until then, I'm Greg. I'm Chris. I'm Dan. And I'm Roger. Keep tasting.