Rating America’s Best-Selling Beers

To many true beer lovers, the phrase “American beer” is an oxymoron: The output of large American breweries isn’t beer, they say. It’s some indeterminate grain beverage with foam and bubbles.

To test whether things are as bad as some claim, the Times assembled a panel of five beer lovers to evaluate a wide range of commercially available American beers.

We tasted the wines blind, we used tulip-shaped glasses so we could see the color and sniff the aroma, and we discussed each one. The panel rated all the beers in groupings.

Bottles were purchased from the cold cases of local markets. Some of the bottles were illuminated by fluorescent lighting, so they may have been more “lightstruck” than cans. This would account for the fact that some had an older, less fresh flavor.

In the American-style lager category, eight beers were judged. Miller Draft from a can and Budweiser from a bottle were rated best. The former had an attractive malty aroma and creamy texture. The latter was fresh and hoppy, light and pale, but with good balance.

Miller Draft from a bottle seemed a little less fresh, and Coors from a bottle was appealingly light in style.

Disappointing was Coors from a can (a trace of sauerkraut in the aroma) and Lowenbrau (a slight skunkiness bothered the judges).

Among the 10 light beers we tried, not one was rated excellent, and only three struck the panel as good enough to recommend. Incidentally, there is often surprisingly little difference between the alchohol and calories in light beers than in regular ones, so check the label before you automatically reach for a light.

The best were Anheuser-Busch Natural Light, Michelob Light and Budweiser Light (from a can--the bottled Bud Light wasn’t quite as good). Natural Light was lighter in flavor than the others, but had some hoppy character and a creamy finish. Bud Light was again very pale and simple, but clean and fresh. Michelob Light had a bit more hops and a lively freshness.

The panel was disappointed with Miller Lite from a bottle because of a dark color and a tinny, cooked character. From a can, the beer was cleaner, but relatively flavorless.

We tried only four “dry” beers, which generally have slightly more alcohol than regular beers, and all four were lacking in distinctiveness. The best of them was Budweiser Dry because it was pale, light and crisp. Coors Dry (both bottle and can) had a citrusy aroma and Michelob Dry had a garlic/skunky note.

Among the premium lagers, three beers rated best: Michelob, Heilman Special Export and Miller Reserve Barley Draft. Michelob was very clean and fresh with a non-hopped taste that was disappointing, but the brew is refreshing and smooth. The Heilman was the most distinctive beer of the group with a malty, Munich-style lager taste. The finish was a trace thin, but the mineral water crispness was appealing. The Miller had a malty, citrusy character and a faint “dusty” note with a trace of bitterness. Very well made.

Coors Extra Gold Draft ranked next, marked down for a rice or corn note to the aroma. A most intriguing beer in this grouping was Sonoma-based Yen Sum, a beer with Ginseng added. The aroma was butterscotch-y, but the ale-like taste was judged very interesting and may appeal to those who want more flavor.

Rated as fair was Rolling Rock, and rated as poor were Dixie, Henry Weinhard’s Private Reserve and Christian Moerlein.

The main problem with all commercial American beer is lack of flavor. “The major breweries,” says beer expert Alan Eames, “shotgun toward a mythical consumer that drinks beer for its thirst-quenching qualities. The idea is to sell lots of beer; flavor is not the issue.”

Exacerbating the situation (at least for the beer lovers) is the fact that most of the giant U.S. brewers say they are making lager beer. Lager comes from the German word lagen , which means to store, mature or age a beer under temperature-controlled conditions. Most American brewers have misappropriated the term pilsner to indicate a lighter style of beer.

“Europeans consider 13 weeks to be a shamefully minimal time for lagering,” Eames says, “and yet 13 weeks for most major American brewers would be extraordinary. Nine weeks is considered a long time in the U.S. industry.” The result is a less complex beer.

Nor is most U.S. beer like real Pilsner, a type of lager that comes from the Czech city of Plzen. The original Plzen brewery used very soft water, permitting production of a beer that retained notes of malt despite very high hop bittering levels. Even today, Pilsner Urquell, made in Czechoslovakia and widely available in the United States, stands as the classic example of a true pilsner, with the characteristic hoppy bitterness in the aftertaste.

On a standard measuring scale, U.S. beers have between 10 and 15 International Bittering Units. “The classic Czech pilsner is a considerably more bitter beer than American ‘pilsner,’ ” says beer expert Byron Burch. “With Pilsner Urquell, it’s up around 40,” he says. “And the American palate is just not trained to appreciate that sort of bitterness. But by cutting back on some of the other ingredients as well as on the hops, the U.S. beer makers have made a better balanced beer--although it has less overall flavor.”

No one knows when this started, Burch says, but it was probably about the time Prohibition ended. Byron suspects that the reason has to do with cost: It’s cheaper to make beer this lighter way.

The tasting panel consisted of Dan Berger, home-brewers and beer writers Byron Burch and Tom Dalldorf, wine educator John Thoreen and Michael Martini, winemaker for Louis Martini Winery.