Why do americans drink budweiser

In truth, Americans' tastes are shifting, though not as quickly as craft connoisseurs might hope. Restoring America. But while there's been a burst of craft brewers introducing beers with complex flavors, Americans still largely love their beer to taste one way: bland. Almost every best selling beer is a light beer.

Bud Light, the most popular brand by far, accounts for nearly one out of every four beers sold in the United States. Dismayed by the popularity of tasteless beers, economist Ranjit Dighe decided to figure out the origins of Americans' preference for pilsners, lagers and other milder brews. What he found is that a taste for bland beer might as well run in Americans' veins. America, however, was the land of plenty, and beer didn't need to substitute for food.

Americans simply wanted to drink to "pass time pleasantly in jovial society," noted one editor at a popular brewing trade publication in the s. And when Americans wanted to drink, they wanted to drink. Lighter lagers, which went down smooth and easy, were more appropriate to the young nation's new style.

Beer brewers such as Busch quickly noticed the trend, and set out to "modernize" beer by developing a brew appealing to the new taste that would also be easier to preserve and ship as American breweries grew their businesses. The golden moment for these brewers arrived shortly after the Vienna Exposition, where visiting Americans were introduced to light varieties of lagers and pilsners, including a champagne-like beer from the Bohemian city of Budweis today located in the Czech Republic that stole the show.

This lighter style of beer had existed for years, but was relatively unknown in America because most German-American brewers were from regions where brewing traditions favored darker beers. The Budweis brewery made beer for the official court, advertising itself as the "Beer of Kings," a slogan that was later adapted by Busch for his American audience. Recreating Budweis in America, however, was nearly impossible because of the difference between American and European barley.

American barley was higher in protein, which resulted in unappealing blobs and undissolved yeast that looked like phlegm floating in beer that was supposed to be crystal clear. But technology and creativity came to the rescue. Busch and his scientists tackled the problem by experimenting with alternate cooking techniques and mixing in starchy grains such as white corn and rice that absorbed excess proteins and helped their beer attain the lemon-colored transparency they were seeking.

Today, this process of "adjunct brewing" is often derided as a way to stretch grains and save money, but in Busch's time high rice prices meant that Busch spent more on his beer and thus charged more for it. He also sold his Budweiser Germans add er to the end of word to denote location in bottles rather than casks to prevent fraudulent imitators from taking advantage of the era's lax copyright laws. Aside from a few drinkers who spit it out during taste tests, the beer was a hit.

Busch and his competitors, many of whom had developed comparable beers using similar techniques, paraded their brews around international competitions and vacuumed up the awards though it should be noted that the breweries made some efforts to influence the judges.

The court of public opinion also awarded them with boatloads of cash—Americans drinking lighter lagers consumed three times as much beer as their German-born counterparts who preferred darker beers, according to the New York Times in Unlike European countries with beer preferences and styles that have evolved over centuries, America lacks a homegrown brewing tradition.

The classic American beer is an "adjunct pilsner," which means that some of the malted barley is replaced with corn or rice. The effect is a beer that's lighter, clearer and less hoppy than its counterparts in countries like England, Germany and Belgium. In colonial America, English-style beers and ales predominated, but rum and then whiskey were the drink of choice. Cider, easier to make at home, overtook beer by the early 19th century. However, the American beer market grew during the great midth century wave of German immigration.

German lagers were an immediate hit, partially because the German brewing method of bottom fermentation — which involves a relatively long fermentation period and cold storage — made for a more consistent, storable product than top-fermented ales.

The lagers were also mellower, though they were dark and hearty compared to what would become popular later. But the "lager bier craze" dovetailed with another big trend: the temperance movement , which at various times sought to reduce problem drinking, reduce drinking more generally and eradicate alcohol consumption completely. From to , the temperance movement gained momentum as more and more Americans were taking voluntary " temperance pledges " and giving up spirits and cider.

German brewers always maintained that beer was a "temperance beverage," unlike ardent spirits such as whiskey. And indeed, European temperance movements did tend to regard beer as relatively harmless. But activists in the American temperance movement — which by then had become more about abstinence and intertwined with evangelical Protestantism — didn't buy the argument. The s saw the first big push for state-level prohibition laws , which ended up being passed in a handful of states.

Those laws didn't last for a variety of reasons including the Civil War , but they did serve notice to the brewers that they needed to work harder to convince the public that beer was a temperance beverage. This article was originally published on The Conversation. Read the original article. In the s, American beer would become mellower still with the advent of a new type of lager: the Bohemian pilsner.

Clearer, lighter and blander than the Bavarian lagers that had previously dominated the market, pilsners looked cleaner, healthier, more stable and less intoxicating. As an issue of the trade publication Western Brewer noted , Americans "want a clear beer of light color, mild and not too bitter taste. Brewers and drinkers who wanted to avert the temperance movement's gaze naturally chose light pilsners over dark lagers.

But lighter beer also was a good fit for the long hours of American factory workers, many of whom ate at saloons between shifts. Coming back to work drunk could get you fired, so if you wanted a beer or two with the salty saloon fare, the weakest beers were the best bet.