They're bringing back Schlitz!

[KB2WIG]

 " lite beer had the same alcoholic content as "regular" beer yes..no?? "

Less ETHL, less Calories.

klc


I have to admit i was involved in the tastes test that led to Utica Club Light.... it was free,; we had to answer a questioneer to get another free case...

[K9ACT]

" lite beer had the same alcoholic content as "regular" beer yes..no?? "

Less ETHL, less Calories.

And what is the cheapest way to do that?  Add water, of course.

Lite is typically about 3.5 to 4% alcohol.  Not much better than what used to be called 3-2 beer.

"Standard" beer is supposed to be about 5%.

US law says anything over 5.5% must be called "Malt Liquor".

Another myth in this country is Bock beer.  This style is a high gravity dark beer that by defiinition has greater alcohol that typical beer.  As it is not labeled Malt Liquor, it obviously is not really Bock Beer.

The typical Bock is just the same old garbage with some carmel coloring added.

Anchor Brewing makes a really good Bock taste alike but it of course is not if it's legal.

js

[Ed-VA3ES]

Real breweries have trucks full of malted barley in the receiving docks but "American Premium" breweries have tank cars filled with corn syrup and maybe a bag of malt just to keep the label honest.

But the best joke on Joe Sixpack is so-called "lite beer".  They take already lousy corn syrup beer and add enough water to it to reduce the calories and alcohol and the idiots love it.
js 

Couldn't agree more. Most domestic American (and Canadian beer too) is made from corn mash.  They maybe wave a bag of hops or barley over it.  The Canadian domestics, (Labatt, Molson, etc.) are all made from this  scrap. Tastes like it too.

BTW - most Canadian beer is 5% alcohol, except for Molson Brador (only available in Quebec) which is 5.5%.  Most of the imported Ales I drink are higher than  that.

[k4kyv]

You are refering to the German Purity Law "Rhineheigtsgabot" (my spelling) which applies only in Germany and only to beer so labled.  I don't trust the Germans any more than any other country to abide by such laws anymore.

Wheat beers were originally forbidden by the Reinheitsgebot (German beer purity law), that forbade the inclusion of anything but barley, hops and water (spontaneous fermentation was used instead of yeast). Some say the law was originally intended to save wheat for the baking of bread. Roger Protz states that the Bavarian royal family held a monopoly over barley production and wished to prevent the use of other grains in beer from undermining their monopoly. All the while, the royal Wittelsbach gangsters were still enjoying wheat beers denied to the general population. The laws were relaxed to allow the Schneider brewery to brew wheat beers in 1850. Schneider Weisse is still one of the better examples of the type, and somewhat darker than most.

http://www.germanbeerguide.co.uk/hefeweiz.html

But the best joke on Joe Sixpack is so-called "lite beer".  They take already lousy corn syrup beer and add enough water to it to reduce the calories and alcohol and the idiots love it.

They add something to the "lite" beers that gives me a headache, besides the fact that it tastes like a shandy made with low quality beer and some cheap imitation of Perrier water.

I thought maybe the headache was my imagination, but my father-in-law says it affects him the same way.

I notice that in the beer section of in any grocery store round here, typically about 40% of the shelf space is taken up with Bud Lite, and maybe another 30% with regular Budweiser, 25% with other brands of American lawnmower beer (doesn't taste too bad right after you have just finished cutting the grass), and maybe 5% with real beer.

If beer preferences, as indicated by what is stocked on the store shelves, are a cross-section sample of voters, no wonder we have such a lousy bunch of politicians elected to office.



 

[Sam KS2AM]

Real breweries have trucks full of malted barley in the receiving docks but "American Premium" breweries have tank cars filled with corn syrup and maybe a bag of malt just to keep the label honest.

But the best joke on Joe Sixpack is so-called "lite beer".  They take already lousy corn syrup beer and add enough water to it to reduce the calories and alcohol and the idiots love it.
js 

Couldn't agree more. Most domestic American (and Canadian beer too) is made from corn mash.  They maybe wave a bag of hops or barley over it.  The Canadian domestics, (Labatt, Molson, etc.) are all made from this  scrap. Tastes like it too.

BTW - most Canadian beer is 5% alcohol, except for Molson Brador (only available in Quebec) which is 5.5%.  Most of the imported Ales I drink are higher than  that.

No Brador in Ontario, eh     ?  Not the last time I checked: 

http://www.thebeerstore.ca/Beers/branddetails.asp?id=0641

[K9ACT]

Wheat beers were originally forbidden by the Reinheitsgebot (German beer purity law), that forbade the inclusion of anything but barley, hops and water (spontaneous fermentation was used instead of yeast).

