What are some differences in macro beer recipes?

General Homebrew Discussion
1

What are some differences in macro beer recipes?

  • type of adjunct rice or corn

  • percentage of adjunct

  • yeast type?  Does Miller vs bud  vs pabst vs brand X use their own yeasts?

  • barley variety

  • brewing process differences

Anything else?

2

Pretty much everything will be different from one manufacturer to another.

3

Yea but what are those differences?

4

Do you mean what exactly each one does?

5

I think the question pretty much summarizes it.  Not sure how I can expand on it?

6

Learning all of the specific differences from one brewery to another would require extensive research. Most homebrewers aren’t too interested in learning about things we likely have no use for. Sounds like a good project to keep you busy for a long while. Good luck with your research.

7

Bud is rice, WY2007, and is lagered on beechwood chips. I think many of the other US macro lagers use corn, Coors is WY2105, Miller might be WY2042, and I’m not sure about everyone else. More specific details are probably well controlled trade secrets, but good luck trying to figure out the puzzle.

8

Flow versus batch processing and an extreme control of the process is probably the biggest difference between the big guys and us homebrewers

9

Dilution percentage might be another factor.

Besides the type of adjunct rice/corn how can one tell these beers apart?  Given a series of these beers brewed with corn how can they be distinguished?  There must be subtle recipe / process differences.  (i.e. Think blind taste test between like miller/busch/pabst/old milwaukee/coors, etc… could you taste the difference and tell them apart?).

Or it may be that recipes are shared between brands.

10

I can pretty much guarantee that the recipes ate not shared between brands.  All the beers you mention taste different.  Have you tried them?

11

Your question was, what are some differences in macro beer recipes? You then list these, quite logically I might add:

  • type of adjunct rice or corn
  • percentage of adjunct
  • yeast type
  • barley variety
  • brewing process differences

Not to be glib, but I think you’ve answered your own question. i.e. some differences in macro beer recipes are:

  • type of adjunct rice or corn
  • percentage of adjunct
  • yeast type
  • barley variety
  • brewing process differences
12

Yea, I’ve tried all of them and agree that there are sometimes subtle differences.

Sharing exact recipes may not happen as consumers might catch on (this tastes like that) but then again a lot of them do have similar tastes and might differ by only one variable, yeast type, dilution percentage, adjunct percentage, etc…

IMO, What would be amazing would be to compare the original with current, like 1800’s recipes vs today’s recipe.

At any rate if the actual recipes were known IMO it would be amazing the subtleness of the differences.

13

i got confused by looking at the title, i thought you meant differences between homebrewing and macros. but macro vs macro, yeah of course.

without googling anything ie “What barley does coors/inbev/heineken whatever use?”

i know that a big limiting factor in making sake is that the commercial sake producers buy up all the special types of rice that are exclusively for sake production. theyre fairly standardized, yamada-nishiki for example will be a type, but then location it is produced in will change the price within that type. apparently if you cook it as food rice it doesn’t taste good, but its qualities are for making alcohol.

so i know that ive heard that budweiser will contract harvests of barley year by year. based on my knowledge of budweiser they are probably choosing grains primarily for maximum efficiency/starch ratio over flavour.

i think one thing that would be interesting between breweries would be how they make their non-pale lager beers. guinness ships some kind of dark concentrate (unhopped?) around the world to breweries they contract to brew regional guinness. lol, im drawing a blank on any other non-pale lagers that are massive scale and international, though i know there are some. i cant even google it as popular craft beers come up and id assume they are simply brewed how we’d expect and then exported.

anyone know what types of hops budweiser uses now?

14

I did provide a starting point but at the end of the post I ask if there’s anything else.  Can someone think of/know of another difference that I didn’t list?

15

another thing, i think the regularity/taste consistency is overstated a bit with the macros. truly macro cheap/standard price american lagers are fucking terrible metallic, corn syrupy, vegetabley, paper bag tasting messes and it having been a long time since i regularly drank them, theyre things i just try to choke down and rarely even finish when i have them now.

i dont think extreme consistency is required with these things, as really their existence is based on marketing and brand name more than anything. i mean that is likely the majority of the cost of the beer in the can.

16

I agree custom barley varieties or different barley varieties are another difference.

17

I’m not sure about consistency but I’d think it’s rather difficult to maintain the same taste year after year with differences in ingredients…  e.g. Taste a Bud Light now vs. One from the very first batch.

18

lol dude, no offense but i would just search for discussions on this topic or do some reading first. “one from the very first batch”? lol what?

19

Budweiser has their own malting plants where they produce a good percentage of the malt they use. I know for a fact that they also buy malt from Rahr regularly.

Are you trying to brew an American lager or just curious? Some say the differences between Miller/Bud/Coors and Pabst are subtle, but to me each beer stands out. Miller has a sulphur component that stands out, Bud and Coors are closer, both have a red apple character, Pabst has more malt character and is the cleanest of all of them. Now others may disagree with this, but buy a six pack of each in cans as fresh as you can get them and do a side by side. It’s remarkable how different each of these beers are, at least to me.

I brew American lager and compete with it. I’m usually pretty successful. The best advice I can give is to try brewing it with both American yeast such as 2007 and then try with German yeast like 34/70 or even 833. I prefer German yeast. If hold back on the malt character and use 833, it comes out like Pabst. The best malt I’ve found for American lager is Rahr Premium Pilsner.

That’s my 2 cents

20

i promise you, i am not being dismissive. but im interested in your apparent seriousness regarding american (adjunct?) lager, what is the appeal? Why? Any interesting things youve learned about it?