Budweiser American Ale

I can’t remember a beer that’s generated the sort of hubbub that this one has.  I’ve had lots of casual beer folks, and non-craft beer people ask me what I thought about it, or if I’d tried it yet.  So, in the interest of having something useful to say to them, I dutifully plunked down my $5.99 and consumed my six pack in a variety of situations over the past few weeks.

If I had to sum up Budweiser American Ale in one word, it would be “clean.”  This sucker seems to have had most of the life stripped out of it.  There simply are no rough edges or bumps to be seen.  It has a glossiness to it that comes across as almost artificial.  The mid-palate seems a bit hollow, and the finish is quick without any lingering hop or malt notes.  It is crystal clear as well.  I don’t know what the filtering regime is for this beer, but my guess would be “thorough.”

The color is a bit over-the-top for me too.  This stuff pushes Amber to the limits of RED.  The nose is primarily a caramelly-sweet malt, with just a whisper of hops.  Thankfully, it’s much better balanced on the palate, though the malt is surprisingly less intense than the nose led me to expect, but man is that finish quick.

At the table, I found the beer to be pretty flexible – again though, never really shining in any particular situation, more not overtly interfering than anything else.  It works better with red-sauced pizza than most beers (I need to do a post on this topic some day), but it’s still not great.  It was also fine with some tacos I made from some local grass-fed ground beef, and it certainly didn’t get in the way of some kettle barbeque chips I picked up at Trader Joe’s.  But, in all of these instances, it didn’t add anything to the food either.

On its own, I became tired of it part way through each glass.  There was just nothing really interesting going on.  The flavor was pretty one dimensional, and I just happen to not be a fan of caramel/crystal malt flavors in beer.  All this being said, Budweiser American Ale is not all that different from a lot of craft-brewed Amber Ales out there, but I can’t think of too many Amber Ales that I like very much at all.  There are certainly no faults, in the technical sense, but it’s hardly an inspiring beverage.

I fully recognize that I am not the target market for this beer, and I can see the Budweiser name providing a reassuring gateway to the uninitiated, and for that reason, this beer could have a not insignificant value – both to A-B, and to the craft market.  That being said, I haven’t run into too many people that come to craft beer through baby steps.  I still have converted more people to possibilities of good beer with Three Floyds‘ Dreadnaught than any other beer.  I think the sheer shock of something so completely different and so delicious (I jokingly call Dreadnaught the best $10 bottle of wine I’ve ever had) makes a more compelling argument.

On a non-beer related note, I noticed, with serious environmental concern, how heavy the Budweiser American Ale bottles are.  When I weighed them on my digital scale I use for brewing I found each bottle to be 15% (Sam Adams) to 20% (O’Fallon) heavier than other brewers’ bottles that I had handy – that’s an extra 2.25 to 3 pounds per case to ship around for no apparent reason other than “style.”  Mulitply that by the tens or hundreds of thousands of cases they will sell, and it’s a problem for me.