They didn't know what yeast was at that time and thanks for the spelling.  I was counting on you for that.
Interesting history on the reason for the law.

As a point of interest, I have never been able to develop a taste for wheat beer.  It reminds me too much of some of my early disasters when I first started brewing.

One in particular, was intentional as an experiment.  I made a typical batch but used baker's yeast just to see what it would taste like.  And in retrospect, it tasted very much like wheat beer and many of those expensive highly regarded Belgian Trapist ales.  These all taste to me like they are playing a game with the Gringos to see what kind of garbage they can be conned into believing it good.

>They add something to the "lite" beers that gives me a headache, besides the fact that it tastes like a shandy made with low quality beer and some cheap imitation of Perrier water.

I know quite a few people can not drink commercial beer at all because of headaches.  We have a number of friends who can only drink our beer for the same reason.

>I notice that in the beer section of in any grocery store round here, typically about 40% of the shelf space is taken up with Bud Lite, and maybe another 30% with regular Budweiser, 25% with other brands of American lawnmower beer (doesn't taste too bad right after you have just finished cutting the grass)

Yes it does.  I would rather drink water.  This is also a problem with taverns and most restraunts.  Fortunately, I also enjoy wine but I can not sit down to a bar and drink the crap that local thugs force them to sell.

>If beer preferences, as indicated by what is stocked on the store shelves, are a cross-section sample of voters, no wonder we have such a lousy bunch of politicians elected to office.

As the Roman elite used to say, pan e circensus  give them bread and circuses and they won't bother us.
Now that translates to Bud and foodball games.

js



 

[/quote]

[KF8XO]

"When your out of Schlitz, your out of beer."

[Ed-VA3ES]

No Brador in Ontario, eh     ?  Not the last time I checked: 
http://www.thebeerstore.ca/Beers/branddetails.asp?id=0641

Right you are!   I hadn't checked the Beer Store's listings for Brador, as I find it too filling (at 6.2%, no wonder!).    I can't even finish one of those!   

[KC4ALF]

I still Remember Stroh's. Used to pass the old brewery near philly I think it was.
As horrib;e as it is you couldn't go to a Pirates game and not drink Iron City. When I go home I always bring a cple of cases down to keep in the fridge for moochers. It's amazing how long they will stay in there 

[flintstone mop]

The Chinese might say "It's Mirror Time"

Fred

[k4kyv]

I used to attend the Cincinnati Stag Hamfest back in the mid 60's, held the 3rd weekend in September every year.  You paid somewhere between $5 and $7 for admission (expensive for a hamfest at the time), but the ticket included access to all the Hudepohl you could drink.  At several locations in the flea market there was a barrel on tap and you just helped yourself.  I was always careful not to overindulge, out of fear of missing a good purchase at the flea market.  It was 90% flea market, with very few commercial vendors.

The goodie selection at that hamfest was almost equal to Dayton, even though the outdoor vendor area was only about 1/3 the size or less. One of the events was always a radio-controlled model plane flying demonstration in the afternoon.

It was located at Stricker's Grove, just north of town.  But sometime in the early 70's, the original Stricker's Grove was sold to a developer, and the park was relocated about 10 miles farther out of town.  The new location was a nice enough place for a hamfest, but attendance dwindled from what it was at the original site.  They eliminated the "stag only" policy as well as the all-you-can-drink Hodepohl feature.  It evolved into just a run-of-the-mill medium-sized hamfest.  The last time I attended was sometime in the late 80's or early 90's, when I decided it was no longer worth the 300-mile journey to Cincinnati and back.

[k3sqp]

It's interesting that in most cases when a beer "returns' it's because the"brand " was sold
not the brewery. Recently Anheuser-Busch bought the Rolling Rock brand. Rolling Rock
is now made IN NJ ( Ithink) nowhere near the "glasslined tanks of old Latrobe" In fact from those
same tanks now comes Samuel Adams Lager. Jim Koch  from Boston has always contract brewed his beers
at various locations. One of the first to make Sam Adams was Pgh Brewing Co. The maker of Iron City beer.
 Pete Slosberg  of Petes Wicked Ale also operates in this manner...
    Interstingly the growth of micro brewers  and home brewing in the USA came in 1976 when
a mistake was found in the law that repealed prohiibition. The law should have read that it
was permissible to make ,at home 200 gallons of wine or  beer. However the word beer was omitted
and in 1976 the correction was signed into law by Pres. Jimmy Carter...
Frank
K3SQP

[K9ACT]

  Interstingly the growth of micro brwers and home brewing in the USa came in 1976 when
a mistake was found in the law that repealed prohiibition. The law should have read that is
was permissible to make at home 200 gallons of wine or  beer. However the word beer was omitted
and in 1976 the correction was signed into law by Pres. Jimmy Carter...
Frank
K3SQP

Too bad I couldn't copy you this well on 40 last night Frank.

