‘Splain Me

Can someone explain the Monty Python-esque anti-corn syrup Budweiser ads to me? Doesn’t Anheuser-Busch InBev use rice syrup in Budweiser? That doesn’t belong in beer, either. In Germany that couldn’t even be sold as beer.

6 comments… add one
  • PD Shaw Link

    I think the odder quirk is that Anheuser markets Busch beer which is corn adjunct beer, and also other InBev beers like Bass and Stella Artois (the latter of which was advertised during the Super Bowl) contain corn.

  • Andy Link

    Corn syrup is currently the trendy nutrition bête noire. I found the ads to be very deceptive considering the brewing process removes or changes any corn syrup.

    It reminds me of those Michelob Ultra commercials where young, attractive and very fit people are at the gym and then have an Ultra afterword because “low carbs” = healthy.

  • PD Shaw Link

    I used to see signs in bars calling Bud a rice bear, but that may be a corn belt thing. I was looking for a sign to refresh my memory last week and came into a lot of background on Budweiser and promoting itself as adding rice, instead of corn, as a superior and more expensive technique:

    https://sites.google.com/site/jesskiddenparttwo/home/rice-adjunct-in-us-beers/rice-in-budweiser

    Some of those things surprised me; they were bragging about their rice, and that it is Southern rice, and while not clear from the piece, rice and beer were being added to the beer shortly after the Civil War. Why? Because American barley was six-row, compared to European two-row barley, and thus had more proteins which made the beer heavier. It looks like the technology may have been developed in Northern Germany, and was being used at a large scale by 1890. There was a German, whose name I forget, who bought a brewing newspaper in NY, who promoted the idea of using adjuncts to lighten the beer. Busch appeared to believe that America was well-suited for a pilsner style beer (because of the heat and humidity?) and was an early proponent, but not the only one.

  • PD Shaw Link

    After doing a lot of this research, a few days ago I started getting advertisements on a national baseball blog in which Anheuser Busch assured me that it is a major purchaser of American corn. Was it my research, is it my location?

    Another observation, a number of the craft beers, like Sierra Nevada, naturally carbonate their beer by adding some (corn) sugar before bottling. I think this turns into carbon-dioxide and a miniscule amount of alcohol, so there is probably nothing recognizable as corn left. (I think this is what I used to do home-brewing)

  • Andy Link

    PD is exactly right. That’s why the whole thing is deceptive. Beer doesn’t contain corn syrup, it contains the yeast-produced byproducts of cornsyrup.

  • Guarneri Link

    This is why mankind should drink only bourbon or scotch.

Leave a Comment