I think the real surge in homebrewing was when a guy named Papazian started Zymurgy magazine and the American Homebrewers Association.

His classic book and efforts converted the homebrewer from the brunt of jokes about bathubs to some of the most expert brewers on the planet.

He attracted the interest of professional brewers and scientists who took the guesswork and black magic out of the process on a small scale.

The quantum leap from making beer from canned extract to using fresh malted barley was in no small way, assisted by the development of the MALTMILL (TM) which allowed hombrewers to properly crush the malt at a price they could afford.

In all humility, I must confess to being the developer of said mill.  To date, we have sold over 20,000 of them and it is still considered the Rolls of small mills.

For the real hype..... http://schmidling.com/maltmill.htm

js

[W4EWH]

You are refering to the German Purity Law "Rhineheigtsgabot" (my spelling) which applies only in Germany and only to beer so labled. 
 

I saw a stand-up comic doing a routine about that law: he asked what kind of purity we could expect from a law passed in the 1600's. Maybe, he said, the brewer was required to clean the dead birds out of the brew before bottling.

W1AC

[W4EWH]

... for both beer and radios, I prefer the homebrew.

I'm curious: how much time and money would I expend to brew my own beer?

I'm not, by any means, a connoisseur, so I just need the basics: so
long as I can be sure it will come out with Ethanol in it instead of
Methanol, I'd be happy to try it.

W1AC

P.S. What is the deal with Methanol, anyway? Everything I've read
about moonshine includes draconian warnings about winding up blind
drunk or dead. Hype? Truth?

[flintstone mop]

I knew a fella who brewed his own. I don't think it's that complicated. You can make it any strength or color you like.
Fred

[W1GUD]

K44KYV:  you rock sir!!!

Thanks for the Jerry Lee

73....

Warren W1GUD

Tampa 3675 AM

[w4bfs]

I hope I get this right ... ethanol boils at 172 degrees F @ atmospheric pressure ... the next fraction to boil is Fusel oil, which boils at 176/178 F ... Fusel oil is something I don't know much about but I'll bet its nasty ... methanol or wood alcohol is not ordinarily a product of sugar fermentation ... blindness comes from impurities (such as lead salts from old radiators) leaching out during distilation ... If you are going to make your own, you need to know what you are doing ... 73 .. John

[k4kyv]

Interestingly the growth of micro brewers  and home brewing in the USA came in 1976 when a mistake was found in the law that repealed prohibition. The law should have read that it was permissible to make ,at home 200 gallons of wine or  beer. However the word beer was omitted and in 1976 the correction was signed into law by Pres. Jimmy Carter...

I'm not sure it was actually illegal to homebrew beer before 1976.  As I recall you could mail order the ingredients back in the 50's, from obscure ads in the back pages of magazines like Popular Mechanics.  The only people I ever heard of getting busted were makers of moonshine whiskey.

I recall once seeing an old set of instructions for a homebrewing kit sold during Prohibition.  They gave step by step instructions exactly how to do it, but every  sentence was written in the negative...

"Don't boil the water.  Don't add malt.  Don't allow it to ferment, etc."

around here we called it shitz

Q: Why should women not pee on the beach?

A: Because they might get sand in their Schlitz.

[K9ACT]

You are refering to the German Purity Law "Rhineheigtsgabot" (my spelling) which applies only in Germany and only to beer so labled. 
 

I saw a stand-up comic doing a routine about that law: he asked what kind of purity we could expect from a law passed in the 1600's. Maybe, he said, the brewer was required to clean the dead birds out of the brew before bottling.

Can't help but compare this to the biblical food laws that millions of religious folks still practice as if they were still valid.

js

[K9ACT]

... for both beer and radios, I prefer the homebrew.

I'm curious: how much time and money would I expend to brew my own beer?

Equipment and labor aside, the raw materials for all grain beer is on the order of $1 per gallon.


P.S. What is the deal with Methanol, anyway? Everything I've read
about moonshine includes draconian warnings about winding up blind
drunk or dead. Hype? Truth?

Pure hype to make the evening news.

First of all, this only applies to distilled products not beer.  The amount of methanol in fermented product is in the noise.

The first runnings from a still contain a small amount of methanol and standard practice is to throw this away.  In a 5 gallon still, this would be the first few ounces.

If the moonshiner was really dumb or just couldn't wait, he risked methanol poisoning.  If it was left in the hooch, it would probably not ever be noticed.... just good practice.  End of story.

js

[k4kyv]

Can't help but compare this to the biblical food laws that millions of religious folks still practice as if they were still valid.

Actually, many of those old taboos about food and cleanliness and uncleanliness as described in Leviticus are consistent with hygienic principles known to-day.  Maybe they didn't understand the scientific reasoning behind it, but at least they were observant enough to figure out a list of rules, some of which would encourage survival in a world with essentially no medical care, even though the only thing they knew was to attribute it to the supernatural.

[K9ACT]

Can't help but compare this to the biblical food laws that millions of religious folks still practice as if they were still valid.

Actually, many of those old taboos about food and cleanliness and uncleanliness as described in Leviticus are consistent with hygienic principles known to-day.

Cleanliness is FB but  condemning pork out of hand hardly fits any hygienic principles that I know of today.

How about not frying a steak in the same pan that had a drop of milk in it ten years ago?

I think Reinheitsgebot had a lot more science in it than Leviticus.  BTW, I went back to your posting and cut and pasted Reinheitsgebot.  It boggles my brain to try to spell it.

js
 

[AJ1G]

Hi Neighbor - have a 'Gansett!  I remember going to the Narragansett Brewery in Cranston back in the 70s when I was at URI for their Oktoberfests.  Their Porter was pretty good, but the generic Gansett wasn't that great.

Worst beer for a hangover I've ever had was Jamaican Red Stripe at the AUTEC TFC (Thousand Fathom Club) in the Bahamas.  I was told that was due to the formaldehyde they are allowed to add as preservative  in beer sold outside of the USA.  Got a pounding headache from them.

Sam Adams just had a homebrew beer contest here in New England.  They were talking it up on the New England/Baltimore preseason football game tonight.  They had over 1000 entrants.  The winner, a recent BC grad, came up with the winning brew.   Sam Adams brewed up a batch of it and was selling it tonight at Foxboro at the game....

My personal beer favorites are Guinness and Bass Black and Tans when it's cold and Coronas or Kaliks with limes when it's hot.

[AF9J]

Frankly, the typical generic US & Canadian beers bore me - too thin and too sour IMO.  My favorites are a good decent Porter or Stout beer.  I used to like Bock beers, until they started cheapening them up ingredientswise, making them nothing more than a darker colored regular US pilsner or lager. 

There are a fair amount of micro breweries in Wisconsin, but, when I was in college in the 80s, there were many more small breweries than there are nowadays.  Leinenkugels used to be independant.  It's still brewed in Chppewa Falls, but ever since Miller bought them out, tastewise you can tell that the recipe was messed with/cheapened, into the typical corn beer thing.   Walters (whose Hibernia Bock was good stuff) is gone.  Rhinelander is owned by Joseph Huber.  FOUR beers I DON'T care for:

1. Old Style - yech!   Fully kreusened?  More like fully poisened.  I can't stand bitter beers.

2. Beer/waters like Kingsbury, Old Milwaukee, Coors, Budweiser, Miller High Life etc.  No body and flavor.

3.  Strohs - a friend of mine insisted on buying pitchers of Strohs when we went out for a bite to eat in college.  I never understood her tastes in beer and food. Strohs IMO made Old Style taste sweet by comparison.

4.  Corona - a.k.a. Mexican Miller or Budwiser.  Talk about hype for a beer that's as thin, bland and tasteless as Miller Highlife or Bud.  Oh yeah, and then make it seem different by having people do the weisse beer thing - only with a lime instead of a lemon in the beer.

BTW, does anybody remember Schmit beer?  Nasty stuff, but I remember the outdoorsy scenes they had on the beer cans.  Personally I'm not a big fan of beer in cans.  There seem to be just enough ions that leech out of the can into the beer, giving it a metallic taste I can't stand.   Keystone (a cheap beer marketed years ago [that I never drank]) used to plug the fact in radio commercials that their beer cans were plastic lined to get rid of the metallic taste.  Nope, for me beer's on tap or out of a bottle.  Or, I don't drink it.  I'm not a heavy drinker (thanks to seeing first hand, the effects of alcoholism on couple of my relatives).  I drink a beer for its flaver - not to catch a buzz.  Hence, no canned beer.

73,
Ellen - AF9J